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KURTLEY Beale is gone in a step. All that's left is the air at which the Rebels grasp in futile desperation.
Before the Melbourne defence can set the sat-nav to No. 12, the ball is gone too. Flicked audaciously by Beale into the safe of hands of Israel Folau who rampages toward the line.
The crowd rises. At least the section in the cheap — or cheaper — seats.
The fullback is still 10m short of his destination but Beale is pumping a defiant fist in the air. This is his — to put it politely — "Damn you!'' moment. The discarded Rebel is aiding his new team's cause and, as sweetly, his old team's destruction.
That the brilliant Folau is the beneficiary of Beale's sleight of hand is both the icing on the cake and a reason to pose a party-pooping question: Why aren't there more people at Allianz Stadium to see it?
Kurtley Beale finds space with Israel Folau to his right. Picture: Mark Evans Source: News Corp Australia
The NRL's round 1 crowd debate was the source of media frenzy, but studied indifference at NRL HQ where they are playing the long game.
There is confidence — misplaced or not — that a game at its competitive peak will attract the numbers it deserves when the NRL Commission's plans are put in place.
The Waratahs, on the other hand, seem to have waved the white flag. Folau's absence from a picture featuring two Major League Baseball stars and the cream of Sydney football — Sonny Bill Williams, Alessandro Del Piero, Adam Goodes — was a matter of unfortunate timing.
It was also symbolic of the rugby codes' diminished status.
On Friday night, you could not blame the weather for the small attendance that the Waratahs no longer announce. (Put me down for 12,000). It's 25 degrees at kick-off. Polo shirts, not tweed jackets, to torture the cliche.
In the members area those rugby cliches are hard to resist. The crowd is, as ARU boss Bill Pulver observed, "male, pale and stale''. One of the few places where a greying, pot-bellied reporter can reduce the average age. When they play John Farnham over the sound system, the promoters might genuinely claim they are trying to appeal to a "younger audience''.
The venue does nothing to draw fans. The best thing you can now say about Allianz Stadium is that the ageing bucket seats and dated function rooms provide an egalitarian touch for a supposedly posh audience. It's like an old band room where you saw some great acts decades ago. A place to evoke memories, not create them.
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Next door at the SCG, baseball fans are enjoying the modern delights of a wonderful new grandstand and hardening their arteries with an array of specially catered American dishes. In that context, Waratahs and NRL fans are not just flying second class at Allianz. They are in the luggage hold.
The Waratahs start brightly. Alofa Alofa scores in the fourth minute. The hum of conversation is disrupted by shouts of appreciation.
But, for the most part, it is an almost depressingly drab first 40 minutes. A messy melange of handling errors, technical penalties and injury time-outs.
You hope the experts will tell you this is one of the worst halves of Super Rugby played this season. If this is considered even mediocre, then the game's problems are even greater than you imagined.
At half-time there is a sevens match featuring the Australian women's team. Which seems an encouragingly enlightened piece of promotion until four well lubricated "gentlemen'' nearby officially launch the 'Sydney Sexist Cliche Festival'.
You convince an usher to allow you to enter to the ground level — despite her dire warning the seats are "much worse'' — and enter an area where the fans wear Waratahs jerseys and caps and are far more engaged with the game. And where, not coincidentally, the game itself seems more engaging.
The loudest cheers are for Jacques Potgieter, a hyperactive blur of shaggy hair and axe-handle shoulders who crashes into the opposition with comic book intensity. The South African forward is an instant cult figure.
The Tahs win 32-8 and have done enough to both enliven the small crowd and answer a vital question: Do the Waratahs, and Super Rugby, have a compelling product to sell in a crowded marketplace?
Yes.
So why aren't they selling?
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