Pre-Origin II SPECIAL EPISODE live in PERTH! Freddy & the Eighth
Brad Fittler, Andrew Johns and Danika Mason are joined by a myriad of guests this week. The boys are joined by Eddy and Tom from the Hello Sport podcast to test the limits of footy dribble, Paul Gallen joins the show and has some FIERY words to say about Sonny Bill Williams, and cricket legend Mitchell Johnson to talk about his impressive career. Plus, the two footy legends break down their best Origin memories, and how important that first hit up really is.
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Sydney Morning Herald
2 hours ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
Do the people of Perth care about rugby league? Here's what we learnt in Origin week
At a guess, 75 per cent of people were in some sort of Origin merchandise. Surely, they were interstate travellers, right? But of the 57,000-strong crowd in attendance, only 13,000 travelled from other states to watch the game. On top of the 44,000 locals in the crowd, another 190,000 watched from their Perth lounge rooms – more than recent round's free-to-air audience for the Fremantle Dockers and West Coast Eagles games. Of course, those figures don't include the number of people watching AFL matches on Kayo, but they do at least make you wonder if West Australian editor Chris Dore was right when he said 'if we had a league readership here, we would be covering it' when asked why his newspaper had buried its Origin coverage next to the escort-services page on the day of the game. This is the same newspaper that six years earlier, before the first Origin game was played in Perth, was championing the cause that the city should have its own NRL team. The Bears will have enough challenges without worrying about that. Rugby league by the numbers in Perth In 2018, the NRL kicked off the NRL season with a double header at Optus Stadium. The fixture attracted a crowd of 38,824 attendees, with 20 per cent out-of-state visitors In 2019 and 2022, the NRL's marquee State of Origin delivered more than $25m direct economic expenditure impact into WA, with over 116,000 visitor nights and nearly 20,000 out-of-state visitors. In 2023, the Dolphins first visit to Perth drew a crowd of over 45,000. In 2024, the Dolphins-Roosters NRL game at HBF Park sold out quickly with the match setting a new attendance record at the venue. In 2025 the recent Sharks-Manly and Rabbitohs-Cowboys double header attracted a crowd of 31,347. The 2025 Perth Origin sold out with more than 57,000 fans, of which 13,000 came from other states. Record ratings for Perth (190k) for game two of this year's Origin series, up from 169,000 in game one. It was the second-biggest consumption of food and beverage at Optus Stadium, surpassed only by the AFL grand final in 2021. Let's face it, the NRL has made things hard for them by insisting they operate from the start on a level playing field and not offering them any salary cap dispensation, as the AFL has done when setting up new franchises. Even in the NRL, expansion team Papua New Guinea will come into the competition in 2028 with the added bonus of being able to offer players a tax-free income. Not since the Melbourne Storm almost three decades ago has a team been asked to convince 30 players to move interstate, away from family and friends. The Dolphins had the luxury of having their own junior nursery and signing a bunch of players who already lived in south-east Queensland. The state of rugby league in Perth There are currently around 5000 registered participants in Western Australia. When the Western Reds were in the competition, participation numbers were in between 15,000-20,000. The NRL aims to double participation in WA in 5 years and reach 30,000 participants in 10 years. In 2025, registrations are currently trending for WA's best year since the days of the Western Reds. 240 schools are currently engaged in rugby league programs in WA with elite rugby league programs in six schools. With the Perth Bears and government support, it is hoped to drive this number to more than 500 schools and establish and elite schoolboy/girl competitions in WA. That means the Bears will have to pay overs for more players, creating an unbalanced roster in a town where they can't just go down to the local ground and find the next best kid. If you are player 19-30 on the roster, or one of the club's development players, you could be making a 10-hour return trip each week to represent the North Sydney Bears in NSW Cup, if the club decides to adopt that development-pathway model. As one rival NRL club representative said during the week: 'I'm glad our players have just done this trip, now they won't sign with the Bears.' Their coach Mal Meninga proved incredibly popular with the locals during his recent trip to the west for Origin II, which is a huge positive. But it must also be remembered that, despite an impeccable record of coaching at representative level for Queensland and Australia, he hasn't coached a club team since 2001. With that will come uncertainty. Loading Similarly, the Bears' chief executive Anthony de Ceglie is a well-connected figure in Perth, which again is a huge positive. But, by his own admission, he has very little rugby league IQ. None of that means the Bears won't – or can't – be a success, but the challenges are real. Time is of the essence and much of this team's success will hinge on its ability to arrive with a bang and not a succession of wooden spoons as it figures itself out.
The Age
2 hours ago
- The Age
Do the people of Perth care about rugby league? Here's what we learnt in Origin week
At a guess, 75 per cent of people were in some sort of Origin merchandise. Surely, they were interstate travellers, right? But of the 57,000-strong crowd in attendance, only 13,000 travelled from other states to watch the game. On top of the 44,000 locals in the crowd, another 190,000 watched from their Perth lounge rooms – more than recent round's free-to-air audience for the Fremantle Dockers and West Coast Eagles games. Of course, those figures don't include the number of people watching AFL matches on Kayo, but they do at least make you wonder if West Australian editor Chris Dore was right when he said 'if we had a league readership here, we would be covering it' when asked why his newspaper had buried its Origin coverage next to the escort-services page on the day of the game. This is the same newspaper that six years earlier, before the first Origin game was played in Perth, was championing the cause that the city should have its own NRL team. The Bears will have enough challenges without worrying about that. Rugby league by the numbers in Perth In 2018, the NRL kicked off the NRL season with a double header at Optus Stadium. The fixture attracted a crowd of 38,824 attendees, with 20 per cent out-of-state visitors In 2019 and 2022, the NRL's marquee State of Origin delivered more than $25m direct economic expenditure impact into WA, with over 116,000 visitor nights and nearly 20,000 out-of-state visitors. In 2023, the Dolphins first visit to Perth drew a crowd of over 45,000. In 2024, the Dolphins-Roosters NRL game at HBF Park sold out quickly with the match setting a new attendance record at the venue. In 2025 the recent Sharks-Manly and Rabbitohs-Cowboys double header attracted a crowd of 31,347. The 2025 Perth Origin sold out with more than 57,000 fans, of which 13,000 came from other states. Record ratings for Perth (190k) for game two of this year's Origin series, up from 169,000 in game one. It was the second-biggest consumption of food and beverage at Optus Stadium, surpassed only by the AFL grand final in 2021. Let's face it, the NRL has made things hard for them by insisting they operate from the start on a level playing field and not offering them any salary cap dispensation, as the AFL has done when setting up new franchises. Even in the NRL, expansion team Papua New Guinea will come into the competition in 2028 with the added bonus of being able to offer players a tax-free income. Not since the Melbourne Storm almost three decades ago has a team been asked to convince 30 players to move interstate, away from family and friends. The Dolphins had the luxury of having their own junior nursery and signing a bunch of players who already lived in south-east Queensland. The state of rugby league in Perth There are currently around 5000 registered participants in Western Australia. When the Western Reds were in the competition, participation numbers were in between 15,000-20,000. The NRL aims to double participation in WA in 5 years and reach 30,000 participants in 10 years. In 2025, registrations are currently trending for WA's best year since the days of the Western Reds. 240 schools are currently engaged in rugby league programs in WA with elite rugby league programs in six schools. With the Perth Bears and government support, it is hoped to drive this number to more than 500 schools and establish and elite schoolboy/girl competitions in WA. That means the Bears will have to pay overs for more players, creating an unbalanced roster in a town where they can't just go down to the local ground and find the next best kid. If you are player 19-30 on the roster, or one of the club's development players, you could be making a 10-hour return trip each week to represent the North Sydney Bears in NSW Cup, if the club decides to adopt that development-pathway model. As one rival NRL club representative said during the week: 'I'm glad our players have just done this trip, now they won't sign with the Bears.' Their coach Mal Meninga proved incredibly popular with the locals during his recent trip to the west for Origin II, which is a huge positive. But it must also be remembered that, despite an impeccable record of coaching at representative level for Queensland and Australia, he hasn't coached a club team since 2001. With that will come uncertainty. Loading Similarly, the Bears' chief executive Anthony de Ceglie is a well-connected figure in Perth, which again is a huge positive. But, by his own admission, he has very little rugby league IQ. None of that means the Bears won't – or can't – be a success, but the challenges are real. Time is of the essence and much of this team's success will hinge on its ability to arrive with a bang and not a succession of wooden spoons as it figures itself out.
The Age
12 hours ago
- The Age
Their season is in the balance. Inequities of NRL draw could tip Panthers over the edge
As well as the travel, there are also the short turnarounds to factor in. As Knights coach Adam O'Brien said after his team's recent loss to St George Illawarra, when he begrudgingly rested Kalyn Ponga so that the Queensland Origin star wasn't playing three games in eight days: 'In this battle, we lost to the scheduling and the draw. Whoever does the draws either hasn't lived it or doesn't care, so I don't know which one it is.' Some may have felt O'Brien's comments were a bit rich, given that a week earlier, the Knights had enjoyed the rub of the green, beating a Penrith side minus their five-man Origin contingent. Panthers coach Ivan Cleary copped that loss on the chin and was disappointed that his depleted team had been unable to give a better account of themselves. It's not in Cleary's unflappable nature to complain publicly or to create controversy but, after Penrith's 18-14 win against Wests Tigers two weeks ago, he made an exception. Cleary's concern was not the game the Panthers had just played, but the double whammy looming on the horizon, after his team's round 15 bye. First Penrith face the Warriors in Auckland on Saturday, barely 72 hours after their Origin stars – Nathan Cleary, Isaah Yeo, Brian To'o, Dylan Edwards and Liam Martin – were on duty with NSW in Perth. It's basically a day in transit from Western Australia to New Zealand, once time zones, connecting flights and layovers at airports are factored in. Not long enough, the coach said, to risk taking his NSW reps across the ditch. 'The Origin players won't be playing, because they can't,' he said. 'That's another story. I don't think it's fair. We should be able to make that decision. And just through flights, we can't get them there.' Front-rower Lindsay Smith, who was a stand-by player for NSW in Perth, is nonetheless expected to rack up some frequent flyer points and suit up for the Panthers on Saturday. Cleary found an unexpected ally in Phil Gould, formerly his mentor at Penrith before a well-documented falling-out. 'What about the ridiculous scheduling for the poor old Panthers this week?' Gould said on his Six Tackles With Gus podcast. 'They are playing on Wednesday night in Perth, all these Origin players … how would they expect those players to back up? It's terrible. If I was the Panthers club, I would be blowing up deluxe.' Gould may have been thinking two moves ahead, given the Panthers' next assignment after Auckland is the Canterbury club he oversees, on Thursday next week. Penrith's Origin quintet should be nicely freshened up for their clash with the table-topping Bulldogs, although Cleary was again disappointed with the scheduling, saying the rest of his players faced a five-day turnaround, which included the trip home from New Zealand. In recent seasons, Cleary has happily rested his Origin players during this phase of the season. In 2022, he gave seven state representatives the weekend off and their back-ups were too good for cellar-dwellers the Wests Tigers. A year later, Penrith beat the Knights with their five NSW players watching from the stand. This season, he doesn't have the same luxury as the reigning four-time champions face a dogfight to make the finals. And perhaps that is the crux of the issue. Loading We all realise the draw has flaws in it. NRL officials understand that, even though they are loath to publicly admit it. Instead, they try their best to juggle myriad complex issues and requests while keeping any inequities to a minimum. Impartial observers might form the view that it's all swings and roundabouts and that it usually evens itself out in the long run. That's all well and good until you're in Cleary's shoes, preparing for two tough games, five days apart in different countries, with your whole season potentially hanging on the outcome. Dynasties don't last forever. In Penrith's case, they can only hope the next two games don't prove to be the draw that broke the camel's back.
