Latest News Wyong Roos home final comes at a cost
| Wyong Roos home final comes at a cost |
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| Thursday, 02 September 2010 11:14 |
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By Steven Maher - Wyong will host arch-rival Cessnock in tomorrow's Newcastle Tooheys Cup elimination semi-final - but having the match at Kanwal has not come cheaply for the Roos. In a decision which has frustrated the club, Wyong has been forced to guarantee the Newcastle Rugby League $10,000 in gate takings for the knockout semi-final.
As the higher ranked team in the finals (Wyong finished the preliminary rounds in third with Cessnock fourth) the Roos were expecting the game to be played at home.
But Newcastle Rugby League officials approached Roos officials after Sunday's defeat against Wests and expressed a desire to play the game at a Newcastle venue, hoping for a bumper crowd. "We did assume that as the higher ranked team the game would be played at our home ground," Wyong Leagues Club's chairman of the football committee Bob Pettiford said. "Under competition rules they do have the right to dictate where the game would be played, but we had a meeting on Monday night and voted unanimously to guarantee a $10,000 gate taking. I'm confident the rugby league fans of the coast will come out and support us. Hopefully we'll get plenty of support but if we don't reach the $10,000 required, we'll make up the shortfall, we've agreed to that." Meanwhile, Roos coach Paul Stringer has named six-man interchange bench for the match. "We need to have a better attitude and be more ruthless," Stringer said. "We didn't have the intensity for the full 80 minutes last week." |