IF the second year of the Penrith Panthers’ long-term deal to bring an annual home game to Bathurst represented the low point of the arrangement, it looks like we saw the high point on Friday night.
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The crowd of just over 6000 that watched the Panthers trounce the Gold Coast Titans 40-0 in March 2015 was a disappointing turnout for what ended up being an uncompetitive match.
Council and the Penrith club focused on the positives after that game – as could only be expected – but the result did raise some legitimate questions about the longevity and viability of the Panthers deal.
Did the Panthers need to bring a strong opposition to town to guarantee a strong crowd? Did the match have to be played well into the season, rather than in the early rounds?
And the most basic question of all: were the people of Bathurst prepared to risk losing their one NRL match a year by staying away when the game wasn’t to their taste?
History now shows that the crowd for the Titans game was the exception, rather than the rule.
The crowd rose by about 500 the next year and by about 2500 on the Gold Coast match the year after, cementing the deal and gradually easing many of those doubts.
And then there was Friday night.
The more than 10,000 people who filled a buzzing Carrington Park on a chilly May night in Bathurst to watch a see-sawing game of rugby league showed that this match has found its place on the local calendar.
While future Immortal Johnathan Thurston, Kangaroos front-rower Matt Scott and representative wrecking ball Jason Taumalolo plied their trade for the Cowboys on the field, the people of Bathurst (and visitors) provided the crowd and the atmosphere that the game deserved.
There was a sense of familiarity about the game – that this is our annual fixture – mixed with a sense of occasion, as befitting the fact a major sporting event (the feature game on free-to-air television, in fact) was here in town.
It was a long way from that March day in 2015. And it showed how far we’d come from an excited, but nervous, new NRL venue back in the first year of the deal in 2014.
In the years since, we’ve shown that we belong. That we can feel comfortable with our place.
So is it too early to start looking forward to the 2019 game?
