LAST week I watched on catch-up the two NRL matches from Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas.
The two games were played in a stadium with a roof in front of more than 40,000 spectators and the pitch and its markings were in pristine condition.
On Sunday I tuned into the game between Featherstone Rovers and Wakefield Trinity that was shown on the Sportsman YouTube channel. It was a thrilling match, full of incident, with Rovers winning in golden-point time. I would guess that their supporters will have had enough excitement from that one game to last a lifetime.
The enduring photograph from that game is of Gareth Gale touching down to score the winning try.
It was a great effort by Gareth to run the length of the field on such a heavy pitch after intercepting Mason Lino’s pass.
But the game could hardly have looked more different to what we saw in Las Vegas.
And that isn’t to criticise a wonderful match at Featherstone’s Millennium Stadium, which was a local derby that, amazingly enough, was the first time these two teams have met in an official match since they contested a famous Grand Final in 1998, when Trinity defeated Rovers 24-22 and secured a place in Super League.
And, until now, they had been in Super League ever since, with Featherstone always trying to find a way into Super League but often failing at or near to the last hurdle, as they did last year.
It’s been a thankless task for them and it will be even harder now that we have moved to a grading system to decide which clubs will play in Super League.
Recently there has been much talk of the NRL buying a stake in Super League, with some speculation that the Australian governing body would want Rugby League to revert to playing in winter, so that we would have more of those conditions that we saw at Featherstone on Sunday.
Would we really want to see more games on heavy, rain-sodden pitches, with the fans shivering on the terraces?
I wouldn’t have thought so, and certainly not in my case.
I was one of the earliest advocates for shifting the season to summer and I would much rather watch a game on a balmy summer afternoon than in the depths of winter. I have nothing but admiration when I see players covered in mud, but I can’t see that image drawing in many new fans of the game, whereas the images that came from Las Vegas made me feel some regret at not having been there for the event.
Apart from anything else, the pitch markings looked terrific and contrasted sharply with Rugby League matches played in this country, which usually have no pitch markings at all, other than the lines across the pitch. There is absolutely no branding at all, other than the posts at the end of the pitch.
And if we are to play in winter, I would prefer to see the game played in a stadium like Allegiant, where the elements can be kept out using a retractable roof.
The only stadium in the United Kingdom that offers that facility (apart from the centre court at Wimbledon) is the Principality Stadium in Cardiff, where we used to stage Magic Weekend when it was first introduced.
As with many things in Rugby League, the decision to stage Rugby League matches in the Welsh capital seems to have passed us by and yet I recall some great experiences in Cardiff at the Challenge Cup Finals that were staged there between 2003 and 2005, or the Magic Weekends that were staged there in 2007, 2008 and 2011.
Cardiff had the massive advantage shared by the Allegiant Stadium and Newcastle’s St James’ Park, in that the stadium was very close to the centre of the city.
But will we ever see Rugby League played there again?
Probably not, I suppose.
But what a shame!
