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I missed out on one of those bags at Fed Sqr i think they had them, then at origin b'coz we didn't catch the train in but came in the other end. Bit unfair but oh well.

From what I've heard from the Storm offices and that, the crowd that was announced was slightly less than what was acctually in the ground...some numbers saved if they need to be used for future smoothing.

The Storm have been talking up that they will get a significant increase in crowds off the back of the Origin matches in Melbourne to the respective stakeholders in Sydney, so it wouldn't surprise me that numbers have been held up from not only the Broncos games, but other games before hand (there has been a few games which have looked a lot bigger than what was announced) to give the Storm strong numbers for the end of the season.

As mentioned before, smoothing is far from a new concept with any sport, so I have no issue if the Storm are doing this, so long as the numbers at the end of the year do reflect the number of bums on seats.

Just on future games, I do know the VRL/ARL Development/Storm Development RL clinics for semister three will start to include free tickets to Storm games, so that should hopefully mean some more kids (and hopefully their paying parents) attend matches towards the end of the season.  The Storm Development group have already seen over 19,000 kids last semister, so they are making a mark on the junior levels.

Regardless of the actual number, the ground looked packed on TV so no-one up north has any reason to doubt the numbers and complain that we got a crap crowd. In fact quite a few people that saw the game on TV thought that the crowd was bigger than the official figure.

On a side note, sad to see that games in RL heartland couldn't pull bigger crowds this weekend. Largest crowd outside of Melbourne was 15,070 for the Sharks vs Tigers match.

UP YOURS NORTHERNERS!!!

In todays Melbourne Sun (print version) the St. Kilda v Collingwood game was listed as a sell out.
Quote" It was a fully ticketed Saints home game - every seat had been sold by last friday, before 3000 standing room only tickets went on sale. The official crowd was 48,564 "Unquote.

That was a pathetic crowd compared to the Origin game! There were plenty of seats available. The Dome screws up again!

someone got the numbers wrong because that looks like a full house.  I'm watching the replay on Fox Sports now.

There was easy 15k there, if not more.