GROUP 11 secretary Ross McDermott believes the crowd figure of 6346 at Albury on Saturday to witness the Manly Sea Eagles take on the Canberra Raiders could harm the chances of more country areas getting NRL fixtures.
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Dubbo's Caltex Park was in the running to host the match but Manly opted to go take it to the border city and McDermott said he had no doubt Dubbo would have drawn more fans to the match.
"Albury had a bad day with the weather, it looked atrocious in the bit of the game I saw, I'm not sure if they'd be happy with the crowd but I'm sure Dubbo could have provided a better crowd no matter of the weather," he said.
While McDermott admitted the poor weather at Albury's Lavington Park played a part in the crowd dipping well below 10,000, he said the NRL and clubs need to plan where they take matches a bit better in the future.
Following on from Bathurst only drawing 6240 for their match against the Gold Coast Titans in round two, McDermott said it wasn't a great look for the bush but he said there were country areas that could pull big numbers.
"It's disappointing for the future of the game in the country because there was 6000 at Bathurst and 6000 at Albury so clubs will be thinking about that," he said.
"But we've (Dubbo) proven it before, last year we got 10,000 at City-Country on a cold, freezing day so they're just not picking the right venues," he said.
Manly's match against the Brisbane Broncos in round 21 is still listed at a location 'TBC' on the official NRL draw but the Sea Eagles are expected to make a decision in the next two weeks.
Group 11 and Dubbo Council have again put Caltex Park forward to host the match and McDermott said he would be getting in touch with Sea Eagles CEO Joe Kelly again this week.
He said he and his committee had been working on some different ideas this time around and had addressed some concerns from the original bid for the Raiders game, leaving him to say he was feeling "slightly confident" about Dubbo's chances of bringing an NRL game out west in 2015.
Another person McDermott said he was keen to talk to was former Australian cricketer Stuart Clark, who has just been announced as the new Chief Operating Officer of the NSWRL.
The issue of rugby league in rural and regional areas has received plenty of attention in recent times and McDermott said the game really needs to act in order to keep the sport in the bush in a healthy state.
"'Gus' Gould said in article he wrote last week there's a lack of support from the CRL and former cricketer Stuart Clark has just taken on an operations job at the NRL and he said that money is not getting back into country areas so once he settles in I'll be in touch with him because he's hit the nail on the head," he said.
