Where were all the Manly Fans?

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Brooke

Bencher
Went to the Grand final fan day at Tumbalong Park where players from both GF teams came. I must say I was very disappointed for the Manly players that they had so little support there. The footy show followed this. I am not a big fan of the footy show and this is the first time I have attended it, in the audience.

I don't remember seeing a thread or email from the club asking fans to attend these functions to show their support for our great team. The only bright light for us few Manly supporters there was Hugh Jackman. Even he had to cope with the Manly boos and Warriors cheers when he tried to speak of his support for the sea eagles.

I did see you there 'forever 08' with your banner. Good on you.
 
Does anyone know why hardly anyone went? It would have been great to have Jono and his drum and some vocal supporters there as well.

I was at the week 1 semifinal and although the crowd was small, still a great atmosphere. Yesterday evening, you wouldn't know Manly were even in the GF, it was all about the Warriors. All those manly haters in the media must have loved it.
 
I wouldn't walk across the road to watch The Footy Show.

I gave it 20 mins last night, only because we're in the GF. Those Sheep jokes were appalling. Two and a half sheep. Please.
 
Who even knew about the footy show thing?
I haven't watched it in years. Why bother?
It's a mainstream show, we're an alternative club.
Footy show is for wests tigers & bongos fans. Let 'em have it.
 
I'll tell you where all the Manly fans were: WORKING!! We've all got jobs and a lot of us work on the Northern Beaches. Just because they all used their dole cheques and baby bonus payments to go doesn't mean that we all need to use a day off just to prove we are better. We'll leave that until Sunday.

Brooke said:
Does anyone know why hardly anyone went? It would have been great to have Jono and his drum and some vocal supporters there as well.

I was at the week 1 semifinal and although the crowd was small, still a great atmosphere. Yesterday evening, you wouldn't know Manly were even in the GF, it was all about the Warriors. All those manly haters in the media must have loved it.

Brooke, that's the way it was on Thursday, that's the way it will be on Sunday as well. We just need to be louder, more passionate and get the boys across the line. Wow, we're not favourites according to the fans? That's a surprise /sarcasm.

I feel for the Warriors because before they had the whole of NZ on their shoulders...now because of the Terrorgraph they have everyone else's hopes on their shoulders too. They will be really nervous on the weekend.

One last thing for you to think about. How can one club's fans outnumber 15 clubs' fans? You can't.
 
Yup, like Jono says I was working, as were a number of other fans I know. I have taken the whole weekend off but it is too much to ask to take another day just for the footy show.
 
probably sums up why we lost a million. The local Sydney fans don't go the extra mile like the other clubs. The Northern beaches crowd even worse. When you read about Cam, Swoop, Darren from Penrith, Sue from Mudgee etc etc and then we get 12k at Brookie it doesn't compare!!
 
Darren said:
probably sums up why we lost a million. The local Sydney fans don't go the extra mile like the other clubs. The Northern beaches crowd even worse. When you read about Cam, Swoop, Darren from Penrith, Sue from Mudgee etc etc and then we get 12k at Brookie it doesn't compare!!

What is this about?
Who even knew there was a footy show thing on? I didn't. Where was it advertised?
Channel nine is for westies anyway.
 
just it looked bad, thousands of worriers supporters and a sprinkling of us. A sydney team players booed onto the stage.
 
I wasn't having a go at any of you guys who had to work etc. Just felt disappointed for the players for the lack of support for them when they arrived at around 530pm before the footy show started.

As it is school holidays it just seemed a shame there weren't more kids and mums there. Maybe a little more publicity aimed at this group could have helped. Zorba didn't think to promote this for our players sake?

As far as the dole bludger thing goes, and the warriors fans. I know it is not very PC but the same thought crossed my mind.
 
I created a thread about this:

http://forums.silvertails.net/Thread-NRL-2011-Grand-Final-Thursday-Fan-Party-29-Sept

My kiwi-blooded warriors-supporting mate & I went - we took days off work for it and caught the train down from Newie & back for it.

I tried to research a bit about it prior, but only found the sparsely-detailed schedule on the page:

http://www.rugbyleague.com.au/grandfinal/fan-party.html

We were mainly hoping to see our 1st grad GF team heroes and get some signature on our jerseys - both wearing our own teams jerseys & caps etc.

Made it to a local pub around 10am for a beer, couldn't really get going any earlier so our train soon after got us to Central just after 1pm.

Got to our 1st pub on George street and hooked up with a table of 3 warriors-supporting strangers and had a good chat and some laughs there, was cool.
They had been to the Fan Party event @ Darling Harbour and told us that it was now all sealed off and nothing happening while they set up for the ticketed footy show event.
I was still hoping there would be peripheral activities and rugby league stuff to check out but they said there didn't look like much after the morning's activities etc. so we just stayed there with them for a couple more beers (which was fun).

We headed down to Tumbalong Park soon after and they were right - was quite dissapointing to see very little going on outside of the big sealed enclosure, and the ticket office had signs over it's windows "SOLD OUT" which surprised us as we were by that stage keen to buy a ticket and join it.

So we wandered around yelling in turns at each other: "Go Manly!", "Go Warriors!" etc.
We actually there caught up with a kiwi Richard who we had both met @ Brookvale a few months prior - a real nice guy who takes a good-size flag on a heavy pole to the games (his photo was actually in both the Telegraph & Newcastle Herald that day in warriors articles).
He actually had a photo of my mate & he on his camera from the Brookie day he showed us and we had some good laughs - we were looking out for him and hoping to catch up with him so that was really cool.

We hung around the "red carpet" area they had prepped for the teams' arrival, was great to see the cheer girls strutting thier stuff there.

The highlight of the trip was when our teams entered along that carpet - we easily found spots along the fence, my mate shook hads with 4 of 5 of his warriors heroes as they came past, and I shook hands with over 2/3 of our entire squad when they came past!
As each one came by I said: "Come on Killer", "Come on Matty", "Come on Snake", "Come on Foz", "Come on Kitey" etc. as I shook each of thier hands - they were all grinning and happy to walk along close to the fence shaking hands or hi-5-ing thier supporters, was really good to see.
In addition to those mentioned I think I also shook hands with Gifty, Hoppa, Daly & George. Then toward the rear of the team I spotted Joe walking a little way off the fence and I yelled out: "Smokin' Joe!" and he turned with a big grin, came over and shook my hand.
Absolutely stoked, we were.

My mate & I both had out textas ready in our pockets, but whilst I thought I might have seen Daly pause a bit with some fans earlier along the fence, it didn't look like any of them were signing anything and they were all kind of moving along steadily without stopping.
I had also noted several kids near us wearing thier gear and also waiting to see thier heroes and if I got a signature I was going to pass my pen to one of the kids and ask the Manly player if he might sign something for them too etc., but not to worry.
So I didn't push the issue, just enjoyed shaking hands and encouraging them.

The team set up some photos near a big trophy replica thing they had, then went into the enclosure proper with announcements from the stage inside etc.
We wandered around the perimeter of the enclosure as they went in and onto the stage, my mate & I still yelling in turns "Go Manly!", "Go Warriors!" to the inside - we could sort of see through the mesh etc. so it was still kinda fun.

Then we headed back into the city to another pub for more beer & some food, both quite stoked with seeing our heroes ad shaking hands with so many of them.

Got a train home that evening, ended up getting home around 12:30am and had to get up soon thereafter for work the next day.

Overall, we were stoked that we shook hands with our team players, but a little dissapointed in missing out on any other stuff.
 

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