Why has rugby league priced its working class fans out of going to games?

BUZZ: RUGBY league is supposed to be the working-class game but Retro Round showed just how far the game has gone from its roots.

• BUNKER: Will the Dragons choke

• SUPERCOACH: Tough call on big Sam

IN the old days you had no choice. If you wanted to watch footy you had to go to the footy.

Outside of the ABC covering a Saturday afternoon game and a commercial network doing about an hour of Sunday match-of-the-day highlights after the 6pm news, you got nothing.

Most of us sat glued to our transistor radios listening to Frank Hyde, Col Pearce, Tiger Black and later on Hollywood and Zorba and Ray Hadley.

YOUR MEMORIES: How you think of leagues good ol’ days

So if you were a genuine fan you went to the footy. They were the good old days.

A sparce crowd watches on during the round 15 NRL match between the South Sydney Rabbitohs and the Gold Coast Titans at ANZ Stadium.

When you’d go to the SCG, buy a pie and a couple of beers from the bar under the old scoreboard and watch from the hill.

You’d go home with change out of $10.

Or enough to buy a hotdog on the way home outside the ground from one of those metal methylated-spirits fuelled stands.

Families were also allowed to take in eskies with all their food.

Once we even smuggled alcohol in — a bottle of bourbon shoved inside the carcass of a chicken. True story.

Turn the clock forward 30 years.

Crowds in 1986 looked far more healthy than they do today.

You wake up on a beautiful Sydney Sunday and decide to take the family to the football.

A family pass to Brookvale Oval sets you back $121.99. No seats and nothing undercover. Just entry.

Throw in petrol and parking. $40 worth of food. A couple of beers, two glasses of wine and some soft drink or water.

It becomes a $220 day. There goes the grocery money.

Unlike the old days we now have options. Channel Nine shows four free to air games.

Or for $70 a month you get 32 live NRL games every month on Fox Sports.

That works out at $2.20 per game — for the whole family.

No parking, no petrol. A comfortable lounge. Cheaper beer. Better food. And you stay warm.

It’s making the choice easy.

The NRL used to have an advertising slogan: “It’s never the same unless you’re there at the game.”

Not anymore. Not when you’re sitting in a 75 per cent empty stadium.

Not when a working class game is charging you $220 for a day out with the family.

It’s the real reason why crowds have dropped almost 10 per cent in the last five years.

Originally published as Why has rugby league priced its working class fans out of going to games?