Fans enjoy a top class footy game in Tamworth

DESPITE a day of rain and a short power outage, the Knights and Sharks NRL teams and the region’s fans enjoyed a top class game of rugby league on Saturday night.

Tamworth’s Scully Park hosted the NRL trial game, attracting a sellout crowd of more than 4000 rugby league fans.

Tamworth Regional Council’s business events manager Gavin Flanagan said everything went “really well considering it had been raining all day”.

“The rain let up before the first grade game started which was great, because it was great rain for the farmers and good it stopped before the main game,” he said.

“The game sold out on Saturday, unfortunately that meant some people came along and couldn’t get tickets.”

Mr Flanagan said they were very happy with the way the event ran, which was the third pre-season game played in Tamworth .

Tamworth hosted the Canberra vs Canterbury NRL game and the Waratahs game last year.

“Both clubs (Knights and Sharks) were really happy with the way things went and we’ll have discussions in the next couple of months about getting other games here,” Mr Flanagan said.

“It was a pretty exciting finish with Cronulla’s win in the last few minutes.”

There was a short blackout of the main lights of about 10 minutes, 13 minutes into the game.

“These things happen, though,” Mr Flanagan said.

“It happened at Super Bowl and Old Trafford so Tamworth’s certainly not immune to these things. Wests were able to get things underway really quickly.”

Mr Flanagan said he believed there were no off-field incidents during the game, either, with everyone there to enjoy the on-field action.

“Everything went really well,” he said.

“The crowd came prepared with wet weather gear. I want to thank the Tamworth people and the people of the region for coming along to the game with the rain as heavy as it was during the day. It shows people are really keen to get out to see these games and it makes us more determined to bring back more high quality sport.”