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Al Pacino, in that virtuoso Any Given Sunday performance, speaks about the inches on the NFL field that make all the difference.
The ones you climb out of hell to claim. The ones you are willing to die for.
“The inches we need are everywhere around us,” Pacino tells his team in the role of coach Tony D’Amato.
Like the NFL, rugby league is a game of inches. However, when the “Greatest Game of All” is showcased in the United States, it will be done so on one of the smallest fields ever for a professional match.
The pitch at Allegiant Stadium, the $3 billion arena known as “The Death Star”, is five metres narrower than a traditional ground. When you consider the length of the field is also four metres shorter, that’s more than 1 million less square inches to steal or defend.
“I don’t think ‘AJ’ is going to be too happy about that, not scoring any tries in Vegas,” South Sydney hooker Damien Cook joked about teammate Alex Johnston, the prolific winger on course to soon set a new try-scoring record.
Alex Johnston dives over for a try for the Rabbitohs.Credit: Getty
“Maybe we can change it to 12 men per game, someone can get sin-binned straight away.”
The NRL wants to showcase expansive football to the uninitiated, but will have less room to do so. Those five missing metres – the equivalent of three full-grown llamas laying side by side – is the width of the channel in which Johnston and the game’s most acrobatic wingers come to life.
The most spectacular tries are those where they plant the ball down while defying defenders and gravity. But will they still have a sufficiently wide channel in which to produce that sort of magic in Vegas?
“You think about the wingers diving into corners like a normal-sized field, it’s more narrow,” said Anthony Seibold, coach of the Manly side that will take on South Sydney as part of the Las Vegas double-header.
Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas.Credit: AP
“One of the things we will do leading up to that week, we’ll try to find a field that has the same dimensions as what we are playing on.
“We’ll practice how we want to play our footy. There will be implications for our prep for a week or two leading in.”
Seibold is well qualified to provide a perspective. Part of his playing career was spent at Hull KR, where home ground Old Trafford had almost identical dimensions to Allegiant Stadium.
“It was similar, 63 metres, the same size as the one we’ll be playing on,” Seibold said. “The kicking game is still viable and important, that doesn’t change.
“The defenders are a bit more shoulder to shoulder due to the spacing, so we’ll need to look tactically at what suits best.
“We will talk to a few guys who have played at Old Trafford, like Jake Trbojevic or Chez [Daly Cherry-Evans], who have played on some of those smaller-sized fields in the UK. You can draw on some of the IP of the guys who have done that in the past. Going back 20 years when that was my home ground at Hull KR, it was a bash-up.”
The NRL will investigate whether the Allegiant field could be widened slightly, potentially by providing padding around the perimeter. Regardless, Seibold believes uninitiated American punters will still be treated to a quality, attacking spectacle.
“The athleticism of the players these days can create space on the edges,” Seibold said.
“It will be different, five metres is a lot, but that’s part of the experience, isn’t it? You have to be a bit creative with how you play footy.”
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