A ground record crowd of 83,833 watched the National Rugby League Telstra Premiership Grand Final between the South Sydney Rabbitohs and the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs.
The crowd is the biggest attendance for any sporting event at ANZ Stadium since it was reconfigured after the 2000 Sydney Games.
It beats the previous ANZ Stadium record crowd of 83,813 set for State of Origin III in '13. NRL Head of Commercial Paul Kind: "About 1000 additional seats were installed for tonight’s game -- and those seats were snapped up quickly. And we believe that we could have had a crowd in excess of 100,000 had the original Olympic configuration still been in place" (NRL). In Melbourne, Tom Decent reported South Sydney lock Sam Burgess "has dropped the 'F-bomb' live on national television while walking to the sheds at half-time of the NRL grand final." Brad Fittler "asked the 25-year-old Englishman when he was coming off the field how he was coping with his fractured cheekbone which he suffered in the first minute if play." Fittler:
"Just got Sam Burgess, how's the cheekbone mate?" Burgess:
"It's f---ed, it's gone" (THE AGE, 10/5).
