NRL insist the grand final WILL continue to be played on Sunday nights

ARL committee chairman Peter V’landys is adamant that the NRL Grand Final will remain at its usual Sunday evening slot, despite calls to play earlier in the day.

Sunday’s clash between Parramatta and Penrith at Sydney’s Accor Stadium kicks off at 7.30pm AEDT and continues the recent trend of evening starts.

The last time the flagship NRL season started before 7pm AEDT was in 2012, when proceedings between Canterbury and Melbourne started at 5pm AEDT.

And V’landys is adamant that the Grand Final will be played under the spotlight.

“Ultimately you have to get the most eyes when watching the grand finale,” V’landys . said NewsCorp.

“Grand finals are a huge opportunity to promote the game and it has been proven that more people watch sports at night.

“We need to maximize our audience with big events. You might get some casual fans turning into rusty fans. At this stage there are no plans to change it.”

ARL committee chairman Peter V’landys has ruled out that the NRL Grand Final will be returned to its traditional afternoon slot for the time being

V’landys’ comments come just days after rugby league Matty Johns urged the NRL to return to a daytime Grand Final.

“I’d love to see a day-long Grand Final return to the NRL,” Johns told Garry Lyon and Tim Watson on SEN Radio.

“I think it’s a better football standard. In our game you move the ball much more.

“And I just love the atmosphere of a Grand Final during the day.”

Former rugby league great Matty Johns has called on the NRL to cancel the night’s grand finals

The 2012 NRL Grand Final between Melbourne and Canterbury was the last to start at 5pm

Johns also noted that the AFL has resisted calls to shift the Grand Final start time to accommodate evening viewers.

‘You see the MCG’ [for the AFL grand final] and you just see it packed with everyone in there,” he said.

At night you don’t really have a good idea of ​​whether it is a full house.

“I love that tradition the AFL has of a daytime grand final and I wouldn’t love to see it change for the sake of just a few eyeballs looking at it.”

The AFL Grand Final returned to its usual 2:30 p.m. start at the MCG last week

The AFL returned to its usual 2.30pm start for last week’s Grand Final between Geelong and Sydney, after the previous two editions were held overnight – in Brisbane and then Perth due to Covid restrictions in Melbourne.

Both games drew much larger numbers than this year’s edition.

OzTam ratings released last Sunday show that 2,179 million people have seen Geelong beating Sydney in the metropolitan crowd of five cities.

It was the lowest rating decision since OzTAM began recording in 2001 and dealt a significant blow to the AFL.