Crowds cut for Bulldogs clash with Storm
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The crowd capacity will be lowered at Sunshine Coast Stadium for Saturday's Storm v Bulldogs game following concerns about a lack of social distancing at Melbourne's clash with Newcastle on Sunday.
Sunshine Coast Council has announced that no more tickets will be sold for this weekend's game with a cap of 5000 fans set for the venue, less than half its seating capacity.
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk on Monday said she was pleased to see the council, Storm and NRL act quickly to ensure public health was protected.
"We don't want to see large crowds gathering and not social distancing," she said.
"The majority [on Sunday] were seated, not moving around, but having said that I want to commend the NRL for taking that very swift action and letting my office know that they will be reducing the numbers by 1000."
The Storm had issued a statement on Sunday night after the win over the Knights to say the stadium was operating under a site-specific COVID safe plan approved by Queensland Health and includes having Queensland Police in attendance.
They said the "attendance of 5437 was inside the 50% capacity approved by Queensland Health for sporting events of this nature in Queensland".
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NRL head of football Graham Annesley was satisfied the code had followed biosecurity measures to support Palaszczuk's comments.
"All the information we have from the Queensland government is that there were no violations of existing regulations and requirements," Annesley said.
"The information that has come to us today is that there were a whole bunch of officials there, from various council, state government, and health officials.
"And that's not to try and pass the buck to anybody, but more importantly it's that the capacity for the current rules in Queensland is that outdoor venues can have no more than 50% capacity.
"That venue had less than 50%. The hill area that caused most of the discussion was less than 50% capacity.
"There will be ongoing discussions about the venue and control of the crowds as you would expect in these times with coronavirus and events of all types - not just rugby league."
