All Stars crowd warning for Gold Coast

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THE original home of the NRL and Indigenous All Stars is in danger of never hosting the pre-season spectacle again with fears that a shocking turnout of between eight and 10,000 people will attend Friday night's match on the Gold Coast.

Introduced by the NRL in 2010, the All Stars concept is a week-long celebration of rugby league's commitment to Indigenous Australia, culminating with the best NRL players taking on the best Indigenous players the code has to offer.

Andrew Fifita tackles Cooper Cronk. Source: News Limited

However, while coach of the Indigenous All Stars Laurie Daley has had his own issues of finding enough players to field a competitive side, the NRL are battling to fill Gold Coast's Skilled Stadium.

As of Saturday, ticket sales for the match were predicted at just under 10,000.

The paltry figure is a slap in the face to the game's biggest names who will feature in the contest including Greg Inglis, Johnathan Thurston, Paul Gallen, Greg Bird, Matt Moylan and Kieran Foran.

The lowly-anticipated crowd also magnifies the worrying and steady decline in support for rugby league on the Gold Coast.

The Titans, who regularly played to a half empty Skilled Stadium last season, recorded their lowest home crowd (6,647) since re-entering the competition.

The Gold Coast's Skilled Stadium was the chosen venue for the inaugural All Stars clash in 2010 with 26,687 in attendance.

Penrith Panthers players Matt Moylan and Tyrone Peachey will face off against each other in the NRL and indigenous all stars game. Source: News Corp Australia

In 2011, 25,843 fans attended the match at Skilled while in 2012 there was further interest from Gold Coast locals with a crowd of 26,039.

Taking the match away from the Gold Coast for the first time to Suncorp Stadium in the most recent All Stars of 2013, a bumper crowd of 41,201 was on hand in Brisbane.

After a one-year hiatus of the All Stars match in 2014, the NRL felt it would be a fitting gesture to take this year's contest back to it's original home on the Gold Coast.

But unless there is a significant spike in ticket sales over the next five days, Friday night's All Stars match is likely to be the last of it's kind on the Gold Coast.

While Daley said he hoped the Gold Coast community supported the match, the NSW State of Origin coach is facing own dilemma.

Daley could be forced to give Inglis and fellow Indigenous All Stars backs Justin Hodges and Jack Wighton time in the forwards to due to an extreme shortage of Indigenous forwards available for selection.

Michael Ennis with NRL All Stars coach Wayne Bennett. Source: News Corp Australia

Underlining the short-supply of forwards is the fact that bench forwards for their respective clubs St George-Illawarra and the Gold Coast, George Rose and Ryan James, have been named as Daley's starting front-rowers.

The loss to injury (knee) of Indigenous forward Tom Learoyd-Larhs left Daley scouring the NRL for a replacement last Friday with South Sydney rookie Chris Grevsmuhl earning a call-up.

Daley said it was impossible not to expect some players would be deemed unavailable for selection when the season-proper is just under a month away.

"It's a game (All Stars) which has been scheduled into the calendar and given what I've heard, I'm assuming the players want to be a part of it,'' Daley said.

"It's at the beginning of a long schedule, but if you're going to play this match you've got to make sure that it's also respected.

"However, you can't help that blokes will have issues in regards to their health and at the end of the day their health is their priority.

"You can't expect them to go into games if they carrying a niggle, that's not fair on anyone.''

Both the Indigenous and NRL All Stars players will gather in camp on the Gold Coast this afternoon.

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