Two meagre crowds on Saturday night highlighted that not everything is rosy for the NRL and AFL.

Down at Carrara Stadium on the Gold Coast, where the AFL hopes to have a 17th club based in three years’ time, only 6354 people, around 4000 less than the AFL had hoped for, bothered to turn out to watch the Kangaroos play the West Coast Eagles.

That’s the smallest AFL crowd in a decade.

It wasn’t much better for the NRL at the old Olympic stadium, now known as ANZ Stadium, where the St George Illawarra Dragons could only muster 6881, about one-tenth of capacity at Homebush, for a home game against the Melbourne Storm.

Of course, there are extenuating causes which could be cited as the reason for the poor attendances at both venues.

But they don’t hide the bare facts that the size of both crowds was embarrassing.

AFL supporters will say it was only a game between the Eagles and Roos and Gold Coast AFL fans want to see their own club, not teams from thousands of kilometres away.

It had been raining in the lead-up to the opening bounce and the game was live on Fox Sports.

I would have thought, given this was the first AFL fixture match on the Coast this year, the AFL community down that way would have been at Carrara in their thousands to show they want their own club.

It’s not certain yet that they will get one.

Maybe local footy supporters were paying back North for turning down an offer to relocate permanently to the Coast.

A decade ago, league and AFL were almost on equal terms as far as popularity goes on the Gold Coast, but these days, with the Titans top of the ladder and drawing 20,000-plus at their new stadium at Robina, league is now a clear winner.

To stem the tide, the AFL has to ensure it programs much more enticing games at Carrara then Kangaroos-Eagles over the next couple of seasons.

The clubs involved may not like it, but for the sport to regain some ground in Queensland’s second biggest city, the AFL needs to put on a fixture like Collingwood v Brisbane.

In the NRL, club matches being played at ANZ Stadium are becoming one of the biggest negatives in the game.

Clubs get financial incentives to play there, but it is hurting the game’s image to see so many empty seats week after week.

Sure the Origin players were missing for the Dragons-Storm match, but St George, perhaps the best supported team in Sydney, should never be in a position where it can’t get 10,000 people to a home game.

The NRL has to step in.

Clubs like South Sydney and the Dragons, with their major fan bases around 40km away, should never be allowed to play games at ANZ whatever inducements they’re offered. If it has to, the NRL should match what the stadium chiefs offer.

The Tigers should be at Campbelltown or Leichhardt and leave ANZ to the Dogs who, at the moment, have nowhere better to go.