When Souths play Easts even the very air is contested. And so it was on Friday night as rugby league’s oldest rivalry was played out in its newest sporting battlefield, the $828m Allianz Stadium sitting smack bang between the two enemy territories.
The Roosters’ NRLW team opened the evening’s entertainment with a 34-6 thumping of St George Illawarra in the first of a double-header, before a vocal crowd of 41,906 watched the club’s men defeat their old rivals the Rabbitohs 26-16 in a typically fierce and thrilling NRL contest which, fittingly, will only reach its denouement in a return bout next week when the two sides play again in a sudden-death final at the same venue.
