South Sydney players have been training on a specially modified field to replicate the smaller dimensions of Allegiant Stadium ahead of their historic season opening clash with Manly in Las Vegas.
Allegiant Stadium, which will host Super Bowl LVXIII three weeks before the NRL double-header on March 3, is an NFL specific field and will therefore be slightly shorter and narrower than a standard rugby league field.
Fans are unlikely to notice much difference as the 94.5 metre field (100 yards) will be marked into 9.45 metres grids featuring the NFL’s unique number stencilling and the NRL has been able to widen Allegiant Stadium to 63.1 metres.
In comparison, a regulation rugby league field is 100 metres from goal line to goal line and 68 metres wide. The in-goal areas will also be 6.4 metres deep at each end of the field instead of the usual 10 metres.
However, the Rabbitohs are leaving no stone unturned in their preparation for the match against the Sea Eagles, which will open the 2024 NRL season before Sydney Roosters take on Brisbane Broncos in the second match of the double-header.
With the top Souths players not due to play their first match of the year until the February 17 Charity Shield clash with the Dragons, coach Jason Demetriou and his staff organised for the club’s Heffron Park training field to be modified.
Players have also watched video footage of what it is like inside Allegiant Stadium as well as the club's training base in San Diego.
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“Our NRL team are in the last week of pre-season before their Charity Shield prep, so it was a suitable week for us to say, ‘let’s mark it like Allegiant and experience what is fundamentally a quite small football field’, to see how they want to play when they get to Vegas for Round 1,” Rabbitohs COO Brock Schaefer said.
“It is only for this week because you can’t pretend that Round 1 is the entire season. It is for two points, and it is an important game, but we play the rest of the season on a regulation field.”
For Rabbitohs players the replica Allegiant Stadium markings, which are painted white inside blue lines representing the standard NRL sized field, have bought into sharp focus how they will be creating history by playing in the first premiership match on US soil.
However, Schaefer insists that Souths will not significantly alter their playing style because of the smaller field dimensions in Las Vegas.
“I think the players have enjoyed having sessions on the replica field and they are very excited and appreciative that they get to understand what the conditions are going to be like in Round 1,” Schaefer said.
“It is one week of understanding what we will experience in Vegas and then they will be back to preparing for the Charity Shield. Once we get over there, we will have two weeks of preparing on an Allegiant-style field.
“But there is still a South Sydney way of playing and large it won’t change how we play football or how Round 1 looks to fans.”
Vegas more than just the game for Manly
The Rabbitohs are staying in San Diego before travelling to Las Vegas on the eve of the match and will train at UCLA, while experiencing the local culture and spending time with US Navy seals in the famed naval city, which is home to the USS Midway.
To help the players prepare, Souths officials have provided them with a detailed briefing of their day-to-day schedule in San Diego and Las Vegas.
“We don’t want anything to feel like a surprise to them, so we want them to understand where they are staying, where they are training, what the climate is like, what the food is like and any unique cultural norms in San Diego that they need to be aware of,” Schaefer said.
“We are doing some things to integrate ourselves into the community when we get there. We have been speaking to the native American nation that is based in San Diego County about what our welcome to country looks like when we arrive.
"We have also been working with the US Navy because San Diego is one of the largest naval bases in the US, so we are doing things to make sure the players get a really grounded appreciation of where they are going.
“Similarly for Las Vegas, the briefing has been very detailed in terms of what they are going to encounter and what it is like day to day, and a lot of that does include security and risk management.
“We have played them videos of Allegiant Stadium so they know what it feels like when we are inside it, and of the training facilities. Nothing will surprise our players when they get there.”