20,000 tickets - 20,000 signatures?
Good afternoon everyone!
When I started this petition a little more than 2 days ago I thought to myself "Well, if no one tries, we wont know whether we can make a difference."
We still don't know whether we can sway the decision for the game to be cancelled/postponed/go ahead without an audience, but the support has been incredible. Currently more than 16,000 people have signed. Thank you all for singing and sharing!
ABC Newcastle's Kia Handley asked me yesterday whether I think we can make an impact. I said that if we were to reach as many signatures as tickets being sold, we'd be in a kind of stalemate. If we could get more than 20,000 signatures surely the persons making the decisions must start to listen.
We are almost there!
It would be great if you could keep sharing the petition and stay active.
This morning local State MP for Wallsend Sonia Hornery shared the petition on fb. Within half an hour her post had almost 500 likes and many comments were from footy supporters who said that although they'd like to have a State of Origin Game in Newcastle, now is NOT the time to have it.
By the way...
The UK Guardian published an article last week about an analysis by Public Health Scotland (PHS). Nearly 1,300 Scotland fans who travelled to London (there were 2,600 tickets allocated to Scottish fans) to watch their team play England on 18 June later tested positive for coronavirus, with a total of almost 2,000 football-related cases emerging from Test and Protect data. Obviously there is a far far higher COVID rate in the UK than in Australia, but so far Australia says that transmission in outdoor venues is negligible and more or less non existing. This analysis by Public Health Scotland seems to show otherwise.
P.S. I was made aware that when people sign the petition they are offered to donate money. This money does not go to myself or directly to the petition.
P.P.S. During the time it took me to write this update almost another 1,000 people signed the petition. We are now at: 16,982 signatures!