The fireworks provided on and off the field at Saturday night’s historic Group 11 grand final at Apex Oval will be reviewed by the organisers before their annual general meeting in November.

Dubbo Macquarie took out the first night grand final in local rugby league history, defeating Dubbo CYMS 14-6 in front of a crowd paying $26,500 at the gate

Group 11 secretary Bob Walsh said the organisation’s management committee was delighted with the result of its Saturday night experiment but admitted there was no guarantee the 2009 grand final would be held with the same format.

“It’s really too early to tell what we will do next year but personally I think the night was a great success,” Mr Walsh said. “But we’ve tried it now and the clubs realise what it is like and we will have a debrief of the night before we have our AGM on the first weekend on November.

“The grandstand was full and in spite of the rain there was still a good number of fans watching from the hill on the eastern side of the ground, so that was good.”

The weekend rain arrived at the wrong time for organisers, who had planned to make the night a spectacle for those in attendance.

A fireworks display and rendition of the national anthem before the first grade contest gave the evening an atmosphere similar to that of an NRL grand final.

Mr Walsh said the eight clubs in Group 11 would be consulted about what they thought of the evening as part of the debrief.

“We tried to make it a big occasion and while we couldn’t control the weather we were happy with how it went,” he said. “The other thing that probably didn’t help was that five of the six teams playing were from Dubbo so we probably didn’t get as many travelling fans as normal, but we have no control over that.”

ben.walker@ruralpress.com