Canterbury and Penrith square off<\/a>, officials are expecting one of the biggest crowds of the past 20 years as Phil Gould and Cameron Ciraldo\u2019s side goes up against the Panthers dynasty they helped shape.<\/p>\nScheduling a Sunday afternoon western Sydney showdown would see the Bulldogs drawing power approach the 74,549 that turned out for the 2009 Bulldogs-Eels preliminary final, and subsequent 70,000-plus crowds that attended the Dragons-Tigers (2010) and Bulldogs-Rabbitohs (2012) grand final qualifiers.<\/p>\n
The week two finals schedule won\u2019t be locked in until after Canberra and Brisbane\u2019s Sunday afternoon qualifying final, given the loser of that game will have hosting rights next weekend.<\/p>\n
Bulldogs chairman Adam Driussi said Canterbury\u2019s strong turnouts this season set the stage for the high-water mark of 2009 to be challenged next weekend.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt doesn\u2019t get much bigger than a home semi-final against Penrith – they\u2019ve been the benchmark for the last five years,\u201d Driussi said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur fans are the most passionate supporters in the game and have been absolutely incredible all year. You could see what that support meant to the boys when we had 65,000 at Accor Stadium on Good Friday – the energy that crowd gave us was phenomenal.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow we\u2019ve got the chance to push toward that 74,000 mark from 2009, and I genuinely think we can get there. This is their time to show the rugby league world what Bulldogs supporters are all about. We need every Bulldogs fan to make themselves heard because in a game this big, that support could be the difference.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Canterbury are anticipating a 70,000-plus crowd to rival their 2009 finals epic against Parramatta as the NRL considers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":142012,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-142011","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-afl","8":"tag-afl","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-australian-football-league","12":"tag-australianfootballleague","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142011\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}