Draw '24: Friday night football feast on menu

Friday night football is again a prominent feature of the One New Zealand Warriors’ 2024 NRL draw.

Exactly a third of their 24 regular season matches have been scheduled for the night lights, just one fewer than the nine Friday night fixtures they had in 2023.

As was the case during this year’s record-breaking campaign, the One New Zealand Warriors' first and last home games are both Friday night affairs.

They open with the Cronulla Sutherland Sharks at Go Media Stadium on Friday, March 8 (8.00pm) and face the Canterbury Bankstown Bulldogs in their last regular season home game in Auckland on Friday, August 23 (8.00pm).

There are three FNF encounters in the first seven rounds against the Sharks in round one, Canberra in Christchurch in round three and St George Illawarra in Wollongong in round seven.

There’s again a heavy diet of Friday night fare in the latter part of the campaign with the One New Zealand Warriors playing five end of the week night games in the space of six rounds – the Raiders away in round 20, the Wests Tigers and Parramatta on back-to-back Friday nights in round 21 and round 22 at home, Manly Warringah away in round 24 and the Bulldogs at home in round 25. In all, five of their Friday night games are at home and three away.

Friday night games were a formula for success for the One New Zealand Warriors this year winning eight and losing just one of the nine matches played. They won all four away the Bulldogs (24-12), Raiders (36-14), Dragons (48-14) and Gold Coast 28-18).

At home they beat Newcastle in Wellington (20-12), Canberra (21-20), Manly (29-22) and St George Illawarra (18-6) with the only Friday night loss coming against South Sydney (6-28) in torrential rain.

Friday nights were also exceptionally popular with the fans as they generated a series of huge crowds culminating in the biggest regular season attendance of the year in the last outing against the Dragons (25,095).