Former Adelaide Ram David Kidwell reckons the NRL should further pursue its South Australian options after he took part in Melbourne's 40-18 defeat of Penrith at Hindmarsh Stadium.

Kidwell, who first experienced the intimate atmosphere of Hindmarsh as a participant in the Rams' four home games in 1998, said the enthusiastic and knowledgeable nature of the crowd convinced him the sport should get a second chance in SA.

"Definitely, I think they were pretty knowledgeable about the high marks people were taking, and just as long as they're involved in the game and excited by it I think there's a future down here," Kidwell said when asked about the crowd.

"It's a good stadium, it's built for rugby league, they play soccer here but it's definitely suited to league."

SA league officials admitted Saturday night's crowd of 7017 was fewer than they had ideally hoped for, but said the numbers had partly been influenced by the fact no free tickets had been given away for the one-off game.

Having played at both Hindmarsh and Adelaide Oval during his spell with the Rams, Kidwell was in no doubt that Hindmarsh should be used more frequently.

"When we were the Adelaide Rams we shifted from Adelaide Oval to Hindmarsh Stadium and that involved the crowd a bit more because at Adelaide Oval you were probably too far away," he said.

"There's other teams pushing to come into the competition and hopefully down here they might get a team in the future."

Panthers coach John Lang said his players had been strangely flat all match, but could lay none of the blame on his club's choice of stand-in venue while its home ground underwent an early season refurbishment.

"That's our first game we've been flat since the start of the season, and we've done a bit of travelling, but so have Melbourne, they came off the bye and that might've freshened them a bit, but we didn't have much choice," he said.

"The ground's being refurbished and the new stand and so forth, we've got a home game in round eight.

"If you had all your home games late in the season you may get a bit sick of that too, so I've got no complaints about coming here.

"The club did it for promotion and the fact we haven't got our home ground to use, so everybody's enthusiastic about coming here, in the end we were just flat."

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