Reading some posts recently NRL and SL expansion has come up. I just thought i would make a new thread for talk about expansion.

first on the NRL. I think we are closer than ever here in australia to getting a national comp. I'd say within 10 years the NRL will be a 18 or 20 team comp with new teams including Perth, South Australia, Wellington, Central QLD and Central Coast NSW. Now to do trhis you may have to get rid or merge some of the current sydney teams. Now this is a touchy subject, i mean nobody wants to see their club gone or merge with another club. I think it has to happen however, if it is going to be NationRL then i don't think yu can still have more than half the teams come from one city. Now im a doggies fan and i wouldn't like to see my club merge but i think i would get over it in the long run and be glad becuase the sacrifice enabled the NRL to spread its wings over all australia.

Now SL, i have heard that there is now a rumour that it may be expanded to 15 teams as opposed to 14 next year. I have said in the SL or NRL thread that i am all for it. I have one question, which three teams will get the promotion? will it be the top 3 in NL1 or will they be picked by a panel, ie. GC titans.

The SL expansion is not just on results. Its on financial viability, grounds and potential supporter base. In Rugby League world magazine, that is where the 15 team roumour was picked up, one of the administrators saying that 14 was not a done number that it could be 15 if enought clubs show that they are good enough. Having said that current teams like St helens may not get a franchise if theie facilities are not upto scratch... that is the whole Franchising system there now. Its not a straight promo or releg anymore on results. I think the SL is looking to a 16 team expansion eventually.

Now the NRL. Basically my views on this currently are: The NRL will expand to 18 one day. I don't think 20 teams is sustainable in the near future, 50 years time maybe when the population base is larger, but not in the next 10-20 years. Which teams to bring in... this is a difficult one becasue no matter what you do you will step on a few people toes:

• Perth/West Aus. team, YES 100%. RL IS popular there and with good marketing this team would be successful.
• Adelaide/Sth Aus team, NO, I don;t think that RL would ever be popular there, they just don't really seem to be getting into it.
• Darwin/Nth territory, MAYBE, they certainly have the talent and in past years have had many players come from there. Population base is tiny though, its potential down fall.
• Wellington, NO. I dont; want to see NZ League killed off. That is what it would do. NZ league will become a 3rd rate sport in NZ.
• Central coast, well basically YES. They are RL mad and need to counter soccers incursion there.
• OUtbakc NSW, MAYBE, if based in Wagga or the Bathurst/Parkes area, this could potentially be the best way to counter AFL, Union and soccers inctrusion into the outback, provide a way for bush stars to get into the NRL.
• THIS is the controvercial point I will make, I think eventually the Warriors need to be canned, but only when the Kiwi RL comp is strengthened. I think at the moment the Warriors are whats keeping the local comp down, but is providing a useful way for the Kiwis to get big game experience and be in a big comp.... this is a hard one to do.

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I think adelaide will do well with a team, they love to compete with melbourne and the mariners were going alright over there, would take awhile to get them going but should devolop nicely, now melbourne will need a second team at some stage, as for sydney, it will always keep its following and they have already been downsized? the new zealand issue is a tight one, if you set up another team in wellington this could help it expand further, they are screaming out to have a team there, then like you guys have said, central coast are crying out for a team to support and now the sunshine coast want a team?  As for northern territory i think a team would survive, but it would have to be up to them to prove it would work. They have a good a.f.l following up there. Even brisbane can devolop further if they wanted to, ipswich and springhill have more than enough support for there own teams,

You could expand all day if you wanted to, but like druzik knows, you have to have sponsers and grass roots in place as well as a strong team and management behind the concepts. Look at the coast, it has done everything right, but one little mistake can kill a expansion team within 2 years. a.f.l will be propping teams up shortly if they expand without these criteriors in place. They have clubs in melbourne who are doing it tough, and need to grow there markets further afield, league is doing nicely, the only area it could hurt is sydney, but with support it should do ok, after all the soccer and afl expansion has settled. Union also has its foot in this pie, and they dont want to die either, i dont really think any sport will die, some will do it tougher than others, this year league will fly, and rightly so, the world cup is going to springboard it over the next few years and by 2013 it will get much more exposure over in england. David Gallop knows the dangers, but why fight it, you only waste time and effort and you need to be thinking of ways to keep young people interested, they are doing this with the new crop of talent. I have said this in another blog,  melbourne needs to worry about its own backyard, league and soccer are making as much progress there as they are making in sydney and brisbane.

Druzik:

The SL expansion is not just on results. Its on financial viability, grounds and potential supporter base. In Rugby League world magazine, that is where the 15 team roumour was picked up, one of the administrators saying that 14 was not a done number that it could be 15 if enought clubs show that they are good enough. Having said that current teams like St helens may not get a franchise if theie facilities are not upto scratch... that is the whole Franchising system there now. Its not a straight promo or releg anymore on results. I think the SL is looking to a 16 team expansion eventually.

Now the NRL. Basically my views on this currently are: The NRL will expand to 18 one day. I don't think 20 teams is sustainable in the near future, 50 years time maybe when the population base is larger, but not in the next 10-20 years. Which teams to bring in... this is a difficult one becasue no matter what you do you will step on a few people toes:

• Perth/West Aus. team, YES 100%. RL IS popular there and with good marketing this team would be successful.
• Adelaide/Sth Aus team, NO, I don;t think that RL would ever be popular there, they just don't really seem to be getting into it.
• Darwin/Nth territory, MAYBE, they certainly have the talent and in past years have had many players come from there. Population base is tiny though, its potential down fall.
• Wellington, NO. I dont; want to see NZ League killed off. That is what it would do. NZ league will become a 3rd rate sport in NZ.
• Central coast, well basically YES. They are RL mad and need to counter soccers incursion there.
• OUtbakc NSW, MAYBE, if based in Wagga or the Bathurst/Parkes area, this could potentially be the best way to counter AFL, Union and soccers inctrusion into the outback, provide a way for bush stars to get into the NRL.
• THIS is the controvercial point I will make, I think eventually the Warriors need to be canned, but only when the Kiwi RL comp is strengthened. I think at the moment the Warriors are whats keeping the local comp down, but is providing a useful way for the Kiwis to get big game experience and be in a big comp.... this is a hard one to do.

I definatley think perth need an NRL team, they have team in the SG Ball comp this year, so hopefully they can upgrade to Premier league or QLD cup within the next few years and if they develop a strong support base through that than i think they will be put into the NRL. From what i know there are still league fans here and there in WA and we've seen with the storm that Rugby League can convert people.

Adelalaide im a bit unsure of, i don't know the situation there, i know that afl is dominant and soccer is strong too but i don't know the league situation there. Still though i think the best way would be to give them a team in PL or SG Ball and if they can get a strong support base well put them in the NRL.

Central Coast definatley need a team, whether a club is relocated or a new franchise is opened, this is an area that needs to be adressed. They have reached the a-league final this year and so there is a big soccer audience there atm but like i have said before they have no other team and there is no reason soccer and NRL can't co-operate because the seasons are alternate.

Another QLD team is a definite to me. Whether it be sunshine coast or central QLD. I myself live in CQ in a small country town kabra, about 20 mins drive from rockhampton. League is easily the number 1 sport here, it is played by all schools; primary and high aswell as having a strong club scene. The secondary school comp is the best in the state, it has about 50 teams maybe more, iv played in it myself the last 5 years, there are some great players there. People will say that Central QLD don't deserve an NRL team because the comets don't go very well in QLD cup. However most of the local junior talent get signed to the broncos, cowboys and now titans early so they play for they're QLD cup feeder teams, not the comets. With a RLWC game coming our way this year i can't help but think CQ is in the sights of the NRL. One problem with Rockhampton is that Browne Park is 8000 absolute max capacity, i myself think 8000 people will not fit in the stadium. It sill has a sitting hill so that my be developed in something but otherwise i think rockhampton would need a new stadium.

Northern territory is a maybe for me too. I see Cricket Australia has sceduled an entire serier (Vs Bangladesh) for the Northern territory. I think a good trial would be to send a couple of NRL regular season games up there and see how they rate. Again like SA and WA put them in the QLD cup and see if they can get a decent support base.

Now wellington is a touchy subject, i agree that the NZRL should strengthen local RL before they even think about putting a second team in the NRL. Now druik you say that the warriors need to be scrapped, i disagree. I think no matter how storng the NZ comp gets players are still going to want to play NRL. so if you took away the warriors then all the kiwis would just go to AUS teams. I think the warriors should stay and act as almost a rep team for NZ cup players.

jim_57:

... Now druik you say that the warriors need to be scrapped, i disagree. I think no matter how storng the NZ comp gets players are still going to want to play NRL. so if you took away the warriors then all the kiwis would just go to AUS teams. I think the warriors should stay and act as almost a rep team for NZ cup players.

Well my reasoning behin this is, if you bring the NZ comp close to NRL standards, Aussie players will want to go over there as well and play, I have no problems with Kiwis playing in the Aussie teams... they have done it for 100 years they'll do it for another 100 years... look at all the Islanders and Kiwis in out teams ATM, the Warriors ahve many Aussies in its team already... The thing is the with the Warriors in the NRL, most Kiwis do not aspire to play for their own local teams but the Warriors... which is fair enough... but its at the expense of the local comp.

I'll give an example. This happened in 88 when the Broncs came into the Sydney comp, what I feel effectively was the best comp in the country, BRL i.e., almost died withing about 5 years. Crowds went from averaging about 8-10,000 to like 1,000 these days. I have been to a souths-wynnum game at Davies park where they must have been lucky to get 200 through the door (granted weather did not help). Now it did lead to a ntional comp and only through a revitalization of the marketing have the QRL and NSWR lower grade comps started to get people in again, but still nothing like what it used to be. I think the Warriors have done this as well, the only problem is that the Warriors in tghe NRL can't have their own "National comp". They need to sit in NZ and develop the game. We are talking about a sport that used to average 10,000 in the 80's as well, and now I her they barely scrape through 1000 to games. A wellington franchise would only serve to drain more money and players out of the local comps.

Now there is another problem that you would face, how many Kiwi/PI players would people accept into their teams in Australia and the UK before they are considered saturated. Now I have no issues with them comming over, If they are the best then so be it... but I guarantee that 90% of people that follow RL do not agree with me... and maybe rightly so! Why should local talent be dropeed at the expense of froeigners, english soccer is facing this crisis at the moment. Now the ESl has a foreign player cap, the NRL AFAIK does not. But when the two markets are saturated where will the Kiwi and PI talent go, if they do not have a strong local comp that they can compete in? They most probably will go to Union. Wheather we like it or not, Union has many many more pro comps out there for players to go and compete in. In Europe alone You have the UK, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, France and Italy, all pro comps, teams paying big salaries for players. Then You have NZ, Aus, SA, Japan.... so you see already 10 pro comps against effectively 3-4 (Aus, UK, Franec, Russia semi pro, and NZ semi pro).

Next issue is who pays for these comps, the RLIF, RLEF, I think not its not their jurisdiction, the local federations, yes! But they need to really do some work to get sponsors and promoters in to get the sport up and running.

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Bloody depressing , think i might go and join in the jumping up and down sport, there must be some light somewhere, otherwise we all might as well join the bloody union?

Cheer up, its not all doom and gloom... I was only pouinting out MY views and where i see things standing at the moment... the bright side is this, that there are many countries out there trying to establish the sport to be more than just a runa round the park! Pople can say what they want about the greeks and maltese and the way their structure is, but it led to them setting up sometsic comps, attracting players to play professionaly in Aus and UK and hopefully down the track that will lead down to the sport getting to a semi pro state. Russia is a great example, its got a semi pro comp comming up with some wealthy backers... they in the future will be one of the leading federations in IRL. I did forget to mention PNG as well before, but PNG has a semi-pro domestic comp, great talent, but no foreigners want to go there since most people are allergic to tear gas. Its one of the unfortunate things still marring the game up there. If we can get a strong PNG comp with some decent cash in there you will find that there will maore coss polination of talent form all countries and the moeny that will start to flow from sponsors will make things a nice viable option.

Again these are my views, reality could be very different. I dont; sit in the RLIF and so have no idea how the politics of this works.

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I think we need to take the gloves off, i will talk in code so we dont attrack any unwanted, the ping pong has launched a attack into the heartlands of league in sydney, why can they do this, money, they have tons to burn, now you and me know that league is the ultimate t/v sport but we are way undervalued so we dont get the dollars, if they dont go national and quick smart then we will cop a flogging because money talks, we never based our game around it but i think its time we did, or other codes will be sinking the boot into us.. rRa ra  has been putting crap on us for too long and has stifled our game, now we are suffering this new challenge and have got no legs, we need to fight fire with fire, if we dont, then forget about going global,

sink the boot into these mobs, this includes the round ball as well, why help them bury us, thats what they want to do, and we are helping the p***f's do it. I think we need to get rid of nice guy gallop and bring in a hard hitter, who calls a bloody spade a spade, no more kiss kiss suck up and we will let you have, Get the hell on ya bikes or we will drive your stinking carcuss into the ground, yes we are angry neadrathals, and look we will prove it, now

do you think i am going over the top, or should we just let them keep bullying us, get the damm sport on television all day every day like they do with the other sports, and make them pay for the privalige.If league dies then sport is finished, i wont be watching anything else.

No no, Gallop is fine in terms of the domestic game... Don;t think AFL is in such a rosy spot as they make it out to be. Their PR department sometimes is as bad as the Union one. Onr thing that RL PR does do/not do well, we tend not to bullsh*t the public. Even eddie McGuire has come out and said that expansion is not that good.

http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,23238570-5006065,00.html

I find his comments interesting, that the "foreign games" basically show that the talent pool is running out in Australia. I don't tend to agree with Mr M, but he has some point there. RL and RU do not have these issues because despite what people say we are an international game and we effectively have the world as out talent pool... something that AFL will struggle to get since they have lagged behind this for 150 years.

RL is a funny sport, it survives verey well just having strong domestic comps and occasional internationals, where as RU and soccer tend to need that strong International presence to survive.

Look I think the current people at the top are good at doing their jobs, but need to be way more pro active in promotion. FOR EXAMPLE. The learius awards last night. SA won team of year, but do you know who their contenders were? The Great Britain RL team. Now where was the hooplah for the last 2 months when it was announced that there was a RL team. CNN made zero mention about this... though for all the other indiviadual awards they went on and on about how many great and deserving players there were for each category. But nothing for RL. WE need this to be promoted... actually it should have been the RFL that did this. But nothing. No parades or anything. AFAIK the GB achievents were waaaaaay bigger and better than SA. To beat the kiwis andhave your first kleen sweep in like 20 years or something is huge. They had a 100% perfect record in their matches last year.

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You know expansion does seem to be the talk around sport ATM. I mean RL with SL and the possiblity of more NRL teams, soccer with the proposed EPL games being played around the world, also AFL have played games in South Africa and United Arab Emirates Recently.

I think in terms of RL expansion we should target the USA, Russia, France, PNG and South Africa Domestic comps for expansion. Not necessarily in teams but try and get popularity, a decent player talent pool aswell as fan base. I'd say within 10 years we will have 2 or more fully pro domestic comps. I think it would be great to have 4 or 5 centres of talent based around the world, one it would give more options to league players and may prevent them playing union.

Now I get back to the NZL issue, i see your point druzik. I never realised that the BRL was so popular before the broncos and that alot of people are still loyal to the teams. For example a few years back i was talking to a teacher of a fair age and we started talking about league, i asked who he supported and he said souths. I automatically asumed he meant south sydney but he then clarified souths in brisbane. Now from what i understand NZRL has scrapped the batercard cup. This could be a good move actually. How you ask? well im going to use an example here. Take soccer in australia, before the Socceroos qualified for the WC soccer was pretty much a ghost in this country. Then the socceroos made the WC the country went estatic, then on the back of this momentum the a-league was launched, it was basically the same comp as before but it was slightly restuctured and people took to it. Now i would say that if the socceroos didn't qualify for the WC people would have been like 'meh, same old, same old' in reaction to the a-league. Now if NZ could win the WC i think this would be an ideal time to re-lauunch a newly structured domestic comp, advertise the crap out of it and try and get a few warriors players playing in some teams. I would say that this would give the new local comp great popularity and would soon eliminate the need for a NZ based NRL team.

Now i would recomend the same with france and PNG, if either of these teams could make the final use the popularity to boost the national comps. Now the PNG comp is already strong but there are real crowd and society problems over there, to give an example i have seen footage of games played over there and they still have barbed wire between the field and the crowds. My uncle took a trip to PNG a few years back on a surveying job and came back with a pretty serious illness. So i guess if the final of this years was NZ V France/PNG then my plan would be great. Same could go if the Warriors won the NRL or Catalans won or made the final of SL.

So getting back to NRL expansion. I don't think NRL needs a chance at the top, although i think gallop has been a bit anti expansion over the years but hopefully he will hear the calls of adelaide, perth and another QLD team. 4 QLD teams sounds good to me aswell as a team in every state in AUS, except tasmania. Also whilst on NRL expansion, does anyone think that if we do get teams in WA and SA aswell as maybe another Victoria team then would we have to do something similar to SOO for these states? Now im not saying change anything about QLD V NSW because if origin were to be scrapped there would be assasinations i'd say, it's that popular. I would suggest Adding 2 games, say Victoria V SA and WA V NT. Have a week off NRL and play these 3 games over the weekend.

 

jim_57:

... although i think gallop has been a bit anti expansion over the years but hopefully he will hear the calls of adelaide, perth and another QLD team...

Well he had to be really, considering what happened in the war, he had to fight the goof fight and consolidate. There were some preety nasty casualties in that war ones that are still being felt today, RL would be sooooo much bigger still, but there are thousands out there who feel bitter about the way tradiational and expansion teams were treated.

I think considering the knife edge gallop has had to walk along, he's done a banf up job. Look I don;t agree with everything he has done either... but put yourself in his shoes and you quickly realise what a tough job it is. Basically what ever he does he will get ridiculed by a section of the fan base or business.  

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jim_57:

.... Also whilst on NRL expansion, does anyone think that if we do get teams in WA and SA aswell as maybe another Victoria team then would we have to do something similar to SOO for these states? Now im not saying change anything about QLD V NSW because if origin were to be scrapped there would be assasinations i'd say, it's that popular. I would suggest Adding 2 games, say Victoria V SA and WA V NT. Have a week off NRL and play these 3 games over the weekend.

Already exists... I think NT won it last year. Its a SA, VIC, NT, WA, QLD (lower grade) and NSW (lower grade). I think the final was the opener to one of the SoO's last year... I may be corrected on this.

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Druzik:

jim_57:

.... Also whilst on NRL expansion, does anyone think that if we do get teams in WA and SA aswell as maybe another Victoria team then would we have to do something similar to SOO for these states? Now im not saying change anything about QLD V NSW because if origin were to be scrapped there would be assasinations i'd say, it's that popular. I would suggest Adding 2 games, say Victoria V SA and WA V NT. Have a week off NRL and play these 3 games over the weekend.

Already exists... I think NT won it last year. Its a SA, VIC, NT, WA, QLD (lower grade) and NSW (lower grade). I think the final was the opener to one of the SoO's last year... I may be corrected on this.

The Affiliated states competition winners.

1994 Western Australia 1995 Newcastle 1996 Western Australia 1997 Australian Capital Territory 2003 Western Australia 2004 Northern Territory 2005 Western Australia 2006 Western Australia

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Yeh I was pretty sure that something like this existed, however if the NRL does expand i think i would be a good idea to broadcast it and try and make it an event like SOO. ALooking at the results, im suprises victoria havn't won it, now that i think about it melbourne don't really have any local juniors. I think this problem will improve once the national under 20 comp is launched this year. Also if WA win every one pretty much than i think this further amunition that we need an NRL team in WA ASAP.

I haven't read all of the above posts but the jist of what everyone is saying is that expansion is necessary if there is room for it.

In the NRL, I believe we probably need a team to move from Sydney to the Central Coast. Opening up another franchise on the Central Coast is probably not a good idea.

We need to put a team in WA eventually but only when they can sustain it and there is a junior base. If you put a team into a city and then try and build a junior base it is quite difficult. I think building interest and then putting a team in is much better.

It would be nice to see another NZ team in the competition but not for a while. The Warriors are just starting to take off and the NZRL really needs to get its act together and get more people playing league in that country before this happens.

I'd love to see a PNG team in the competition, however, that would not be sustainable for at least another 10-20 years at the least and probably more. They just wouldn't get the corporate support or the players wanting to live and play there.

Then I guess you could have your 20th team as another Queensland team but this is not a good idea for about another ten years or so. The Cowboys have only just begun to break even and the Titans have only just entered the competition.

 What really needs to happen is we need to get more people playing rugby league and then the need for more teams will take care of itself

We talk a lot about AFL and even though the Swans are getting good crowds, people playing AFL in NSW has dropped dramatically. Last year the SMH or daily telegraph said that people playing AFL in Western Sydney had declined by like 17% while league was increasing by like 11% (the league figure is the one recently stated by the NSWRL). That's why they're spending a lot of money, bceause they haven't really cracked the market and they know it.

Anyway that's my two cents and that's my first post ever so hello to everybody!