The Great Dane

Frankly I think you are projecting English attitudes... The reality is that, as with all things to do with NZ, most Aussies would be totally apathetic to the Warriors winning a GF. Of the rest that did care enough to really take notice most would celebrate their success.

Indigenous round is normally played during NAIDOC week (sort like a national Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander week), but because of covid NAIDOC week was moved this year until after the NRL's regular season, but normally that's why Indigenous round has to certain round. In the past people used to complain when clubs either didn't have indigenous jerseys or didn't wear their indigenous jerseys during Indigenous round, we won't go into peoples' reasons for demanding that the clubs be forced to have indigenous jersey (it's deeply political), but apparently it makes the NRL look "amateur" if the clubs don't wear their indigenous jerseys during indigenous round. So the NRL made indigenous jerseys mandatory and made it a rule that they have to be worn during Indigenous round.

The jerseys were produced before the draw was changed because of covid, so they would have been designed to be worn against other teams, and to be fair jersey clashes during indigenous round were probably the furthest thing from the NRL's mind when they were redrafting the draw. The real problem with the indigenous jerseys are that they are mandatory and have to be worn during indigenous round, get rid of those two things and there's no issue.

Rabbitohs were rabbit hunters, but the clubs’ colours were red and green from 1908 and the club didn’t pick up the Rabbitohs nick name until the depression, i.e. 25-30 years later. So yeah the bit about rabbitohs wearing green shirts then playing the game with blood on it and that being the inspiration for red and green colours is utter BS, and if you don’t believe me just look up their 1908 team photo. BTW, many of the clubs have real stories and meaning behind their choice of colours, so that’s not particularly unique either.

@Copa @The Rocket, I could give a more comprehensive history of sport in Canberra, but I'm going to try to keep it detailed as necessary but as brief as possible. The first major group, and one of the biggest, to relocate to Canberra once it became a city were public servants from Melbourne, and obviously being from Melbourne they brought their culture with them. Particularly in the early years (20s-50s ish) that almost made Canberra like a colony of Victoria in NSW, and part of that was Aussie Rules being very popular and easily biggest sport in Canberra, however as soon as you crossed the border RL was king, and still is to this day. Aside from that you have a very strong private school culture in Canberra, and with that comes a strong RU culture, and after WWII a steady flow immigrants from Europe moved into the region, many of them to work on the Snowy Hydro dam, which gave soccer, which was already popular, a big boost. Jumping ahead to the 1970s (i.e. just before the Raiders) Aussie Rules was easily the biggest sport in Canberra it's self, followed by RU, but RU was only really big because of the private schools, take them away and it still would have been popular but nowhere near as big as it was/is, and RL and Soccer were just behind them (which was bigger is splitting hairs). However if you take the whole region into account, and not just Canberra, then RL was far and away the most popular sport. Basketball and the Canberra Cannons were the kings of Canberra in the 80s (I and many other people legitimately thought that it was going to takeover), but leaving that detour aside, the Raiders entered the NSWRL in 82, but that didn't really see an major change in the sporting landscape of Canberra until the late 80s and particularly through the 90s, starting in 87, when the Raiders made their first grand final, through to about 2000 when the golden era was over. RL exploded in Canberra through that time, it jumped straight to the most popular sport and peaked in popularity about 95-96, but since then it's always been one of the two most popular sports. For the sake of brevity I'm going to skip over the Brumbies and RU's boom in the early 00s and the AFL's continued forays in Canberra , but you should know that like the Cannons in the 80s those were an important time in the formation of Canberra's current sporting culture. So jumping to today; the suggestion that Rocket made that Aussie Rules had been driven out of Canberra is ridiculous, alongside RL Aussie Rules is one of the two biggest sports in Canberra by far. Which is the biggest of the two is hard to tell, I'd say that the perception that RL is bigger is only because it gets more exposure because of the Raiders, while Aussie Rules's fan base in Canberra is more split because they don't have a team to unify behind. Suffice it to say that if the AFL put a team in Canberra today it'd easily be as big as, if not bigger than, the Raiders, and the Raiders are going through a bit of a boom period because of their success in 2016 and last year. . . RU and soccer continue to follow behind, but again, which is bigger is hard to tell with any accuracy, and again you get a situation where RU gets more exposure than soccer because of the Brumbies, but if the A-league put a team in Canberra it'd be of similar size to the Brumbies overnight. But on top of that you have a situation where the Brumbies are suffering because RU is struggling in Australia in general, and I have no doubt that if the ARU could get it's together that the Brumbies would bounce back alongside it. Long story short, Canberra's is effectively on the front lines of a century old culture war between Melbourne and Sydney fighting to see which will inform the dominant culture of Australia, as such Canberra's sporting (and cultural) history is complicated compared to the rest of the country, and aside from in the early days of the city it's never been obvious which sport (or cultural influence) is dominant. Two things are for sure though, firstly currently Melbourne is winning that culture war, and secondly that RL should never get comfortable in their position in Canberra.

People keep talking about a second NRL club in NZ, but the chances of it happening within the next couple of decades are slim to none. There’s two main hurdles in the way; firstly, nobody in NZ is standing up to own and operate it, and put simply, none of the markets in NZ are as valuable as the large markets in Australia (Bris, Perth, Adel, etc) the NRL still has room to grow into. So unless something unpredictable happens (like a Wolfpack situation), at the very least a second NZ club is probably fourth in line for an NRL license and chances are the by the time the NRL get around to them their will be legitimate demand for clubs in other places. Long story short, don’t hold your breath for a second NRL team in NZ anytime soon.

I’m not saying it’s easy, nothing worth doing is, but it’s obviously possible otherwise RL never would have expanded outside of England.

I understand all that, however RL's failure to have any significant growth outside of it's heartland in the UK is only the responsibility of the people in power of RL in the UK and not anybody else's. The same goes for RL in Australia, or anywhere else for that matter. Australian RL has almost completely failed to grow the sport in any significant way outside of NSW, QLD, and the ACT. It's our responsibility to grow the sport in Vic, WA, SA, TAS, NT, etc, not anybody else's, and excuse making and subtly trying to shift that responsibility onto other people is a large part of the reason why attempts at growth have failed.

Nope I haven't missed it at all. I'm just pointing out that if RL was more relevant in the UK then they wouldn't need the Kangaroos constantly touring to know that RL is one of the biggest sports in Australia. I'm also pointing out that RL in the UK is over reliant on internationals, but that's an aside.

If the current struggles that the Broncos are facing, if you can even call them 'struggles', is enough to make you throw in the towel, then you're going to hate supporting almost any other club.

It is not Australian Rugby League's job to sell Rugby League to the masses in England, and it's a sad indictment on English RL that it's reliant on internationals to remain relevant.

While that is true, it sounds more profound than it actually is. Aside form recent immigrants pretty much everybody in Australia is of mixed ancestry (often very mixed), and next to nobody particularly identifies with their English ancestry over any other. That's not to say that the cultural influence of Britain (and particularly England) isn't still strong in Australia though, we're part of the Anglosphere so of course it is, but that is less to do with the peoples ancestry than it is to do with the countries ancestry, if you know what I mean.

Because of all the inherent advantages that the club has the Broncos have never experienced a truly tough time in their existence! I mean in their 30 years they've only missed the finals 3 or 4 times and they've never missed them back to back, if I remember correctly they've never finished in the bottom four, let alone won a wooden spoon, and I could go on but I think you get the point. Take the last decade (their least successful), they only missed the finals twice (2010 and 13), every other year they made the finals and they even made the GF in 2015. Most other teams would give their left nut and their first born child to have a record even half as good as that... The Warriors have only made the finals 8 times in their whole existence and if you put all the GC teams together they've only made finals 4 times, so in their worst decade the Broncos matched the Warriors total and doubled the GC's! In my opinion the way that many Broncos fans are reacting to the teams current bad form is more of a reflection on their character than on the club's, and most of them would never make it as fans of any other club.

It's quite ironic that in dropping them you are showing the same lack of 'mental strength' that you claim they are.

If they owned the Super League it'd change everything, and frankly they are slowly and steadily achieving that. Every year more and more pommy players are heading down here, and if the gap in wages continues to increase that will continue to happen.