The Great Dane

Why? They have nothing going for them that other bids don't have, and they have plenty going against them. If I was forced to pick one of the current bids I'd probably go with Western Corridor/Ipswich, or even the Bombers, before I went with the Dolphins.

That's not the sort of rationalisation that I support. The only form of rationalisation that I support is relegation. The NSW cup and/or Q cup aren't in a position where they could support this yet, but the NRL should be looking at setting them up so they could support smaller Sydney clubs (and potentially other clubs in the future) that can't compete in the NRL being dropped down into them. That way the fans still have their club exactly as it was the season before, the clubs are in an environment where they are sustainable and competitive, the NRL frees up money, resources, and space in the NRL, and the NSW/QLD cup get well supported clubs. It's the best outcome for everybody. I do find it funny that you think that if a club folds, or whatever, that it's impossible to retain their fans in numbers when both you and I are examples of people that have "lost clubs" and moved on. Firstly, stop deluding yourself, Cronulla don't have well over 100,000 fans. None of the NRL clubs do unless you count even the most ludicrously loose definition of fan, i.e. people that when asked say they support a club but have never watched a game, bought any merchandise, and couldn't name one player. Secondly, because the vast majority of fans from Sydney are not old enough to have experienced a time before their club existed in the competition, it's hard to create a good analogy of what is happening in Brisbane that people from Sydney will truly understand. So I admit that it is not a perfect analogy, but, it's close enough to give you an idea of how the majority of people in Brisbane that aren't Dolphins fans or from Redcliffe will respond to the Dolphins getting a license. Because collectively their are probably close to a 100,000 of them with various levels of fanaticism that are just as committed to their clubs as you are to Cronulla (still not clear if you are actually a Cronulla fan though lol).

The only thing "wrong" with the NSW cup or Q cup is that they don't get very good coverage, so compared to the NRL it's hard to follow those competitions. Aside from that, they're good competitions and having teams like the Dolphins in them is a great thing. If the NRL, NSWRL, and QRL, could get them good broadcasting deals where all their games are broadcast on TV like the NRL then I have no doubt that in time some of the clubs in them could grow to be as big as NRL clubs.

Even if that is true, it's still different to what I was talking about. Mmm hmm and the Raiders are known by everybody to be linked to the Queanbeyan Blues, doesn't change the fact that I (and everybody else in Canberra) wouldn't be a supporting the club right now if they had kept the Queanbeyan Blues brand. Also the Power are only still Port Adelaide because Adelaide was taken, in fact basically every geographical name in Adelaide that is worth something is taken by somebody. I'd also bet you anything that they have had problems with people refusing to support them because they are the Magpies, the Raiders sure had their problems with the "Queanbeyan Raiders" types for a long while. Wasn't anywhere near as bad as it would have been if they'd stayed the Blues though. If they do that it'll bite them and the league as a whole on the ######. If somebody was making a new competition above the NRL and it was suggested that the Dragons get a license for a southern Sydney team called the Southern Dragons that would represent Cronulla as well (IIRC you are a Cronulla fan right?), you'd refuse to follow them. Expecting any less from anybody else is a huge mistake... Especially when it's no hair off the Dolphins balls to just come up with a neutral brand for the NRL team.

Whom have spent the last twenty years trying to get more of their Melbourne clubs to relocate out of Melbourne... The controversy around the Dockers name was mainly copyright challenges from Levi's, not people hating it in particular. And even people didn't like the brand, it's not really example of what I'm talking about. Port doesn't go against what I've been saying at all, in fact they are an example of exactly what I'm arguing that the Dolphins should be forced to do if they want to join the NRL! I even used the example of the Raiders (my club) and how people could stomach the Queanbeyan Blues owning the license if they changed the brand for the NSWRL team and showed a commitment to create a club for everyone instead of just an extension of their own club. I also brought up the example of the Tuggeranong/Canberra Vikings, I literally suggested that you should look them up. A RU club in Canberra (that coincidentally used to be my club as well) that tried to do exactly what the Dolphins are doing and it's blown up in their faces twice now, because everybody that isn't a Vikings fan won't be caught dead in supporting the Vikings.

The first thing I'd do is announce the expansion process so I could get a good look at all the potential options in Brisbane, because maybe the perfect bid is waiting in the shadows. Then if none of them suited I'd go to the expansion clubs and say to them 'if you move to the South of Brisbane and create a club that represents everything south of the river, create a neutral brand, and show you have x amount of start up funds, have x amount of sponsorship money lined up, etc, etc, then I'll give you the license'. Whichever bid best meets those standards can have the license. If none of them can meet those standards then I'd create the team in house myself at the NRL, then sell it on to the highest bidder once it's established a few years later (hopefully for a profit, but I'd take a loss now if it was necessary, in the long run the club would easily pay for it's self), similar to what the AFL is trying to do with GWS and the Suns, except it'd be a lot cheaper and easier because there's actually demand for another NRL team in Brisbane. If that isn't feasible for whatever reason, and really the NRL could afford it if they wanted too, so it should be feasible, then as a very last resort I'd just not expand to Brisbane in this round of expansion and go with two of the other bids (Perth and another one, hopefully from NZ or Adelaide) and wait until a better option presents it's self in Brisbane. Better to wait and get it right then rush it through and stuff it up... What would you do?

Because Super Rugby is struggling, they needed to shed a few teams to survive, and it was decided that the Australian conference needed to drop a team (along with two from SA and now the Sun Wolves as well). The Western Force were really the third strongest club financially, and probably shouldn't have been dropped, but the ARU wanted a presence in Melbourne because it's a bigger market and they didn't want to get rid of the Brumbies because they are the most successful Australian club in Super Rugby, and it'd not only be weird but bad PR if they got rid of the most successful Australian team. So really the Western Force being kicked out of Super Rugby had little to do with the club or the Perth market it's self. If the NRL wanted a team in Adealide they could make it happen, and there's no reason that Adelaide couldn't support a team. The Rams averaged 15,330 in 1997, and that was 20 years ago during the Super League War. Sure their numbers dropped down to just 7,682 in 1998, but almost every bodies numbers dropped dramatically in 1998, and it's hard to get a fan base excited when they know that they almost certainly are going to be kicked out of the comp before the next season. So really there's plenty of potential in Adelaide, and it's inevitable that they'll get another club eventually. The way the Nines were set up with it starting on a Friday a 4:00pm locally, and with each team not playing all the others in their pool, they wouldn't have been well attended anywhere. It probably didn't help that V'Landys came out and bagged Perth just before holding a big event in Perth either... You are also cherry picking the Nines attendance and ignoreing the multipule 20k+ attendances for NRL games held in Perth over the last few years and the sell out SOO.

Mate if you want to follow a Sydney Suburban comp that's great, go and watch the NSW cup and leave the NRL to become a national competition.

Fremantle were a new club not a promoted one, and Port Adelaide were forced to separate their AFL brand from the rest of their club, mainly because it'd be a bit weird to have two teams called the Magpies in the one comp lol. The Canberra Raiders were forced to do the same thing as Port. If they had been able to enter the NSWRL as the Queanbeyan Blues they'd have folded by now, because nobody (including myself) in Canberra and Queanbeyan outside of people whom were already Blues fans would have been caught dead wearing their jerseys. Also you should look up the Canberra Vikings and compare their (multiple) failures to the Raiders success.

Frankly, you are simply ignorant of the lay of the land in Australia. I'm not knocking you for that by the way, I mean you live on the other side of the world. I do find it funny that you think things would be any different down here to how they are in the ESL, Championship, or League 1. Despite what some people in Sydney like to think, tribalism exists at almost every level of game right across the country, and you don't break those tribal tendencies easily. Also I'd like to hammer home the point that the Dolphins aren't just a Q Cup team, they run teams in all sorts of comps in basically every age group, and they've existed for 80 odd years and made a lot of enemies along the way. There's nothing wrong with another Brisbane team, in fact it's a great idea, if done properly it'll be extremely profitable, but it needs to have a neutral brand otherwise all you are going to do is alienate people that you need to make it as successful as it could be. As to how you start that club, well there're plenty of different ways the NRL could go about it, and it could be done with or without the Dolphins (or other bids, you do realise that there're other bids in Brisbane right?). For a start if the Dolphins are willing to follow the Queanbeyan Blues/Canberra Raiders model then there won't be a problem. You definitely don't need a preexisting club either, I mean do you know how the Broncos (or Storm, Cowboys, Warriors, Knights, Titans, and a bunch of the Sydney clubs) were started lol. At the end of the day though, if the NRL goes with the Dolphins as is, then they'll be choosing a club that will almost certainly draw an average attendance of about 10-18k fans in Suncorp every week (once the novelty factor wears off), when they could easily create a club that averages 20-25k+, and I think we can both agree that choosing to go with a club that they know will be smaller is a dumb idea, and extremely defeatist.

Firstly, it's not the "NRL fans" you have to worry about, it's the RL fans in Brisbane, as they are the main target audience that a new Brisbane club is trying to engage. Also the Dolphins aren't just a QRL club, they run teams in competitions from under 6s right up to the QRL team. They are also that club that every local community has, the one that is richer and more successful than all the rest that everybody else is envious and resentful of. For any new Brisbane team to work, and be able to compete with the Broncos, one of the main groups they are going to have to appeal to is the Rugby League community in Brisbane. By adding the Dolphins you are asking those people to compete against them in the morning and then support them in the afternoon. It's not a recipe for success, and in fact it's failed miserably when other clubs in Australia have tried to do it. BTW, you didn't answer the question, how do you think the England Rhinos would go converting Wigan and St Helens fans into Rhinos fans?

Even if they move into the city and change their name to just "the Dolphins" they'll always be the Redcliffe Dolphins in drag and because of that they won't appeal to the vast majority of people outside of Redcliffe, because the vast majority of people outside of Redcliffe that are RL fans aren't big fans of the Dolphins. Imagine if e.g. Leeds decided to join the the NRL, but they changed their name to the England Rhinos with the intention of drawing fans from other clubs and parts of England to support them, what percentage of the other clubs fans do you think are going to jump on board the Leeds/England Rhinos when they've spent the majority of their lives hating them!? I doubt it'd be to many right! Well it's the same thing with the Redcliffe Dolphins in Brisbane. If the Dolphins (or rather the Leagues club group that owns the Dolphins) want to own an NRL club that is fine, but the NRL team needs an independent brand and it needs to appeal to as many people as possible. In other words they can have a club, but it can't be based in Redcliffe or share the Dolphins brand.

Trying to rope in regional towns/regions wouldn't be as effective as simply representing a larger part of the city of Brisbane, and even if they did it wouldn't work as the people of the Sunshine Coast and especially Bundaberg (I don't think you understand how far it is from Bundaberg to Brisbane lol) aren't going to get behind a Brisbane club in numbers and travel down to games on a bi-weekly basis. Besides that why set up in a suburb and target towns with small populations, when you could set up in the heart of the city, target over a million people living in the city, and if you want still target those small regional areas?

Letting the Dolphins in would be one of biggest mistakes in modern NRL history. It'd be like choosing to have Brisbane's version of Manly instead of Brisbane's version of Man City. The NRL would literally be choosing to have another tiny suburban club when they could have a huge metropolitan club that represents half the city. It'd be a huge mistake, especially in the long run. BTW, if they get a license they're going to play out of Suncorp not Dolphin Oval, and according to them they plan to be called just "the Dolphins".

Who's talking about relocation anyway?

No, the sale of professional sport to hardcore fans is reliant on emotional bias, the running of the business it's self is better done if there's no emotional bias whatsoever.

That would be because you are so emotionally biased that you can't see straight on this subject. In other words you are so scared that you'll lose the Sharks that you won't even really broach the subject with an open mind, which is silly because nobody sensible is even talking about folding clubs, so even if Sydney was rationalised the Sharks would still exist. That's just BS on the face of it. None of the Sydney clubs have over 100k supporters of the type that matter; paying customers, and any fans that aren't paying customers are unquantifiable, don't add anything to the club even if they do exist in the hundreds of thousands, and as such don't really matter in the context of this discussion. Maybe if we were living in a time before the internet you might have a point, but obviously we aren't. In the modern global market it's simply impossible to maintain RL's market share of Sydney. These days there's no such thing as a captive market, anybody that takes an interest in any sport can follow it and support it with ease without ever having the opportunity to actually attend an event. In other words even if you keep all the clubs in Sydney and don't touch them at all you are going to slowly bleed fans as more and more people become interested in the bigger fish in the pond, and now that it's a global pond there're some very big fish floating around. The only way that the NRL and RL in general can counter act that bleeding of their fan base is by directly engaging with a larger group of people, i.e. they need to focus on growing their share of the national market of 25 million people instead of focusing the majority of their efforts on the just one fifth of that in Sydney. The NRL has limited resources at it's disposal, it can only afford so much and fit so many clubs in the competition at any one time. As such having 9 clubs in Sydney is prohibiting expansion,and has been for going on 40 years now, because the NRL doesn't have the financial resources and space in the playing pool to support 9 clubs in Sydney plus all the others that they need across Australia and New Zealand, get rid of four or five of the smaller clubs in Sydney, that by rights never should have been in a national competition anyway, and suddenly the NRL has the resources that they need to expand the competition to everywhere it should be and more and quick succession.

Only because of a couple of accidents of history, and the Sharks were the only SL team that survived the war that also failed to use that money to set themselves up for the foreseeable future. Frankly that says all you need to know about their history with money. Not necessarily. If a billionaire came along and promised to bankroll a club from Betoota for a laugh the club would never go broke, they wouldn't have any home fans either, but it'd never go broke. Sometimes playing the long game is the best option, and sometimes that means short term pain for long term gain. Anyone not talking about rationalising Sydney is either ignorant, deluded, or entitled. They are ignorant of the damage that the Sydney centric competition does to the code nationally. Deluded in that they think that there isn't a problem when there so obviously is. Or they are so entitled that they think that their convenience or their club's standing is more important than what is best for the sport and/or competition as a whole.

If not Brisbane then where? Outside of NQ and the GC, that already have clubs, there really aren't all that many places in Queensland outside of Brisbane that could support an NRL club. Ipswich and the Sunshine Coast probably could, but not only would both require the government to build them a stadium for one tenant (i.e. a white elephant), but both would be small regional clubs trying to survive in the shadow of the Broncos, and more likely than not would end up as carbon copies of the Titans in that they'd struggle to survive, and realistically even if they could be built into strong clubs neither would be as valuable as a second, third, or maybe even fourth Brisbane club.

Every second decade somebody has claimed that Cronulla is financially sustainable only for them to balls it up before the decade is out. If there's a way to go broke Cronulla has found it, so I'd give it a little bit of time before I'd be too comfortable. Also just because the club is financially sustainable it doesn't necessarily mean that they should be in the competition. Not that I'm saying that Cronulla should be kicked out, but it doesn't logically follow that simply because they can afford to be in the competition that they should have a place in said competition.

One year doesn't make a pattern, look at the 7 years prior to it... Make the Swans competitive again and their numbers in Sydney will pop right back up, then swap GWS and Brisbane going well for a couple of teams that are actually well supported and their ratings will come back up pretty quickly. As for their expansion being a 'failure', it's going to be at least 10-15 more years before anybody really has an idea whether the AFL's last round of expansion was a success or not, and the AFL knew they were playing the long game with GWS and the GC. However the Swans definitely haven't been a failure, Brisbane on the other hand has never really had sustained success. Whether the NRL is doing fine is debatable (it really depends on your definition of fine), but the NRL would definitely be doing much better with Perth than how it's doing without them, and it'd certainly be doing better with Perth then it would with e.g. the Central Coast.

If the Storm hadn't have given them to a path to the NRL (and largely payed for their development into professional players) most of those players wouldn't be NRL players at all. That is literally creating more professional players. That fact alone gives them the right to call them their juniors. Also your last two points are literally making the point I was originally making for me.

The NRL has higher average ratings, the AFL has higher total ratings. In other words more people in total watch the AFL each year, but more people on average watch the NRL per game. Only because they are playing at a handicap, and it's not by much. They are also growing their market share in non-AFL areas where the NRL has stagnated broadly speaking. And if they had Perth and Adelaide they'd be way bigger then they are now. If Perth isn't crucial where is. And frankly half of the clubs in Sydney aren't crucial yet we're stuck dragging them around despite them not adding anything of value to the competition, so if we can deal with them then I think we can deal with Perth.

That's simply not true. They've had partnerships with clubs in Brisbane and other SEQ based clubs since their earliest days, and their money and resource have gone to developing players that feed into their system in Queensland since that time. In other words they literally produce juniors in Queensland no different than any other club produces 'local' juniors and they always have. Their current partners are the Sunshine Coast Falcons, and the Storm have a lot invested into the Sunshine Coast, arguably more than in Victoria outside of their NRL operations, I mean they literally own the Sunshine Coast Lighting which is the bloody local professional Netball team. It's not uncommon for teams to produce juniors all over the place. The Raiders used to do the same in Brisbane as the Storm are doing on the SSC through a partnership with Souths Logan and their juniors club, it created a direct path from juniors to the NRL through the Raiders, and it produced players like Josh Papalii and Anthony Milford.

Mate I don't have time to explain this to you in detail, but to put it simply, the NRL has to sell it's soul to match the AFL. Compare the AFL's broadcasting deal to the NRL's: The AFL has all it's games on free to air, the NRL doesn't even have half. The AFL has complete control over it's draw, and most of it's matches are played at fan friendly times, the NRL's only has complete control over it's draw in name, and way less of it's games are played at fan friendly times. The NRL only beats the AFL ratings per capita, and the NRL had to murder it's crowds and gate takings to achieve it's high ratings. If the AFL were willing to give up all their control and allow the broadcasters to turn their competition into a 'TV product' then their ratings and the broadcasting rights values would slaughter the NRL's, but they are too smart to do that, and that is why most of their clubs are massively profitable businesses with comparatively huge crowds and memberships, and only one or two of the NRL's clubs are profitable on a annual basis.