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Andrew Johns call for NRL teams to be cut down to 12

Rugby league Immortal Andrew Johns has called for the NRL to be cut down by four teams.

And given he still sees the need for one more team in each of Brisbane and New Zealand, that’s bad news for New South Wales.

“I think it should be 12 teams,” Johns said on Wide World of Sports. “I know from a broadcaster’s (point-of-view) they wouldn’t be happy with that. But I just think there’s not enough talent going around, there’s too many teams in Sydney, nine teams in Sydney is too many, but how they cull them is going to be really difficult.”

Can’t say I disagree! 

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2 hours ago, Yorkshire Knight said:

Even though Brisbane in terms of attendance is an anomaly in comparison to the rest of the league, you still gotta include them in the outside of Sydney average. If not then you also gotta exclude the highest Sydney club’s attendance as I’d imagine their numbers would be inflating the average 

Whatever way you cut the figures, they are superb.

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2 hours ago, rlno1 said:

Another dumb comment from the eighth.

Kill Sydney teams just kills the game simple as that.

I totally agree, utterly idiotic from Johns, why not go the whole hog and reduce to two teams, Queensland v NSW all season every season.

The quality would be amazing!!!

As I've said in other posts quality is a red herring... The secret of success for any league is competitiveness and the NRL has that in abundance.

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16 hours ago, Yorkshire Knight said:

Andrew Johns call for NRL teams to be cut down to 12

Rugby league Immortal Andrew Johns has called for the NRL to be cut down by four teams.

And given he still sees the need for one more team in each of Brisbane and New Zealand, that’s bad news for New South Wales.

“I think it should be 12 teams,” Johns said on Wide World of Sports. “I know from a broadcaster’s (point-of-view) they wouldn’t be happy with that. But I just think there’s not enough talent going around, there’s too many teams in Sydney, nine teams in Sydney is too many, but how they cull them is going to be really difficult.”

Can’t say I disagree! 

That is an absolutely awful idea.

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I’m so tired of this discussion, we’ve effectively been having it down here since the late 70s, and it always comes to the same conclusion: that for multiple reasons  (the potential size of the competition, geographical spread, broadcasting value, playing pool, etc, etc) there’re way to many teams in Sydney and some have to be removed, and that removing Sydney teams from the NRL won’t kill the sport in this country (as it’s been done multiple times without the apocalypse occurring as a result).

But despite those conclusions there’s a contingent of people who won’t accept those conclusions for emotional reasons that continue to fight it with the same tired arguments over and over, the grand irony of it being that more often then not those most vocally opposed to rationalisation are those who put the least effort into supporting their ‘beloved’ teams .

BTW, I think that relocations and mergers are stupid in the current market (forced mergers have always been stupid) and that the best method of rationalisation for the NRL would be relegations. So I personally think that the NRL’s talk of relocations is misguided, but then again rationalisation has to happen somehow I guess and relocations are better than nothing.

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1 hour ago, The Great Dane said:

I’m so tired of this discussion, we’ve effectively been having it down here since the late 70s, and it always comes to the same conclusion: that for multiple reasons  (the potential size of the competition, geographical spread, broadcasting value, playing pool, etc, etc) there’re way to many teams in Sydney and some have to be removed, and that removing Sydney teams from the NRL won’t kill the sport in this country (as it’s been done multiple times without the apocalypse occurring as a result).

But despite those conclusions there’s a contingent of people who won’t accept those conclusions for emotional reasons that continue to fight it with the same tired arguments over and over, the grand irony of it being that more often then not those most vocally opposed to rationalisation are those who put the least effort into supporting their ‘beloved’ teams .

BTW, I think that relocations and mergers are stupid in the current market (forced mergers have always been stupid) and that the best method of rationalisation for the NRL would be relegations. So I personally think that the NRL’s talk of relocations is misguided, but then again rationalisation has to happen somehow I guess and relocations are better than nothing.

Which Club do you follow GD?

Talent is secondary to whether players are confident.

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3 hours ago, The Great Dane said:

 that for multiple reasons  (the potential size of the competition, geographical spread, broadcasting value, playing pool, etc, etc) there’re way to many teams in Sydney and some have to be removed, and that removing Sydney teams from the NRL won’t kill the sport in this country (as it’s been done multiple times without the apocalypse occurring as a result).

Sydney teams are not limiting the potential size of the competition, they are contributing to it. That is simple mathematics. 16-1+1=16. That’s not growth. 16+1=17. That’s growth.

Sydney teams are not limiting the geographical spread of the competition nor the broadcasting value. If expanded teams will add value to the comp (which I agree they will) then they will. That doesn’t mean a Sydney team needs to be axed. Just add the new team. Axe a Sydney team and a healthy number of viewers are immediately lost. Broadcasters don’t want to lose viewers.

Sydney teams are not limiting the player pool. To the contrary, they are each contributing to the player pool more than a one team town like Melbourne are after their 20+ years in existence. Why would Perth or Adelaide be any different?

These are all simple realities that you don’t seem to understand.

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Just now, The Great Dane said:

Cool, you’re a Queenslander though right? I just assumed you are because of the Norths Devils logo.

Moved north in 2001, I am a member at Norths, I used to live near Parramatta for many years before emigrating

Talent is secondary to whether players are confident.

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On 3/22/2019 at 7:39 PM, Allora said:

They  always could scrap the Titans and relocate them to Brisbane.

That would make a lot of sense.

The Crushers (based in Brisbane) weren’t that successful. In their last game they opened up the gates, so free to get in. 

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3 hours ago, Sports Prophet said:

Sydney teams are not limiting the potential size of the competition, they are contributing to it. That is simple mathematics. 16-1+1=16. That’s not growth. 16+1=17. That’s growth.

Sydney teams are not limiting the geographical spread of the competition nor the broadcasting value. If expanded teams will add value to the comp (which I agree they will) then they will. That doesn’t mean a Sydney team needs to be axed. Just add the new team. Axe a Sydney team and a healthy number of viewers are immediately lost. Broadcasters don’t want to lose viewers.

Sydney teams are not limiting the player pool. To the contrary, they are each contributing to the player pool more than a one team town like Melbourne are after their 20+ years in existence. Why would Perth or Adelaide be any different?

These are all simple realities that you don’t seem to understand.

This is why I’m so tired of this discussion, it’s just been this same BS since the 70s, next someone will come along saying that if you cut a club all their fans will suddenly become AFL or Union fans overnight when they had no interest in it before hand, despite the fact that nobody can show that has ever happened when a team has been cut in the history of the sport (or any other competition in this country that has rationalised clubs), it’s just something that has been repeated over and over until it has become accepted as truth...

Firstly, when I said the potential size of the competition I meant the potential size that the NRL and Australian market can reasonably support... Most reasonable people will tell you that due to available broadcasting money, sponsorship and corporate money in the market, and the current size of the talent pool,  that the NRL could support roughly 20 clubs for the foreseeable future, unless you are willing to take big hits in standards.

Secondly, obviously Sydney clubs are limiting the geographical spread of the competition because there’re limited places in the competition and they are taking up almost half of those places while there’re at least seven other markets that could reasonably support a team, many of which basically demand a team if you are going to have a comp with national reach.

Thirdly, yes Sydney produces more players than Perth or Adelaide, and probably always will, no reasonable person would suggest any different, however Sydney doesn’t need 9 professional clubs to maintain the talent pool in Sydney, however if Perth or Adelaide are ever going to have juniors systems that produce lots of NRL standard players then they will need to have a meaningful professional pathway, which is boarder line impossible without a local professional club when the sport has to compete with other sports that do have local professional clubs that their juniors feed into.

Besides, that isn’t how the Sydney clubs limit the talent pool anyway... They limit it by taking more players out of the playing pool than nessacry to support an unnecessary amount of professional clubs to maintain the Sydney market when it is over saturated anyway, when those excess players could be used to support teams in other markets where the NRL either has no presence or the NRL under serves the market.

BTW, Melbourne hasn’t produced many players because the Storm invest all their money for juniors programs into juniors programs in SEQ, particularly on the Sunshine Coast at the moment, and not into developing juniors pathways in Melbourne or Victoria at large.

So yeah those simple realities are great, except that they totally ignore the points that were and always have been made.

BTW where are you from and who do you support, i.e. what’s your skin in the game?

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40 minutes ago, Allora said:

Moved north in 2001, I am a member at Norths, I used to live near Parramatta for many years before emigrating

Fair enough.

I’d love somebody with the means to do a good job of it to set up a NSW Cup club independent from the Raiders in Canberra.

I’d become a fan and a member, I might even drop the Raiders altogether frankly, it’ll probably never happen though.

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10 minutes ago, Playdaball said:

The Crushers (based in Brisbane) weren’t that successful. In their last game they opened up the gates, so free to get in. 

They also came into being just as the SL war started, and in 95, their first year and before the SL war really hit, they did quite well (for example they averaged 21k fans which was one of the better averages in the league), after that things went down hill quick, but that is true of every club.

That was also over 20 years ago. A lot has changed in twenty years, especially in Brisbane.

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1 hour ago, Playdaball said:

The Crushers (based in Brisbane) weren’t that successful. In their last game they opened up the gates, so free to get in. 

As Great Dane has said above it was as the Super League wars broke out.

Many people that live in Brisbane would like a local Club to follow other than the Bronco's.

There are many Rugby League fans that have moved up from NSW as well as long time locals that do not like or would ever think of following the Brisbane Broncos, I am one of them.

If there were two Brisbane teams you would have a game played in Brisbane every weekend.

 

 

Talent is secondary to whether players are confident.

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2 hours ago, The Great Dane said:

...next someone will come along saying that if you cut a club all their fans will suddenly become AFL or Union fans overnight when they had no interest in it before hand, despite the fact that nobody can show that has ever happened when a team has been cut in the history of the sport (or any other competition in this country that has rationalised clubs), it’s just something that has been repeated over and over until it has become accepted as truth...

BTW where are you from and who do you support, i.e. what’s your skin in the game?

So I would counter that from the onset of the SL war and the turn of the century, the Sydney Swans went on to become Sydney’s biggest sports club. Most members, most turnover, highest crowds, biggest, biggest, biggest. If you can’t agree that SL war, messing with mergers and dropping clubs wasn’t a key factor in the meteoritic rise of the Swans and junior AFL participation in Sydney, then there isn’t much that you will ever be convinced of.

As a former Balmain Tigers fan who had grown up anywhere between Bondi, Paddington and Maroubra, I was never going to support a club that plays home games in Campbeltown. I was lost to the NRL for about 16 years before becoming the hardened Sharks supporter I am today.

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Maybe the NRL should distribute money regionally and let the clubs decide how they'll share it between them.

When the Sydney clubs realise they'll only get X amount if there's 9 clubs, they'll find away to cut down to 6 (merge, move or P&R in Sydney conference).

Personally, I'd love to see a Sydney conference Premier and Division 1 with all the traditional clubs back (Easts, Souths, Wests Magpies, North Sydney Bears, Balmain, Manly, St George, Illawarra, Canterbury, Cronulla, Parramatta, Penrith). 6 in Premier take part in NRL (3 conferences of 6), 6 below play for promotion to Sydney conference. TV money distributed the same to NRL 6 but 50% to Div 1 to keep them full time.

It'd never happen, but it's the only way you could keep all the traditional teams and expand at the same time without relocation and merger.

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32 minutes ago, Wellsy4HullFC said:

Maybe the NRL should distribute money regionally and let the clubs decide how they'll share it between them.

When the Sydney clubs realise they'll only get X amount if there's 9 clubs, they'll find away to cut down to 6 (merge, move or P&R in Sydney conference).

The money available for distribution correlates to the exact teams that are in this competition right now.

Those teams are all responsible for the TV money secured and as such should expect an equal distribution.

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19 minutes ago, Sports Prophet said:

So I would counter that from the onset of the SL war and the turn of the century, the Sydney Swans went on to become Sydney’s biggest sports club. Most members, most turnover, highest crowds, biggest, biggest, biggest. If you can’t agree that SL war, messing with mergers and dropping clubs wasn’t a key factor in the meteoritic rise of the Swans and junior AFL participation in Sydney, then there isn’t much that you will ever be convinced of.

As a former Balmain Tigers fan who had grown up anywhere between Bondi, Paddington and Maroubra, I was never going to support a club that plays home games in Campbeltown. I was lost to the NRL for about 16 years before becoming the hardened Sharks supporter I am today.

Told you this’d be the next thing that would be brought up!

As for your “counter”, if you actually bothered to look into it you’d know that since their relocation the Swans saw steadily growing growth year on year (with some exceptions in the mid 80s) and that they didn’t see any segnifcant jump in numbers until 2006, you know about a decade after SL was done and dusted, also a year after they won the “flag” (for those that don’t know what the flag means, it means the premiership). So tell me is the theory now that all the fans of the clubs that were rationalised waited 5-10 years to jump on the Swans to get back at RL for taking their clubs away, or could it simply be that maybe the Swans saw a jump in support in 06 because they had some success and the bandwagon was jumping on...

 Also, it’s a very odd tactic to bring up a club that was rationalised and went on to be one of the most successful clubs in the country as your “counter” to the suggestion that rationalisation isn’t the worst thing in the world and won’t lead to the death of the sport.

It’s also a strange tactic to suggest that the the fans of rationalised clubs will all abandon the sport overnight, when you yourself had your team rationalised and yet here you are 20 years later, on a forum dedicated to the sport... Like shouldn’t you be a massive Swans/Waratahs fan like supposedly all the other fans of the clubs that have been rationalised?

BTW, I was a Bears fan for years, I sort of still am (it’s kind of difficult to follow them attentively with them being in the NSW cup and my being based in Canberra) sure after the Raiders joined the comp the Bears pretty quickly became my second team, but I think you get the point that if rationalising a club is the quickest way to turn all the fans of those clubs off the sport then it’s pretty weird that two old fans of two rationalised clubs are here talking about it now isn’t it!

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Following on with Swans, they have been consistently good since that 2006 season. They have constantly been in the finals and won another comp. It will be intersting to see what their fan base looks like after a few losing season. 

As a comparison when I was a kid the Brisbane Lions AFL team won 3 in a row and had a big fan base. However they haven’t been good for years and no one cares anymore

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I find it amazing that Cronulla need attendances of 16,500 just to breakeven. This is especially so when they own the ground and should be in a much better position to make money on matchday than other clubs. When the salary cap is more than fully covered by the grant it seems odd that they can be in such a loss making position.

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I personally believe the NRL should expand to 18 with a long term goal of 20 teams. However I think the conservative NRL are worried about the cost of expansion.

The AFL has expanded to 18 and have a bigger broadcast deal because of it. However they have had to sink millions into both franchises. 

TV deals have been continually getting larger and larger over the years however there are some fears (that I disagree with) we are going to reach the tipping point where broadcasters can’t afford bigger deals. This is especially true for free to air which is vital for the NRL.

if the NRL expand to 18 but don’t get as big a broadcast deal as they need they could be in trouble financially to cover the franchises plus other expenses (junior development, etc).

The advantages of relocation is they can keep the same number of mouths to feed but open up new broadcast time slots (Perth, NZ 2) and make the networks happy Brisbane 2 . So they can still get a higher broadcast deal with less risk if it’s not high enough to cover 18 teams. 

I don’t agree with the above but it’s possibly their thinking

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5 minutes ago, Damien said:

I find it amazing that Cronulla need attendances of 16,500 just to breakeven. This is especially so when they own the ground and should be in a much better position to make money on matchday than other clubs. When the salary cap is more than fully covered by the grant it seems odd that they can be in such a loss making position.

This is the million dollar question. A lot of money does go into junior development, however NRL clubs seem to burn a large amount of money and are always finding themselves in financial trouble. 

While the Sharks are good at the moment. If they go through a few rough years in the field there will be a ton of financial pressure on them. If any team is getting relocated or placed in NSW Cup the Sharks and Manly seem the obvious answers

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