Which Sydney club must go

[Mr Plow]

This came up on twitter which I found interesting. Read into it what you will

[Hela Wigmen]

None of them. No team deserves being culled, moved or expunged. 

[Eddie]

16 minutes ago, Hela Wigmen said:

None of them. No team deserves being culled, moved or expunged. 

Agreed, the article is ######. 

[Oxford]

34 minutes ago, Mr Plow said:

 twitter

This was you first mistake then you read something on it. Mmmmm!

[Mr Plow]

30 minutes ago, Hela Wigmen said:

None of them. No team deserves being culled, moved or expunged. 

After this is over and everything goes back to normal it will be interesting to see who is still around. Gold Coast are probably the one you’d worry about the most but there’s always this talk of there being too many teams in Sydney

[ATLANTISMAN]

NONE OF THEM END OF

ALL RUGBY LEAGUE CLUBS ARE TOO VALUABLE TO LOSE:)

NRL/Super League/Championship/French/Amateur/Anywhere 

 

P

 

[eal]

The NRL is not stupid enough to actively cull a team, it drives people away from the game. If however one falls over on its own they may be hesitant to step in and save it. Manly are the most financially vulnerable but RL can't afford to not have a team between the harbour bridge and Newcastle. St. George have essentially lost their local support as almost everyone in the area is Asian, but they have the Illawarra region to themselves. Roosters have a smaller support base but are very wealthy and an historic club. There is no obvious choice for a culling.

[lucky 7]

If they want to reduce the amount of clubs in Sydney just move one to the Central Coast, but certainly don't reduce the amount of NRL clubs.

[Anita Bath]

Id pay to see Manly.....culled.

 

Bring back the bears.

 

We should set up a gofundme page for the cause.

[rlno1]

None, and bring back the Bears on the Central Coast.

[The Great Dane]

You can say what you will about no club should every be culled or whatever, but it's undeniable that the NRL has over saturated the Sydney market, and that by doing so they have created a bunch of clubs that weaken each other and act as a huge weight around the competition and sports neck that stunts it's growth.

That is especially undeniable is the current environment, where the practices that the NRL have been forced to take to keep all the clubs competitive (especially the regional clubs and smaller ones in Sydney), such as giving the clubs $13mil annual grants, has almost bankrupted them.

Also if you are going to argue that rationalisation pushes fans away, or never works, or whatever, you have to explain how and why every other sports relocations, relegations, mergers, culling, etc, are failures, which, frankly, is impossible to do because there's no way that you can argue that some of the most successful clubs and competitions across the world are failures.

Before you say it, the rationalisation after the Super League war was a failure, but it was a failure because it wasn't planned, it was rushed, and it was totally controlled by self interested parties that were trying to get one over each other, and not because rationalisation as a concept is bad or impossible.

The Central Coast Bears are a pipe dream that should never happen so long as cities like Perth and Adelaide go without representation, and places like Brisbane, NZ, and Melbourne are underrepresented. If for the foreseeable future the CC (or for that matter other proposed regional clubs) get a club over big metropolitan markets it'd be the NRL choosing to stay a regional competition, to stunt it's own potential, and to pass up on hundreds of millions of dollars, potentially billions in the long run. That's coming from an old Bears fan as well.

[Chronicler of Chiswick]

Interesting to see the Roosters there. I remember when this cropped up in the pre NRL days (when  they were Eastern Suburbs) there was talk of culling them due to their inner city location with relatively small catchment area and their lack of junior clubs.

[Copa]

3 hours ago, rlno1 said:

None, and bring back the Bears on the Central Coast.

The Bears have nothing to do with the Central Coast aside from their connection to that previous disaster of a team up there.

I was raised on the Central Coast and people there do not identify with Sydney at all. 

The Bears are out of the top league and won’t be back.

[The Future is League]

18 minutes ago, Copa said:

The Bears have nothing to do with the Central Coast aside from their connection to that previous disaster of a team up there.

I was raised on the Central Coast and people there do not identify with Sydney at all. 

The Bears are out of the top league and won’t be back.

Would you if push come to shove be in favour of moving a team from Sydney to the Central Coast to save that club being culled?

[Copa]

Just now, The Future is League said:

Would you if push come to shove be in favour of moving a team from Sydney to the Central Coast to save that club being culled?

I’m not sure ... I grew up hating “Sydney people”

[Hela Wigmen]

I’m not sure how people can say a city of over 5m people, which is arguably the capital of Rugby League on the planet, has too many teams. 

[Mr Plow]

22 minutes ago, Hela Wigmen said:

I’m not sure how people can say a city of over 5m people, which is arguably the capital of Rugby League on the planet, has too many teams. 

Sydney has 9 teams. Compare that to the Premier League which has 5 London clubs and a population of 8m.

Plus 5 of the Sydney teams are a result of mergers. Maybe they could justify dropping the weakest team for a second Brisbane team or another NZ team

 

[Eddie]

34 minutes ago, Hela Wigmen said:

I’m not sure how people can say a city of over 5m people, which is arguably the capital of Rugby League on the planet, has too many teams. 

Exactly. It’s like saying there are too many London teams in the Premier League and saying one of them needs to move to Bristol. 

[Eddie]

6 minutes ago, Mr Plow said:

Sydney has 9 teams. Compare that to the Premier League which has 5 London clubs and a population of 8m.

Plus 5 of the Sydney teams are a result of mergers. Maybe they could justify dropping the weakest team for a second Brisbane team or another NZ team

 

The difference is that there are plenty of other places capable of having a PL team. 

[The Great Dane]

40 minutes ago, Hela Wigmen said:

I’m not sure how people can say a city of over 5m people, which is arguably the capital of Rugby League on the planet, has too many teams. 

At the end of the day population doesn't mean very much if there's not enough demand for a product, and in Sydney's case, there's way more supply than demand for NRL clubs.

I mean Sydney is supposedly the capital of RL right, well in the capital of RL on average only one of the clubs is profitable, none has over 30k members and none average over 20k attendance, and there isn't enough public or private money to support the clubs needs. For the supposed capital of RL those are bloody dismal facts.

If the Sydney clubs were like the AFL clubs in Melbourne then you might have a point, but not only are they not, but the AFL has been trying to further rationalise Melbourne for the last 20 years as well.

[The Great Dane]

15 minutes ago, Mr Plow said:

Sydney has 9 teams. Compare that to the Premier League which has 5 London clubs and a population of 8m.

Plus 5 of the Sydney teams are a result of mergers. Maybe they could justify dropping the weakest team for a second Brisbane team or another NZ team

 

Only the Tigers and Dragons are mergers, otherwise I agree though.

[The Great Dane]

8 minutes ago, Eddie said:

The difference is that there are plenty of other places capable of having a PL team. 

There's a massive difference between could and should.

Sure the EPL probably could support more teams in London, that doesn't mean that they should. 

[Mr Plow]

13 minutes ago, The Great Dane said:

There's a massive difference between could and should.

Sure the EPL probably could support more teams in London, that doesn't mean that they should. 

In saying, that look at Wimbledon. They fell on hard times financially and were bought and relocated to Milton Keynes

You could find a Sydney NRL franchise that is not performing very well and relocate their license somewhere else 

[Yakstorm]

If you're looking at cutting teams from around Sydney and looking to only keeping the 'essential' sides, there really isn't any metric in which the Bulldogs would come into play, and there are very few when it comes to the Roosters.

Bulldogs have a huge supporter base, traditionally have had good membership and merchandise sales, rate extremely well on TV, have strong community connections as well have strong connections to community groups which are important to Rugby League's success in Sydney, as well have solid juniors and of course a long proud history, etc.  They also have plenty of financial clout behind them, with Canterbury League's having well over 200m worth of assets.

Roosters, whilst they may lack in Junior numbers, are one of the richer clubs in the league, have a lot of influence in the 'money making circles' in Sydney, and actually have quite strong membership numbers and crowd averages.  They also hold a strategically important position in Sydney, especially if the Rabbitohs keep playing out West.

Unfortunately clubs like Manly and Sharks would be in the firing line before those two, and you can argue that Manly is strategically important due to the lack of teams on Sydney's northside.

[Blind side johnny]

A fundamental weakness of such arguments, certainly in the short-term, is that the supporters of a culled club instantly turn into potential supporters of another club that remains. Experience surely proves otherwise.

There may crtainly be an argument for fewer Sydney clubs in the NRL but is culling the only mechanism in which to achieve this? For exapmle I have never really understood the opposition to new clubs joing the NRL on merit whilst another departs - promotion and relegation, in other words. Australia is a properly meritocratic country after all so closed shops wouldn't be a part of the national mentality.