NRL expansion (Merged Threads)

[rlno1]

I'm thinking NZ2 in Christchurch will enter in 2027 as stadium will not open until April 2026.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/350262798/christchurchs-new-te-kaha-stadium-taking-shape

This has everything the NRL want time zones for TV, plenty corporate facilities, entertaining areas. Indoor. No brainer really.

As they say build it and they will come.

[John bird]

7 hours ago, rlno1 said:

I'm thinking NZ2 in Christchurch will enter in 2027 as stadium will not open until April 2026.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/350262798/christchurchs-new-te-kaha-stadium-taking-shape

This has everything the NRL want time zones for TV, plenty corporate facilities, entertaining areas. Indoor. No brainer really.

As they say build it and they will come.

Throw in that added factor that the local super rugby team are not the force they used to be and the super rugby competition as a whole is on a downward trajectory the decision to add NZ2 in Christchurch becomes paramount.

Edited June 17 by John bird

[rlno1]

My ideal 20 would be:

Sth Island Keas

Perth Bears

Brisbane Tigers - but as a merge with Balmain and Western Suburbs Magpies fly again on their own.

I'm a traditionalist and value the games history. 

PNG can come in later once path ways etc are strong and we are ready to expand again.

This scenario won't happen I know.

[Wellsy4HullFC]

1 hour ago, rlno1 said:

I'm a traditionalist and value the games history. 

...so my plan is to relocate the brands hundreds of miles away.

[John bird]

2 hours ago, rlno1 said:

My ideal 20 would be:

Sth Island Keas

Perth Bears

Brisbane Tigers - but as a merge with Balmain and Western Suburbs Magpies fly again on their own.

I'm a traditionalist and value the games history. 

PNG can come in later once path ways etc are strong and we are ready to expand again.

This scenario won't happen I know.

Perth is a viable standalone club that doesn’t need all of the bears baggage .

the Brisbane tigers bid is a tricky one as we already have a team with the tigers nickname but have to admit to liking your idea of demerging the west tigers and relocating the balmain side to Brisbane and have the western suburbs moving back to campbelltown as the western suburbs magpies or even just the western magpies.

[Anita Bath]

Brisbane Tigers would not work, with or without Balmain. The ‘secret’ of the Dolphins success is they got in already being a very rich enterprise thanks to massive income from non football activities ( rent from shopping centre on land they own on top of a vey successful leagues club.

 

 

[John bird]

51 minutes ago, Anita Bath said:

Brisbane Tigers would not work, with or without Balmain. The ‘secret’ of the Dolphins success is they got in already being a very rich enterprise thanks to massive income from non football activities ( rent from shopping centre on land they own on top of a vey successful leagues club.

 

 

The Brisbane tigers could have worked at the end of the super league war had balmain linked up with easts tigers and relocated to Brisbane instead of merging with western suburbs.

Also the Brisbane tigers I believe are also a very wealthy asset rich club.

[EggFace]

I still want a presence on the Central Coast...what Sydney team would do well playing out Bluetonque.

[John bird]

14 minutes ago, EggFace said:

I still want a presence on the Central Coast...what Sydney team would do well playing out Bluetonque.

North Sydney bears.

[John bird]

This amazing new stadium needs to be the home of the NZ2 Christchurch based South Island NRL team.

 

 

can you imagine an all New Zealand NRL derby game between the warriors and South Island in this amazing stadium packed to the rafters!!!

[Sports Prophet]

7 hours ago, EggFace said:

I still want a presence on the Central Coast...what Sydney team would do well playing out Bluetonque.

We all know the answer to that and I agree with you that we need a team there.

[John bird]

Wise words from a PNG legend.

 

https://www.lismorecitynews.com.au/story/8669671/nrl-wants-me-to-stay-out-of-png-discussions-olam/

 

when his playing career is over I’d love to Justin olam involved on the development side of the game in PNG.

[John bird]

Wise words from a PNG legend.

 

https://www.lismorecitynews.com.au/story/8669671/nrl-wants-me-to-stay-out-of-png-discussions-olam/

 

when his playing career is over I’d love to Justin olam involved on the development side of the game in PNG.

[John bird]

Really hope the NRL allows the Perth bid to be a standalone team.

 

https://thewest.com.au/sport/rugby-league/western-australia-edges-ahead-of-papua-new-guinea-to-field-nrl-team-c-15085671

[Sports Prophet]

16 hours ago, John bird said:

Wise words from a PNG legend.

 

https://www.lismorecitynews.com.au/story/8669671/nrl-wants-me-to-stay-out-of-png-discussions-olam/

 

when his playing career is over I’d love to Justin olam involved on the development side of the game in PNG.

Lismore City News! Damn you must go through a lot of news to land at the Lismore City News  

[ghost crayfish]

Love all these expansion ideas but really don't think it can happen successfully without rationalisation in Sydney, where there are still too many teams. I think 20 teams is too many and will dilute the strength of the competition. That mistake was a big part of Super Rugby's downfall and one we should learn from.

We should also look back to our own previous expansion to 20 teams in 1995. It was simply too many clubs - the top 4 and bottom 4 were worlds apart in standard, and the teams ranked 8 to 15 were at best competitive, but lacking the depth or real elite class to compete week in week out at the highest level. And the real trouble there was if a good player happened to be at a struggling club, they wanted out - so the struggling club could never offer much hope of really climbing up the ladder either. When it comes to clubs like the Tigers and Titans, I fear we are back in that situation now.

I think we've already seen gaps widen with the move up to 17 clubs and the Dolphins adding extra competition for talent. This will dilute further if we stretch to 18. Maybe we could do it if the club was in NZ and created more pathways for Kiwi and Pacific talent, but we need to be careful about going too far beyond that (and I say all this as a rugby league expansionist).

I really think we need to address the number of Sydney clubs before we go too far on expansion. If, for argument's sake, we lost one (or both) of Cronulla and the Tigers, then I'd be all for Perth and Christchurch - but as it is, am just a bit wary.

Further, what does the season structure look like with more clubs than we have currently? If we go to 20 teams, do we simply have 19 rounds and free Origin and test weekends? If so, great! But i'd worry we'll just end up with a convoluted 30-round club season involving conferences and whatever, with no room left for test football at all - a huge mistake.

Edited June 21 by ghost crayfish

[Farmduck]

20 minutes ago, ghost crayfish said:

 

We should also look back to our own previous expansion to 20 teams in 1995. It was simply too many clubs

We need to remember that a big part of the attraction of team sports is the history. The grudge matches, local rivalries and so on. Once we get to 20 teams or beyond, some teams will only play each other once a year and, with Magic Round and games taken to country venues, a Wests or Doggies fan might go 4 years without ever seeing the Perth Whatsits in the flesh.

Even now I couldn't care less about the Cows. Or the Titans. If it wasn't for all the salary cap stuff, I wouldn't even care about the Storm. It's nice to watch any team playing well but that's not the same as having some deep-seated 20-year history against a club. Obviously this takes time but, during that time, some of these clubs will be coming to Sydney and playing in front of three men and a dog. This doesn't make great TV and doesn't put bums on seats.

The best example I can think of is Wests v Melbourne. These games are among Wests' lowest crowds, at Leichhardt and Campbelltown. In the last 10 years there have only been 3 seasons where they played each other twice. They played at Leichhardt in 2017 and didn't meet again in Sydney until 2022. The average Sydney crowd for these games during that period is about 8-9K. In fact, through their entire history, the biggest crowd this match-up ever pulled was in 2018 at Mt Smart with a game in Gosford running second.

[Sports Prophet]

@ghost crayfish your opinions are far from unique in the game. My personal opinion is there is plenty of playing talent available, what the game would really need to focus on is coaching talent. The playing talent is there. Do we have enough talented coaches available to turn those players into NRL standard across 20 clubs?

I don’t see a simple 19 round season happening. There will be an unequal number of repeat fixtures like there’s always been. Hopefully there is room for the Origin weekends though. My fear is that the Origin weekend was tried and is now back to a Wednesday, so the NRL I assume are reluctant to the idea of a full three weekend schedule. Personally, I think they are missing out by not playing Origin over three consecutive weekends.

Lastly, your point on Sydney is one I am steadfast against. It is madness to simply axe two functioning clubs with 150,000 - 200,000+ supporters each. Especially for relatively speculative attempts to expand the sport. There is a genuine likelihood, you give up, more than you gain. What the sport needs to do is a better job of improving the level of fandom of those supporters. Those who don’t go to games, to go to one or two a year. Those who go to one or two a year, to consistently attend three to six and so on. I also believe that there needs more work in Sydney for some bigger events. The suburban grounds are pretty, but more needs to be done so the SFS and Homebush are getting 40k+ in on a regular basis.

Edited June 21 by Sports Prophet

[Treizistance]

@ghost crayfishDisagree. 20 clubs in the 90's didn't last solely because of the SuperLeague war. It's taken nearly 30 years for the sport to regain it's confidence again after retreating from Perth, Adelaide, Brisbane 2 and Sydney's North Shore.

Merging/killing Sydney clubs is a surefire way to open the doors to AFL as fans shafted by the code won't support other teams as they are told to, but rather turn their back on the code as remaining RL fans justs reminds them what they've lost/had taken from them. It's the reason why the Swans grew and became a significant feature on the Sydney sport scene. I can relate to this as my RU team was culled so I don't follow domestic RU anymore, am lost to the game.

Australia's population in 1995 was 18m, it is now 26m, a massive 44% increase in little under 3 decades.

I'm more of the view of 20 by Brisbane Olympics and 24 by 2040 if done correctly.

Edited June 21 by Treizistance

[John bird]

5 hours ago, Sports Prophet said:

Lismore City News! Damn you must go through a lot of news to land at the Lismore City News  

Strangely enough it wasn’t hidden behind a paywall.

[John bird]

1 hour ago, ghost crayfish said:

Love all these expansion ideas but really don't think it can happen successfully without rationalisation in Sydney, where there are still too many teams. I think 20 teams is too many and will dilute the strength of the competition. That mistake was a big part of Super Rugby's downfall and one we should learn from.

We should also look back to our own previous expansion to 20 teams in 1995. It was simply too many clubs - the top 4 and bottom 4 were worlds apart in standard, and the teams ranked 8 to 15 were at best competitive, but lacking the depth or real elite class to compete week in week out at the highest level. And the real trouble there was if a good player happened to be at a struggling club, they wanted out - so the struggling club could never offer much hope of really climbing up the ladder either. When it comes to clubs like the Tigers and Titans, I fear we are back in that situation now.

I think we've already seen gaps widen with the move up to 17 clubs and the Dolphins adding extra competition for talent. This will dilute further if we stretch to 18. Maybe we could do it if the club was in NZ and created more pathways for Kiwi and Pacific talent, but we need to be careful about going too far beyond that (and I say all this as a rugby league expansionist).

I really think we need to address the number of Sydney clubs before we go too far on expansion. If, for argument's sake, we lost one (or both) of Cronulla and the Tigers, then I'd be all for Perth and Christchurch - but as it is, am just a bit wary.

Further, what does the season structure look like with more clubs than we have currently? If we go to 20 teams, do we simply have 19 rounds and free Origin and test weekends? If so, great! But i'd worry we'll just end up with a convoluted 30-round club season involving conferences and whatever, with no room left for test football at all - a huge mistake.

Record amounts Tv money allows the NRL to expand alongside all the added increases in sponsorship for both clubs and the competition as a whole limiting the fear of financial instability and ruin. 

as for the quality of the on the pitch product and dilution of the competition then unfortunately this will probably happen in the short-term but the whole idea is to not just expand into a new market for fans but potential NRL players as well in both Perth and New Zealand as well as potentially PNG which has an unfathomable amount of untapped talent waiting to be unearthed through aggressive and extensive on the ground development and pathways programmes.

[Farmduck]

59 minutes ago, Treizistance said:

 

Australia's population in 1995 was 18m, it is now 26m, a massive 44% increase in little under 3 decades.

I'm more of the view of 20 by Brisbane Olympics and 24 by 2040 if done correctly.

A lot of the increase has been Indians and Chinese who aren't big RL fans. Look at an OZ cricket crowd and you'll see all the Indians but you rarely see many at a RL game. Statistics on these numbers can be a bit misleading. UK-born and NZ-born still show up as the highest numbers but many of those people came here 50 years ago or more. The RL-attracted portion has already been absorbed into general RL crowds and the newer immigrants aren't adding to RL attendances in proportion to the way they add to the total population.

This will take a generation. Look at all the Arab supporters at Doggies games. The first big wave of Lebanese immigrants came in the 1970s and by 1980 Sydney's biggest mosque was in Lakemba, in Dogs territory. But it wasn't until Hazem el Masri came long in the late 1990s that we saw the big Arab crowds at Dogs games. Most of them were not immgrants, they were the OZ-raised children of immigrants.

[Farmduck]

1 hour ago, Sports Prophet said:

 

Lastly, your point on Sydney is one I am steadfast against. It is madness to simply axe two functioning clubs with 150,000 - 200,000+ supporters each. Especially for relatively speculative attempts to expand the sport. 

The time to axe these clubs would have been after the Super League season. It's too late now. These clubs have done a lot of work on building their financial bases and they are all comfortable now. Even the rumours over the last 5 years about Wests were bogus. It was Balmain who were circling the drain, not Wests Tigers. The Wests Magpies side of the equation had money coming out their ears. Look at all the development around Shark Park. The Sharks are set for life, even if they never played another NRL game.

The other perennial basket case was Souths who have thrown off the George Piggins era and embraced reality and now are financially viable at an NRL level. There's no reason to even consider dumping the other Sydney clubs. 

 

[John bird]

1 hour ago, Treizistance said:

@ghost crayfishDisagree. 20 clubs in the 90's didn't last solely because of the SuperLeague war. It's taken nearly 30 years for the sport to regain it's confidence again after retreating from Perth, Adelaide, Brisbane 2 and Sydney's North Shore.

Merging/killing Sydney clubs is a surefire way to open the doors to AFL as fans shafted by the code won't support other teams as they are told to, but rather turn their back on the code as remaining RL fans justs reminds them what they've lost/had taken from them. It's the reason why the Swans grew and became a significant feature on the Sydney sport scene. I can relate to this as my RU team was culled so I don't follow domestic RU anymore, am lost to the game.

Australia's population in 1995 was 18m, it is now 26m, a massive 44% increase in little under 3 decades.

I'm more of the view of 20 by Brisbane Olympics and 24 by 2040 if done correctly.

100% this.

add in the population of New Zealand that is currently going bonkers for the NRL and record amounts of TV and sponsorship monies then it’s for me a blunder and a no-brainer not to expand.

also the populations of where RL is strongest and predominantly played are also exploding like the city of Brisbane and the whole south east Queensland region as well as the natural increase for the greater Sydney area.

the population of the Perth metropolitan area is also rapidly growing from currently around 2.3 million which includes hundreds of thousands of internal migrants from NSW and Queensland as well as tens of thousands of kiwi expats and even English immigrants and is forecasted to reach 3.5 million by mid 2040.

Edited June 21 by John bird

[John bird]

8 minutes ago, John bird said:

100% this.

add in the population of New Zealand that is currently going bonkers for the NRL and record amounts of TV and sponsorship monies then it’s for me a blunder or a no-brainer not to expand.

also the populations of where RL is strongest and predominantly played are also exploding like the city of Brisbane and the whole south east Queensland region as well as the natural increase for the greater Sydney area.

the population of the Perth metropolitan area is also rapidly growing from currently around 2.3 million which includes hundreds of thousands of internal migrants from NSW and Queensland as well as English immigrants and is forecasted to reach 3.5 million by mid 2040.

Double post.