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Imagine if NRL had retained first ever clubs

Roar Guru
10th March, 2011
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Roar Guru
10th March, 2011
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3437 Reads

1908 is when the NSWRL kicked off its very first season. There were nine teams: Balmain, Cumberland, Glebe, Eastern Suburbs, Newtown, Western Suburbs, Cumberland, South Sydney and North Sydney.

The following year, Cumberland got the axe, and that left us with eight clubs. 

So, what if we kept these same clubs till today?

There would be no expanding in NSW to Illawarra, Penrith, Parramata, Canterbury, Cronulla and St George.

Now you may ask why would people support these foundation teams despite not living in that area. Well, one can relate to AFL in how the majority of its foundation clubs draw fans outside their home area.

The same can apply to this theory.

For example, the North Sydney Bears would represent the North Shore, Northern Beaches and the Central Coast, drawing upon a large catchment than just the North Sydney area.

With the push for memberships these days, one would suggest a team like North Sydney can garner bigger memberships by having the catchment to itself rather than having Manly cutting into it.

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There are obvious disadvantages by keeping the original eight. One of them is the lack of derbies that we see today.

St George vs Cronulla, Penrith vs Parra and Manly vs North Sydney are some of the many derbies fans would never see. However, the foundation teams would stay separate, keeping their heritage and history as a stand-alone club.

Overall, keeping the original eight wouldn’t cause the problems caused by continual expanison into NSW which led to dramatic reduction of teams due to the over-saturation of teams which peaked at 13 teams in NSW and the ACT during the early 80s.

This is hypothetical.

I don’t wish the teams we have today to go, but to see things from a different perspective.

Ideally, this would be the NRL of today if we kept the foundation teams (I do take some liberty and assume the expanison teams outside NSW/QLD do survive and have better administration, too)

NRL with vintage teams:
Newtown Jets
South Sydney Rabbioth
Newcastle Rebels
Western Suburbs
Eastern Suburbs
Balmain Tigers
Glebe Reds
North Sydney Bears

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Brisbane Broncos
South QLD Crushers
North QLD Cowboys
Gold Coast Titans
NZ Warriors
Canberra Raiders
Western Reds
Adelaide Rams
Melbourne Storm
(second NZ/CQ/Sunshine Coast/etc)

Also, another possibility would be the NSWRL and QRL merging their competitions rather than adding non-heartland teams. However, that would be for another day.

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