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A general view of Etihad Stadium during an AFL match. Slattery Images.
Focus all you like on the Gold Coast Suns, Greater Western Sydney Giants, Melbourne Storm and whoever else joins the NRL in its mooted expansion; the NRL and AFL have enough cash and invested interests to ensure they’ll survive and, eventually, flourish relative to their market, for they are too important to fail.
It’s the heartland clubs that are the real concern.
While the NRL and AFL now call themselves national leagues (bit of a stretch for the NRL), they are still, obviously, heavily weighted in New South Wales and Victoria respectively given the fact they evolved from state competitions.
And it’s that imbalance and congestion in those states that will, if they aren’t already, stretching the leagues, raising yet again the inevitable dilemma of relocation/expansion.
Can, in the long-term, the AFL really sustain nine clubs in suburban Melbourne? And how about the 10 NRL clubs around Sydney?
In the AFL, the plight of the VFL strugglers – clubs such as Melbourne, North Melbourne and Western Bulldogs – remains and ongoing concern; highlighted recently by the debate over equalisation.
The proposed mergers and relocations of the 1980s and 1990s, pushed by the AFL Commission, in the end only shed two VFL clubs (South Melbourne Football Club and Fitzroy Lions) from the competition, as North Melbourne, Richmond, Melbourne and Hawthorn – the latter two coming close to a merger as the “Melbourne Hawks” – fought gallantly for their survival.
North Melbourne, meanwhile, resisted heavy pressure to relocate to the Gold Coast, and are now one of the clubs forced to look outside of their home state for extra revenue and support, committing to its second home in Tasmania.
While this strain on Victorian clubs was an inevitable result of the move to a national competition – as the AFL Commission predicted but could, seemingly, do little about – ground maximisation, the other buzz-word from the AFL’s growth period, would also help wear away at the smaller clubs.
While the move away from suburban grounds into the two mega city stadiums of the MCG and Docklands (Etihad Stadium) has helped contribute to record crowds and gate-takings for the league – which will become so much more valuable once the AFL owns Docklands lock, stock and barrel come 2025 – what effect has it had on the pecking order in Victoria?
The move away from the Whitten Ovals, Waverley Parks, Princes Parks and Windy Hills has eroded the suburban ties that link the VFL clubs with their real roots.
New generations grow up sparsely spread across Melbourne, moving to new suburbs even further from the city and the VFL bases; moving regularly throughout their lives and not necessarily connected to the one area.
With all clubs playing out of the city, the connection Victorians had with their local clubs has weakened, with the risk we are seeing a funneling of support into only a handful of power clubs – think Collingwood, Carlton, Essendon and Richmond – at the expense of the smaller clubs, who are left trying to fill stadiums of 56,000- and 100,000-plus with under 30,000 members/attendees.
In the NRL, suburban grounds are very much still in play, however the likes of Cronulla, Penrith and Manly still feel the pinch of financial constraints, while the Sydney Roosters’ crowd average sits at a paltry 14,934. A number of the NRL’s Sydney suburban clubs rely on profits from leagues clubs and other revenue streams to keep the footy club going.
The situation is more desperate when you consider the NRL’s national footprint pales in comparison to the AFL’s – only three clubs outside of New South Wales and Queensland (Melbourne Storm, Canberra Raiders and New Zealand Warriors).
If the NRL is serious about expansion into foreign lands in West Australia, South Australia and the like, then relocation may become a necessity to balance out the competition.
It remains to be seen whether all these clubs crammed into such small suburban markets can survive as the leagues grow nationally.
But with the expansion of rival codes with generic clubs representing and pulling support from the wider city (think Storm, Rebels, Heart, Victory, Tigers and more in Melbourne), the pressure is building on the smaller, more vulnerable, specific area clubs. This reality is what’s lost in the code war rhetoric, for it’s a very real threat.
If the AFL and NRL were designed from scratch, then they clearly wouldn’t be as heavily weighted in their states of origin.
So at what point do the AFL and NRL cut their losses and do away with or, more likely, relocate the suburban clubs?
Both codes have more markets to conquer if they continue expanding nationally. And while relocation is often ridiculed as a farcical mirage for the club sent packing to a faraway land, the alternative is bankruptcy and complete non-existence.
(For a great example of how relocation impacts the fans left behind, listen to this great program from Radio National.)
So, for example, could the Sharks of Cronulla – $13.5 million debt and reliant on land and facility redevelopments to get out of debt – move to Adelaide, if the NRL deems a team in South Australia necessary for the growth of the game?
Why not? When it comes to relocation in order to facilitate further expansion and streamline the competition, codes and heartland clubs may have no choice.
Follow Adrian on twitter @AdrianMusolino