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Depending on the way you approach things, rugby league’s greatest strength is also its greatest weakness. The conundrum of how to advance the game and how that fits in with Sydney is the greatest challenge for the game’s administrators.
There are literally hundreds of theories on how rugby league should tackle its next leap forward.
And they are all marked by their diversity.
Recently retired players such as Andrew Johns, Shane Webcke, and the legendary Arthur Beetson, have all called for the number of teams in Sydney to be reduced and the game to be expanded in order to develop a truly national competition.
But this goes widely against the likes of Phil Gould, who believes the current clubs in Sydney all need to be part of any future competition.
Who’s right?
Someone, everyone, no-one?
The NRL for their part have stated that they are happy with the state of the Sydney market, despite also offering a fairly juicy carrot for someone to move to the Central Coast.
But that debate is for another time.
It’s a bizarre world, where passions run high and statistics are used to prove just about everything and nothing at the same time.
I’m not going to pretend I have the answers. But I find it fascinating just how diverse the opinions are and this is why I have such sympathy for David Gallop.
Say what you like about Gallop, but he is presented with an unenviable task.
Like all sports these days, he is meant to run the NRL as a business. Yet he is faced with the prospect of his poorest performing commodities also being his most valuable.
Look at the farce that surrounded the expulsion and re-admittance of South Sydney.
Pre-expulsion Souths were a joke: they were getting twelve people to their games, their books had the accountability of a bar coaster, and the writing was long on the wall that they needed to improve their game to stick around.
The inevitable happened and they were given the chop. Suddenly all hell broke loose and they were the world’s most popular team.
You had 100,000 Souths fans telling you they walked barefoot to the match every week.
Reality often has little space in rugby league.
Personally, I’m happy Souths are back in business, but their recent history shows that while rugby league has a tribal landscape, it’s not the sort of vicious tribal culture that some would have you believe.
Far from dog-eat-dog, Bulldogs and Panthers fans’ enthusiasm for the game declined on the back of the demise of the Bunnies and Bears.
Forget economists, that is one for the psychologists.
But does that mean there is no future for those pilgrims that see expansion as the answer?
The Broncos’ Bruno Cullen strikes me as one of the more sensible CEOs in the game today and his considered views on where the game should be heading are very different to the din that occupies so much copy in the media.
Cullen argues that the removal of the Western Reds and Adelaide Rams were necessary after Super League, but that doesn’t mean you give up on them forever, and if the game does want to grow, development in these markets is important in the future.
Surely most league fans would believe that expansion has been good for rugby league.
I can’t fathom that people would want to replace Melbourne with a revived Newtown Jets or return to the days of the NSWRL. But I know it is pointless for anyone to try to speak on behalf of all fans.
So while armchair economists point to the invisible hand of the market deciding which club has the right to move forward, spare a thought for the game’s administrators trying to juggle the tyranny of history while keeping the bean counters happy.
In the end the only thing people seem to agree on is that the game must make hard decisions.
But that’s the thing about hard decisions – they don’t please everyone, which is really why they are called hard decisions.
Sadly, easy decisions, which everyone likes, have gone the way of unlimited tackles and kicking duels.
And they aren’t coming back any time soon.
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