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AFL club Essendon will seek legal advice if rugby league’s Brisbane bid team confirm reports they intend adopting the name Bombers if included into an expanded NRL competition.
The bid team of Craig Davison Nicholas Livermore and Bill Rae will unveil their brand, colours and training base at a press conference at Albion Park Raceway on Thursday morning.
However the 16-time AFL premiers who’ve been around for 130 years say they’ll get legal advice as to whether the bid team have crossed the line with their choice of name, News Limited reported on Thursday.
“I wish them good luck with their expansion but if the Bombers really is their name then we want to make sure that no lines are crossed or blurred,” Essendon chief executive Ian Robson said.
“Our club has been around for 130 years and the Bomber name has enormous brand equity as a football club around Australia.”
Bid teams from the Central Coast, Western Australia, Central Queensland and Ipswich are vying to be part of expanded NRL competition, possibly as early as 2013 when a new TV rights deal will be in place.
Brisbane bid director Craig Davison told AAP if the new Commission was up and running in a few weeks and tenders called next month with the successful applicant(s) revealed before the players’ signing deadline of November 1 2012, his group would be ready to kick off in 2013.
Davidson’s group, who have invested thousands of hours and even more dollars into it’s proposal, officially launched their bid blueprint at Suncorp Stadium on February 21.
They believe Brisbane is ready for a second team to challenge the Broncos and that Suncorp Stadium needs to host a lot more than 12 NRL games a year.
Davison says while Sydney rugby league fans had been served up over 300 NRL games in the past three years only 39 games had been played in Brisbane.
“You start looking at the success of the Reds and Origin games and you realise people crave more football up here,” he told AAP.
“The people of Brisbane are starving for another NRL team and such a magnificent venue as Suncorp Stadium needs to host a major game every week not 12 times a year.”
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