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Lote Tuqiri scores for the Tigers: NRL Round 20 Manly v Tigers @ Bluetongue Stadium Sun 25th 2010. Digi Image by Grant Trouville © action photographics.
Rugby league experts and fans alike agree the NRL is likely to expand to 18 teams in the next few years. This is certainly good news – teams in new locations will afford more people the opportunity to attend games than ever before.
There are more than six clubs vying for the expected two spots opening in this expansion window.
Of the stronger bids, the front-runners are (in no particular order) the Central Coast Bears, the Brisbane Bombers and the WA Reds. Two of these teams are reincarnations of previous teams. All three have presented strong cases for inclusion.
The case for a Perth side is reasonably straightforward. Western Australia is, by quite a distance, the wealthiest state in the nation. Its capital has a population of 1.7 million (which is equal to the combined size of current NRL host cities Newcastle, Canberra, Townsville, Wollongong and the Gold Coast). They have (back in 1995) already supported a rugby league team with average crowds of 13,000 on a cricket ground, when Perth had a far smaller (and much less affluent) population than today.
Additionally, WA represents a chance to get an entire state (probably Australia’s most partisan) behind one team. Whilst I am not in favour of the “dots on a map” approach to expansion (hello North Queensland Fury) the inclusion of a Perth team would certainly give the National Rugby League a more “national” look.
The case for a Brisbane side is also pretty simple. Brisbane vies with Sydney for the title of Australia’s rugby league capital. Sydney has a population of 4.5 million with eight and a half teams (or 530,000 people per team). Brisbane has two million people and just one team.
With figures like that you don’t have to be Einstein to figure out they deserve another. The last attempt at a second Brisbane team (the South Queensland Crushers) scored phenomenal crowds before it became a casualty of the Super League war. 21,000 a game is a figure which many Sydney teams would give their back teeth for (I’m looking at you Penrith, Manly and Cronulla). The opportunity to have a game a week at Suncorp is extremely desirable.
The case for a Central Coast side is arguably the strongest of the lot. Countless Roar articles have been written on the topic, so I will just present the basics:
– Purpose built stadium in an existing rugby league community.
– Two support bases with over a million people between them.
– Corporate support from some of Australia’s richest suburbs.
– A club with over 100 years of rugby league history, existing rivalries and an existing support base.
Consensus tells us that two clubs will be admitted in 2013 or 2014 to bring the NRL up to 18 teams. My question is, why only two? There are three expansion clubs with a superb model yet only two spots available.
Surely 19 clubs is just as workable. It would create a natural bye round for each club, would see overall increased attendances for the competition and, with the figures being bandied about for the new TV deal, should not present a threat to the NRL’s bottom line.
While there can be pitfalls in expanding too quickly (and again we need only look at North Queensland Fury) the lost opportunities in expanding too slowly could be even greater.
As long as the expansion teams are chosen carefully, it need not compromise the overall stability of the competition.
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