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It’s hard to find an issue prevalent in just about every sport, but expansion is one of those rare ones.
At the moment, the pressure is on the NRL, with the AFL moving further into the rugby league heartlands of Queensland and western Sydney. And despite the AFL’s recent success in non-traditional markets, the NRL has put off expansion talk until 2017.
I think this is a good move. Unlike the AFL diving into expansion in rugby league markets and hoping for success, the NRL has taken a much more calculated approach.
Over the next five seasons, the NRL will most likely play some exhibition matches in possible expansion areas, gauging where a move would be most effective.
But alas, the most likely candidates will probably be a third Queensland team, a second New Zealand team or a team on the Central Coast. Maybe even another Melbourne team.
I think that for the NRL traditional markets are the way to go, and would be shocked if the NRL even considered Perth in the next 10 years, let alone Port Moresby.
But how should the NRL approach this expansion?
To many Australian sport fans, myself included, the European system of relegation and promotion is a mouth-watering concept.
It gives the teams at the bottom something to play for, and creates interest by introducing new opposition each year. Unfortunately, this idea would be unworkable in Australian sports.
European sports were born and raised on that system, while Australian sports weren’t. Any attempt to replicate it would be foolish. However, when thinking about expansion, this system isn’t completely worthless.
When the NRL is thinking of expansion, they shouldn’t think of creating a new club, they should instead think of ‘promoting’ a smaller team.
Someone beat me to the punch with the latest Brothers bid for entry into the NRL. I am in 100% support for this proposal.
Admitting a pre-existing team into the NRL, rather than giving the license to some whackjob millionaire who wants a team in his home town eliminates a number of problems – one of the greatest ones being time.
Setting up a football club takes a long time – the Gold Coast Suns were formed two years before their first AFL match, and the GWS Giants had three years.
Admitting a team, for example, from Queensland Cup would eliminate the need for the creation of an entirely new team from scratch.
The two new AFL clubs have both had pretty solid fan-bases over their first few years in the league, with both membership counts exceeding 10,000. For clubs created from scratch, in non-traditional markets, that’s pretty good.
You’d expect something similar from the NRL, especially if they were to promote a pre-existing team.
It eliminates the need for scraping up a fan-base from scratch, and would make it easier to pull fans away from their NRL clubs to support the club that they have a connection to.
A club that they or their children played junior footy for, one that they pay $2 to watch every Saturday, or whose leagues club they’ve been going to for 50 years would hold much greater appeal than a brand new one.
Obviously, it wasn’t very hard to entice Gary Ablett to live on the Gold Coast being paid $1 million a year. But GWS have been finding it harder to lure the big names to come and live in the western suburbs of Sydney.
The NRL wouldn’t experience these problems to this degree. But these problems would be virtually eliminated if, for example, Norths Devils were promoted and got their hands on Cooper Cronk, re-connecting him with the last club he played for prior to the Melbourne Storm.
Recruiting stars would be much easier if they promote a club that already exists.
Despite the fact the NRL would probably much rather a team in a non-traditional market, or an AFL one at that, it would be wise to put a new team in a rugby-friendly area, and what’s more, give an NRL license to a pre-existing club.
It would save time, bring in fans, and maybe even bring in marquee players quicker than if a completely new club was created.
There’s no reason not to.
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