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In the late 90s, rugby league in this country went through the initial steps of what I like to call the game’s ‘rebuilding process’.
I’m sure if this article’s headline has caught your attention, you’re probably well versed on the events that led up to and defined this particularly cloudy period in rugby league’s history.
The birth of the NRL in 1998 was the initial step towards the game’s revival.
One of the first goals for the new league was to condense from the 20 teams that participated in the NRL’s inaugural season to a more manageable number.
The leagues two stakeholders agreed to move towards a 14-team competition for the 2000 season.
Part of the logic behind this was rationalising the overcrowded Sydney market that was home to 11 of the 20 teams in 1998.
To encourage this process the NRL offered money and a guaranteed spot in the 2000 season for clubs that decided to merge. Clubs that resisted this temptation ran the risk of being booted out of the competition.
What followed was a scrambling of size ups and negotiations as those clubs that were believed to be in the NRL’s firing line went searching for an appropriate partner.
Fast forward to the 2000 season and we had a 14-team league that included three merged clubs while foundation club, the South Sydney Rabbitohs, were controversially removed from the competition.
The Balmain Tigers and Western Suburbs Magpies became the Wests Tigers, the St George Dragons and Illawarra Steelers became the St George Illawarra Dragons and the Manly Warringah Sea Eagles and North Sydney Bears became the Northern Eagles.
Fast forward again, this time to 2013 and the Rabbitohs have been reinstated following a Federal Court appeal that brought them back into the competition in 2002.
During that same year the Northern Eagles merger fell over with Manly emerging from the ashes to claim the license for the 2003 season.
Ten years since Manly re-entered the competition on their own, some questions have arisen about the surviving mergers while serious questions still remain about the sustainability of what still seems to be an overcrowded Sydney marketplace.
Just recently some cracks have begun to appear at the Wests Tigers and relocation or some other form of rationalisation in Sydney still seems to get some airplay in NRL circles.
As the league seems to be closing in on new teams and the areas outside of Sydney calling out for NRL representation reaches an all time high, the NRL’s administration has no choice but to contemplate how to accommodate these regions at the next round of expansion and into the future.
Sydney gets zoomed in under the microscope even further due to the fact that legitimate New South Wales expansion options such as the Central Coast are being held back due to the log jam that exists 50 minutes down the F1.
Furthermore, other significantly sized heartland areas outside of Sydney like the South Coast are being underrepresented by a lopsided relationship that is clearly tilted in the way of a more powerful Sydney merger partner.
This article will argue that these issues could have been avoided if the NRL took more leadership and ownership of a vision for the game when rugby league was rebuilding itself in the late 90s.
Putting Sydney’s clubs in the position where they were left to their own devices to negotiate their futures with other clubs or risk being punted from the competition was a huge mistake.
This is where the NRL needed to establish a clear, ordered and strategically thought out vision for what the game should look like in and around Sydney.
Instead, those clubs that were clearly under threat went on a desperate search for another club that wasn’t going to strip too much of their existing identity.
Or as was the case with the Dragons merger, the powerful St George went after the vulnerable Illawarra in order to create an unbalanced merger that maintained as much of the Kogarah based club’s character as possible.
In such an important period of time in the game’s history, the keys to the asylum were effectively handed over to the loonies as the clubs were entrusted with the huge responsibility of sorting out the overcrowded Sydney market themselves.
Obviously the clubs are going to look after their own best interests which didn’t and doesn’t necessarily align with the game’s best interests in Sydney.
The NRL needed to step up and put forward their dreams for the game.
The end result of the Sydney clubs playing school formals was one neighbourly merger, two patchwork mergers and the removal of one team that found its way back into the competition to the detriment of the NRL’s goals of a 14 team league and a rationalised Sydney.
In my opinion these patchwork mergers are inefficient in that they effectively involve taping two small separate clubs together as opposed to developing one stronger club.
For example, your average Tigers crowd at Allianz isn’t going to get a significant amount of Campbelltown residents travelling up towards the city.
The same can be said of a crowd at a Campbelltown home game not involving many inner westerners.
St George Illawarra is at a similar disadvantage due to the significant amount of distance between their two core fan-bases in Kogarah/Hurstville and Wollongong.
Furthermore, having teams that have split homes that are separated by one or more rival teams is detrimental to the all important tribalism that rugby league (especially in Sydney) thrives on.
Clubs should represent a decent sized chunk of land and population with a home ground located within or very close to their masses of fans.
To maximise crowds, we shouldn’t have a situation where Sydney clubs have bases at opposite ends of the city or in another city altogether.
You may say that it’s ironic that the only failed merger is the one that existed between two neighbours but Manly did whatever they could to ensure that this merger wouldn’t succeed. Three years was hardly giving it a fair shot.
And the end result where an entire clubs worth of fans was isolated was hardly a favourable outcome.
If the NRL took control of the situation prior to 2000 with a well devised strategic plan for the structure of Sydney, there’s every chance that rationalisation would no longer be a topic of conversation and we’d be left with fewer but larger and more successful (off the field) Sydney clubs.
Below are my suggested mergers to fairly cut the number of teams in Sydney while creating teams that make more geographical sense for crowd purposes.
Northern Eagles- Give them another proper shot. Playing at a renovated Brookvale.
Eastern Jets – An attempt to link Newtown fans (I’m told there’s still quite a few out there) to Sydney’s truest ‘inner city’ club, playing at Allianz.
Southern Dragons – The Rabbitohs and Dragons join forces to represent Sydney’s southeast. Playing at Kogarah and/or Allianz.
West Bulldogs – Yes, similar to another code but work with me here. The Maggies link up with their western Sydney neighbours at Canterbury to represent Sydney’s southwest. Playing at ANZ.
Parramatta Tigers A Balmain and Parra merger to represent Sydney’s west. Playing at Parramatta Stadium.
Penrith Panthers – The one Sydney club to remain untouched. I promise I’m not a Panthers fan! This locks out Sydney’s west by taking care of the northwest. I know the Panthers haven’t exactly been pulling huge crowds to Centrebet in recent times but this is an important area due to the size and ongoing growth of Sydney’s northwest.
They’ve also had crowd averages in the high teens during some more successful years. Playing at Centrebet.
I am actually a Sharks fan and due to the Shire’s isolation from the rest of Sydney, I believe there is a case to include the deep south as well, however I’m not going to put them forward.
The area and growth isn’t as large as what the Panthers represent and seven full time Sydney teams is starting to creep up to the status quo which is too many.
Around Sydney, I’d have a full time presence in Gosford and Wollongong. These cities are far enough away from metropolitan Sydney to justify their own NRL teams. Both have stadiums that would be among the best rectangular venues between 20 to 25,000.
They’re both rugby league heartlands with immediate populations of over 300,000 and regional populations that are double this and as Sydney continues to crowd and become a more expensive place to live, Wollongong and Gosford will grow.
Six teams within metropolitan Sydney that represent six individual and united areas will create a more sustainable situation in the game’s greatest heartland.
Then a full time presence in two of New South Wales’ largest regional centres will ensure that these important areas get the representation they deserve moving forward.
Such a model is an example of what the NRL had the opportunity to move towards back in 2000 and I believe the game would be in a better place now if it had.
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