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The ARU is telling fans it intends to create a new ‘regions’ based national comp to be unveiled before the end of the year.
The new comp, with the working title National Rugby Championship (NRC) will replace the ill-feted ARC that ran for just the one season in 2007.
However, fans remain curious as to the exact meaning of a “region”.
Meanwhile, Central Coast Mariners have approached the FFA for funding assistance and intend to play some A-League matches at North Sydney Oval in the future.
Former A-League clubs Gold Coast United and North Queensland Fury, both from smaller regional markets, have come and gone after just two seasons each.
Ironically, the NBL which during its former heyday in the 1990s boasted as many as 14 clubs, is slowly rebuilding, underpinned by two regional clubs in Northern Queensland, the Townsville Crocs and Cairns Taipans.
Is it mere co-incidence or deliberate planning that the AFL, the most powerful team sport in Australia and with most clubs in its national comp – 18 – tends to shun regional-based clubs?
Of the 18 clubs in the AFL, only two could be regarded as regional. Yet Geelong Cats were the second AFL club formed back in 1859, just two months after the Melbourne Demons.
For sporting purposes, Geelong has long been considered a suburb or district of the Greater Melbourne Urban Area.
Likewise, the Gold Coast, home to the AFL Suns, is often regarded for sporting purposes, as a suburb/district of the Greater Brisbane Urban Area.
It’s interesting that Geelong, Gosford (Central Coast) and Southport (Gold Coast) are all situated roughly the same distance from their capital city, GPO to GPO. Or city centre to city centre.
Geelong is 74 kms from Melbourne; Gosford is 76 kms from Sydney and Southport is 79 kms from Brisbane. In respect of distance, the difference is negligible.
However, population numbers differ widely. Broadly speaking, Geelong has a population base of just under 200,000; the far flung Central Coast about 350-400,000 and the Gold Coast in excess of 600,000.
Geelong is the agricultural hub of the Western Victoria district, with much farming related produce passing through Geelong before being distributed elsewhere.
Geelong is also home to the Ford Motor Car manufacturing plant, which began life in Australia in 1925 but is due to close in 2016.
How the loss of car manufacturing will affect the Geelong district and its ability to finance its all-powerful AFL club remains to be seen.
The two ‘Coasts’ share the similarities of being tourist destinations, retirement venues and also full of young people who will not find enough work to go around for everyone.
What other regions host national clubs?
Incredibly Townsville, with a population not much smaller than Geelong, hosts two national clubs – the NRL Cowboys and NBL Crocs, with the Cairns Taipans up the road about 350 kms.
The Wollongong Hawks play in the NBL, while the Illawarra district, of which Wollongong is the capital, share the NRL club St. George-Illawarra Dragons.
The island state of Tasmania is home to the cricket conquering Tigers who compete in the Sheffield Shield.
A team of the same name competes in the AHL along with another regional team, the Darwin Stingers.
Which brings us to Canberra and Newcastle. Canberra is of course, the nation’s capital, while I have always seen Newcastle as the capital of Australia’s mythical seventh state, Eastern Australia, covering most of the North-Western NSW.
Although both cities have a lesser population than the Gold Coast, I’m inclined to think they have a much better financial infrastructure, especially Newcastle.
Despite its smallish size (compared to the five state capitals), Canberra is already home to four national club teams – the NRL Raiders, the Super Rugby Brumbies, the ABL/Claxton Shield Cavalry and AHL Lakers.
Newcastle is home to the NRL Knights and A-League Jets, thus providing the same number of national clubs as Gold Coast.
To gain an insight in the capacity of each city to facilitate national clubs with sponsorship revenue, merchandising revenue, media viewing revenue, current fan-base and future players, I have divided each city’s population by the number of national clubs.
The final figure being what I refer to as a “potential service population”, or PSP if you like.
Population figures are deliberately rounded out to a higher even figure. PSP averages are also broadly rounded upwards.
1. Sydney; 4.7m (18 NCs), PSP 265,000.
2. Melbourne; 4.3m (17 NCs), PSP 255,000.
3. Brisbane; 2.2m (7 NCs), PSP 315,000.
4 Perth; 1.9 m (8 NCs), PSP 240,000.
5. Adelaide; 1.3m (7 NCs), PSP 190,000.
6. Gold Coast-Tweed; 600,000 (2 NCs), PSP 300,000.
7. Newcastle-Maitland; 430,000 (2 NCs), PSP 215,000.
8. Canberra-Queanbeyan; 420,000 (4 NCs), PSP 105,000.
9. Central Coast; est. 400,000 (one NC), PSP 400,000.
10. Wollongong; 290,000 (2 NCs), PSP 145,000.
11. Hobart; 220,000 (one NC), PSP 220,000 (whole state would provide higher figures).
12. Geelong; 190,000 (one NC), PSP 190,000.
13. Townsville; 180,000 (2 NCs), PSP 95,000 (excluding Cairns Taipans).
Of course, these figures don’t tell us the whole story as the better established cities can better facilitate their national clubs than other cities with less efficient demographics.
It’s remarkable that Townsville can facilitate two national clubs, while it can be argued Brisbane is totally under-utilised with only one NRL club.
Having only one national club might suggest Central Coast is ripe for more, but its ‘broken-line’ geography and poor demographics tend to compromise national club expansion into other sports.
Canberra is doing a sterling job servicing four national clubs, which might mean that the Comets (cricket) and Cosmos (football) might struggle to re-enter the national comp scene, at least in the short to mid-term.
Of course none of these deliberations take into account our women’s teams in the NNL (netball), WNCL (cricket), W-League (football) or WAHL (hockey).
Any deeper study would of course require taking women’s national clubs into consideration.
The purpose of this article is not to provide any solutions but present a talking point to readers, from which potential answers might be found for the difficulties faced in developing national comps in Australia.
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