As the NRL considers three applications to be the 17th team, I’ve been given cause to contemplate the ‘rise of the club’ in our sport over the last 25 years.
Beware: I’m going to mention ‘the book’ again. As I read through the final manuscript for Two Tribes and make a few calls to tidy things up, it’s reinforcing to me how ridiculously chaotic things were between 1995 and 1999. It was like a gigantic natural disaster causing reshaping landscapes that erosion and tectonic plates would have taken millennia to impact upon.
Where a club was during those few years, and the decisions its bosses made, were more important to its history than generations of effort and decisions before or since. Then things settled down again and now we have progress and change proceeding at a glacial pace once more.
The accelerant back then, of course, was moolah; the flood of money caused by the introduction of pay television to Australia.
In 1997, clubs were considered expendable. In Two Tribes, South Sydney’s Shannon Donato recalls how players had to take turns picking up rubbish before training at Redfern Oval because there was no-one else to do it.
If a team could not pay its bills, it was reasonable to assume that it might drop out of the competition or be forced to merge. South Sydney were only what they are now – this gleaming institution – to their fans. To others, they were a broken down inner-city footy club.
We didn’t understand IP and branding the way we do now and the past didn’t have the same sort of lustre it developed as we made the transition from part time to full-time, pre-internet to internet age.
Only a couple of games a week were on TV, so the colours and iconography of the teams were not enshrined in popular culture as they are today.
Having scrambled onto the lifeboat for the turn of the century, leaving others drowning below them, the existing NRL clubs have since enjoyed unprecedented riches at a time when continuous long-term intellectual property has sky rocketed in value with the advent of social media.
If the clubs don’t like the ‘independent’ commission, they can keep voting members off until they get the ones they do like.
The loss of clubs like Souths and North Sydney has also led us to give them a lot more respect, with the return of the Rabbitohs adding to this perception that clubs should be untouchable. And the location of the team has become so much less important. We can follow Penrith without having ever driven along Mulgoa Road.
It was so important for the sport in 1995 to have a national footprint. Now, if people in Perth want to watch rugby league they can look at their smartphones. The ritual of going to the game is rarely examined in any detail because it’s not really a ritual.
All of this will make it unbelievably tough for the next team to put on the old South Queensland Crushers boxing gloves and step into the ring with the Brisbane Broncos.
The brand names of the existing clubs, and the attached power, have become so big that a new team will take decades to catch up in the marketplace. At least if the new team is in a new city, it has some clear air to work in.
In Brisbane just to wring a bit more juice out of an over-ripe orange? Finding the PR sweet-spot will require the likes of Cambridge Analytica or or Russian troll factory if the public are to be manipulated correctly into feeling an emotional attachment.
While the AFL discusses moving to Tasmania – and the clubs resist – rugby league contemplates its answer to Port Adelaide or Freo… again. It’s definitely not expansion. It’s not even reclamation.
In truth, it’s exploitation.
Rellum
Roar Guru
What has that got to do with it?
Rob9
Roar Guru
Labelling it as ‘exploitation’ and framing this dynamic as you have in your article implies some sort of negative connotation. I might be going a rung or 2 up the inference ladder here, but I’m not sure introducing a 2nd Brisbane team into a competition with 9 Sydney teams should carry that baggage.
Steve Mascord
Expert
Businesses exploit markets. That's exactly what you're describing - and what I'm describing too.
Steve Mascord
Expert
It's still not expansion. It's marketing!
Steve Mascord
Expert
Most people don't watch levels below the NRL.
Maxtruck
Roar Rookie
Change hands
josh
Roar Rookie
I'd rate Intrust Cup games ahead of Super League in the UK. It fits the definition of elite sport. Is it just because the players have day jobs?
Opposed Session
Roar Rookie
Yeah I’ve had the same argument on here since they started debating expansion. Brisbane is so territorial. If you live north of the river you dislike the South and vice versa. They already have a team close to Brisbane and some days it’s quicker to get from Brisbane to the GC than Redcliffe or Ipswich if traffic is bad. Now if Easts and Ipswich merge, it’s no longer Brisbane expansion.
Paul Monaro
Roar Rookie
These questions need to be asked. Just like you don't have to drive down Mulgoa Rd to follow Penrith, you can tune into Lionel Messi's fortunes at Paris Saint-Germain from your lounge room. The game doesn't need more teams to expand.
josh
Roar Rookie
Anyone from Brisbane doesn't identify with those regions though. I can't see anyone living 15km from the CBD, supporting Redcliffe or Ipswich. An Ipswich team based in Springfield, I could see as viable in the future. I could see the NRL choosing this because of the presence of the Brisbane Lions. But the Ipswich/Springfield as their own issues in terms of what's Ipswich.
josh
Roar Rookie
A little, Also Redcliffe isn't Brisbane and Ipswich isn't Brisbane.
Nico
Roar Rookie
Steve's raised some great points but I think Brisbane 2 presents a bit of a unique situation. On the point of IP/brand name etc, creating shiny new teams from scratch is certainly where the A-League has fallen in its expansion attempts. Instead of trying to bring in a couple of older teams (such as South Melbourne) which could have added a bit more gravitas to the comp, for better or worse they've gone with a couple of artificial clubs to go with the already artificial clubs thrown together. I think they advantage the NRL has with Brisbane 2 is that all of the bids aside from the Bombers have established roots and are largely recognised brands in Brisbane. Redcliffe is the place where Beetson started his career while Ipswich is where Alf and Kevvie started off. The other factor at play is what Joe Gorman touched on in his book 'Heartland' is the lack of hatred in the Queensland rivalry - I can barrack for the Broncos against the Cowboys/Titans but the week after I'll just as happily barrack for Cowboys/Titans - I can imagine quite a few existing Broncs fans would also get right behind Brisbane 2 any week they're not playing the Broncs
Brothers Old Boy
Guest
If the Firehawks/Jets merger does come to fruition, they should consider rebranding their name as Brisbane Yuggera Firehawks? or Jets. As Yuggera country encompasses the whole Brisbane and Ipswich greater region. It also gives them a point of difference identity to Brisbane.
fiwiboy7042
Roar Rookie
It looks like Redcliffe will have a de facto NRL team given NZ media reports that the Warriors will be based there for the next season.
Rob9
Roar Guru
Pretty shallow way of looking at the distribution of teams in a professional competition where players aren’t bound to a geographic location.
Joey
Guest
Would be embarrassing if the new team + Broncos + Coast were made up of NSW imports. Sure, Melbourne have raised less than 6 players in 23 years, but they have never been a league state, and they continue to be. For Qld to show as having a team in name only would be farcical.
Joey
Guest
Not to mention the multiple new combinations of Friday night games that QRL and up til now, Bronco powerbrokers have demanded from the annual draw.
Joey
Guest
3 dud SEQ teams instead of 2. May as well let St George and Illawarra split up if that’s all it achieves.
Micko
Roar Rookie
Wouldn't the WESTS Tigers be better off moving to Perth, and you don't even have to change the name! :thumbup: :happy:
Republican
Guest
Conversely isn't it exploitation to 'expand' into new markets at the expedience of established loyal heartlands? I would go so far as to say that this is where the real exploitation happens. Television networks own elite sporting brands and as such dictate their terms, criteria and interpretations of what 'growth' should look like, so where a 'market' decides exclusively who are the winners and losers. This is exactly why any virtue in sport has been brutally compromised while the dumbed down 'consumer' doesn't even know what their searching for. These extinct traits are now only concocted illusions, inherent of a generic commodification that typifies our sterile culture - less existence.