Full disclosure is probably required here: I’m not really a huge league fan. I watch it, sure, I have a team (go Storm), and I was going to become a member before the pandemic hit.
However, it’s not my love. If you hadn’t already guessed, I’m a diehard AFL fan and probably worst of all, I call league ‘rugby’ in normal conversation. But I am fascinated by league, the history is intriguing, the rivalries are convoluted and old, and the fans are out of their minds in the best way possible.
I look at league as an outsider with no real love and no malice, just bemused confusion at how out of touch it is. From the outside looking in, the NRL needs to expand, further professionalise, and controversially come to terms with what I see as the most likely future for the league.
Expansion
It’s a hot topic in the NRL now, even I can see that and is starting strong with a second team in Brisbane being planned. Although, why they’re not building a new team from the ground up is beyond me and I assume has something to do with the lack of a draft system, plus a need for established juniors but it seems regressive to me.
It’s a good start but the reason they’re putting another team up there is because of the AFL, not because they’ve planned out the future of expansion or think Brisbane can sustain a new club. And with no sign of an 18th club on the horizon, it’s dubious how much extra revenue this team will add to the NRL’s books, especially to justify the $13 million a year they’ll be getting from the NRL.
It just feels reactionary as if the NRL never considered that they would want to expand until just this year.
Which is weird, because even in Melbourne we have heard about plans for expansion in the NRL for at least the last five years but now it just sounds more like media punditry than any real proposals going on internally at the NRL.
Fans need to get realistic about where the game can expand.
The rate of participation of Pacific Islanders in your sport is something to be proud of, but If I see one more person say you need teams in the Pacific when the World Bank says the Pacific has “2.3 million people, scattered across an area equivalent to 15 per cent of the globe’s surface”, I might give up on any hope for this sport.
Logistics and wealth are important and denying that is asking for a situation like the Toronto Wolfpack to happen in the NRL.
(Richard Lautens/Toronto Star via Getty Images)
The NRL seriously needs to start looking at building a club from the ground up in Perth and make the game national, and leave the Sydney sides in Sydney. The new entity must be its own club with no other baggage and try to grow the game rather than just rest on their laurels.
This will help the league grow and protect the game which should always be their goal as custodians of the game.
Professionalism
I would never claim to be an expert on how professionalism affected rugby league but what I have been able to learn tells me it was messy, damaging to many clubs, cost the fans an established league, and most upsettingly of all, involved Rupert Murdoch (yes, I know about his involvement in the Storm).
However, I do not think the game did enough to professionalise the support structures of the league and the clubs themselves.
Firstly, junior development should be taken out of the hands of the clubs. Yes, they need a reserve side but that’s about it. The NRL or the ARLC or both should invest heavily in youth development rather than have the clubs do it. They can’t be both a professional sports team and a youth group.
I know community outreach is important and a team being involved locally with sport gives everyone a warm feeling, but the cold fact of the matter is that the building that runs out million-dollar men on the weekend has enough to deal with without running a complex feeder league of its own. NRL clubs aren’t, in general, rich enough to make it work.
The community is always going to want to play sport – just give them money to play yours and get a draft for the best of them.
(Photo by Mark Evans/Getty Images)
Also, it is an excellent means to balance the competition. I don’t want to hear the, “They’ll just play union if they can’t play where they live” crowd. Union’s domestic competition is a shambles and you can offer a lot more money in league for all but the international level. There’s a reason the national side gets to be called the Kangaroos and union must settle for the Wallabies. You’re the big dog in this fight – so start acting like it.
Secondly, the ARLC needs to rationalise its corporate structure and start investing in the long-term financial future of the league. I’ve seen countless people praise Peter V’landys for getting the NRL back on the field first of any sport in 2020, and it was a major accomplishment, but why was it so necessary?
Yes, we all wanted to watch sport but the real reason the NRL needed to start playing was because of the absolute failure that the competition’s long-term financial planning has been.
The AFL could afford to be slow the NRL was worried about clubs collapsing and could not. The NRL feels bloated and overly bureaucratic right at the time it cannot afford to be. This isn’t a way for suits to get rich, it’s an important part of our cultural heritage as a nation and should be treated as such.
League has been kicking the can down the road with fully professionalising since the end of the Super League War and it will doom the competition as it stands currently, unless standards are addressed in administration and governance from the clubs to the Commission.
The future of league
Much is made of the code war between AFL and NRL but something I don’t think NRL fans are ready for is that the war to the extent that it ever existed is over and league lost. I know I’m biased towards the AFL, but I just can’t see how the NRL will be able to keep the competition at anything resembling parity with its southern rival.
I believe there is plenty of room for both leagues to be popular and profitable in this country, but the NRL will be playing catch up for who knows how long.
While the AFL looks for a 20th team to add at some point in the future with a 19th Tasmanian team, the NRL is going to spend money it doesn’t have trying to establish a team in Queensland that, while the team itself will doubtlessly be profitable, I don’t really see it as market growth, just giving a city that deserved a second team 20 years ago its due.
Queenslanders will always love their league but it’s not going to be the impenetrable fortress that fans and executives think it is. The NRL is moving heaven and earth fighting a war that the AFL has failed to notice it’s in or that it started. And while that’s the reality, league is doomed to be the second sport in the nation for any foreseeable future.
Take heart, however. This is all fixable. It just will take the type of long-term thinking I’ve never seen in this sport outside of the Storm and even then, that feels like an accident.
Protect your game and help it grow, advocate for fixes to problems and own it because it is truly your game and while we both have our poorly behaved fans, AFL fans do want you to be happy with the game you love, just like we are.
Paulie
Guest
Problem is the NRL clubs they see their comp bigger than the international scene...reading yesterday the IRB Rugby World Cup to be held in France in two years time has already sold over 1 million ticket sales.
matth
Roar Guru
Perth and Adelaide should never have been dropped in the first place. We would then be still expanding into SEQ about now, but on the back of a national footprint.
Adam Bagnall
Roar Guru
The average career is only about 40 games and their career can end suddenly ie. Jahral Yow Yeh. Why shouldn't they earn as much as they can? Also not sure how tennis players and rugby league is a fair comparison. One is a team sport and the sport is very popular. The other is an individual sport and struggles for an audience outside of the 4 majors
Adam Bagnall
Roar Guru
They would play play most games at Suncorp. As good as their ground is, it's not NRL standard, I think they may play only one or two games there. Small minded thinking like adding yet another QLD team is what is holding the game back. We should have had well established teams in Perth and Adelaide by now, kept Souths out and the game would be truly national
Adam Bagnall
Roar Guru
John Howard was a devout Dragons fan and was very open about this
Adam Bagnall
Roar Guru
I agree regarding the Brisbane team, it doesn't expand the game at all. It will still be a sport played mostly in QLD and NSW. In 1995 there were teams in Adelaide and Perth and the game was truly national, especially when your Storm came in a few years later. Sadly the Super League war happened and under a bizarre rationalisation, they were both cut. The NRL should look to these markets to expand and ignore QLD
scrum
Roar Rookie
And lower standard footy- some of the games this year have been way below a professional standard- some players no clue in how to align in defence and some showing little commitment. Another team further dilutes the standard.Your last sentence is correct- it’s all about the money and not the quality of the footy
Brendon Waldron
Roar Pro
Adding another team in Brisbane isn't about adding extra content but adding more value the content we already have. There's 8 games every week but not all of them are of the same interest to people in SE QLD. Another game involving a Brisbane team potentially means more viewers in Brisbane, more Fox subscriptions, more money flowing into the game...
matth
Roar Guru
Yep sorry, I thought you were talking about GWS and the Suns. You are right, they did relocate two teams out of Vic
Felix Stone
Roar Rookie
South Melbourne moved to Sydney 4 years before West coast was founded and they were the first non Vic AFL state team and the Brisbane bears were founded the same year as west coast
matth
Roar Guru
Yes they did after they mined their existing markets. The NRL have not done that yet
Felix Stone
Roar Rookie
but they also expanded to Sydney and Brisbane at the same time the expanded and exploited existing markets
Rowdy
Roar Rookie
The same would be true for AF as probably ¾s of them would've been working class as well.
scrum
Roar Rookie
Why is expansion necessary- it’s got nothing to do with the quality of the game but the quantity. One extra team is not going to bring any extra content so I assume long term the plan is for 2 teams. But there are not the cattle. Some of the players at the moment are below par as it is, so another team dilutes the quality of teams. Totally impossible but in an ideal world NRL would be a 12 team comp- home and away 22 rounds then finals. So for the 12 teams. NQ, 2 from Brisbane, Newcastle, Canberra ,Melbourne, NZ and 5 from Sydney. But hats off to the AFL, miles in front of the NRL as an organisation
matth
Roar Guru
I think as well, that rugby league being very much a working class game, has had a different attendance culture. Back in the days of 6 day working week and no football on Sunday's, the target market might not have been able to get the time or funds to regularly attend. That's just a guess however, I wasn't there!
Rowdy
Roar Rookie
It’s because AF got in early in their cities. RL started 50 years later. Look at the teams and their domicile suburbs. Melbourne, Hobart, Adelaide and even Perth have many teams all very close to their CBDs. The area around the Kalgoorlie Gold mines was known as “Victorians” because Ballarat and Bendigo miners had shifted west and brought AF with them. They forced Perth’s hand to join the Federation. A case of if you leave me can I come too?. It’s a passion born of the embryonic history of those cities. Sydney and Brisbane had RL come relatively late to the party. ——- The furphy about RL being bigger than AF, in Australia, prior to Super League is a comforting lie some RL fans tell themselves to feel better.
matth
Roar Guru
The culture of attending club games in Australian Rules, whether SANFL, WAFL, VFL or now AFL has always been an amazing thing and has been high on a World scale.
matth
Roar Guru
And when the AFL was financially struggling their 'expansion' plan was to get the WAFL and SAFL into the competition - i.e. fish where the fish (and money) was.
David Luland
Roar Rookie
Player entitlement is also a problem. Compare minimum salary for NRL players versus a global sport like tennis. The 400th player earns over $100k plus free travel, accommodation, coaching and physio. A player ranked 400 in the world would be lucky to earn half that, and has to pay all expenses. They don't realise how good they have it.
Rowdy
Roar Rookie
Look at the money that has been poured into the regional strongholds of RL by the AFL. The NRL have no money to pour into the 3 Western states or Tasmania, into their regional areas, or even their major cities.