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Opinion
We all have heard about the news in the past few weeks that Queensland Cup team the Redcliffe Dolphins have been granted a license to join the NRL in 2023, with high profile coach Wayne Bennett to coach the side.
Although they won’t be known as Redcliffe. They won’t even be named after any location. They are names simply the Dolphins.
And after watching Western United in the A-League, Australia’s top round-ball football league, they’re set to go down the same path.
For those who don’t follow Australian football, a bit of background information.
Western United received a license to enter the A-League starting from the 2019-20 season back in December 2018, although the FFA (now FA) didn’t know they were admitting Western United FC.
The only thing they knew was that they were admitting the Western Melbourne Group, a club for the western suburbs of Melbourne, to be based in the suburb of Tarneit at a brand new 15,000-seat stadium that they would own.
But since then, they’ve been all over the place.
(Photo by Robert Cianflone/Getty Images)
They started off playing at the 36,000-seat GMHBA stadium in Geelong, about an hour and a bit west of the Melbourne CBD.
That was part of the reason the club was known as Western United. They didn’t think people from Geelong would support a team with Melbourne in its name.
They also took games to Ballarat and Footscray, both of which are oval stadiums and an hour and 15 minutes away from each other. They have also taken games to Launceston in Tasmania.
Last season they also played a lot of their games at AAMI Park right in the centre of Melbourne, which is also the home of Melbourne City, Melbourne Victory, Melbourne Storm and the Melbourne Rebels.
That was despite a lot of the foundation members of this club saying they were able to differentiate themselves from Melbourne.
They even tried to play games at Lakeside Stadium, which is in the South of Melbourne, although old NSL club South Melbourne FC stopped that from happening.
So Western United FC have been all over the place since their foundation, and no one outside of A-League fans knows where they are from, and sadly the Dolphins are going down the same path.
(Photo by Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images)
Despite being based 40 minutes north of Brisbane, they are still a Brisbane team, and they will have to compete with the Brisbane Broncos, who when they were winning, had the most amount of memberships in the NRL.
They had 6000 or 7000 more than South Sydney, who were the second biggest. The Broncos are still in the top three for memberships.
The Dolphins are already failing to compete, saying they will play the majority of their home games at Suncorp Stadium, which is the Broncos’ home.
There are people out there who want to see NRL played at Suncorp Stadium every week, and will attend matches accordingly, but these people won’t be Dolphins fans. They’ll stick with the Broncos.
They are promising to also play games at their home of Moreton Daily Stadium, but also Sunshine Coast Stadium.
This could go a lot like the Northern Eagles’ failure of the early 2000s, where people from the Central Coast didn’t want to support a mainly Sydney-based team, and would rather wait for their own team.
So far I’m struggling to see how this club is going to differentiate themselves from the Brisbane Broncos, and actually expand the game, rather than just splitting the existing pie into two pieces.
(Photo by Albert Perez/Getty Images)
So what should they do? Well first of all, what’s wrong with Moreton Daily Stadium?
The ground can hold 11,500 people, and I’m sure they’d be able to get some government funding to up the capacity to around 15,000, as we know how much governments love expansion teams.
A capacity of 15,000 is perfect for them. It’s better seeing a packed house in a 15,000 ground then seeing a 50,000 ground only a quarter full.
Secondly, they need to accept that they aren’t going to appeal to all of Brisbane.
They’re the only team from Moreton Bay in the Queensland Cup, and they should be proud of that.
That’s nearly 500,000 people they represent, about the same as the population of Newcastle.
There’s one advantage the Dolphins have over Western United FC, and that’s that they are an existing club, with fans.
They need to make sure they don’t lose these fans and their history, and keep Redcliffe on the shirt.
If I was in charge, I’d keep the club being known as the Redcliffe Dolphins, but I’d put Moreton Bay on the club’s logo.
That is a bit like how West Ham United in England have London on the bottom of their badge.
At the moment, the Dolphins are nothing for everyone, but they’re a club with history.
They need to try to be everything for some people, or they’ll end up like Western United, a nothing club trying to be for everyone.
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