No the 80 odd years of history of the great Brisbane comp was pretty much extinguished by the arrival of the Broncos in 1988. This decimated the vibrant Brisbane comp at the time. So Brisbane effectively went from a 10-12 team town to a 1 team town, got this back to 2 with the Crushers in 95, then come 98 back to 1. So yeah those one team towns like Brisbane never lost anything. At least the mergers in Sydney the clubs involved had some control.

Great article, I do think Siebold has inherited quite a few problems from Wayne so only time will tell whether he can right the ship, and if the time goes backwards from last year his time will be up. Jack Bird is quite the conundrum, it was always an odd purchase for me and this is his third season and we’ve barely seen him play. Boyd & McCullough have been great servants of the club but their best years are behind them. And Milford has probably been expected to do to much given the state of the spine the last couple years. And there is a good chunk of the salary cap gone.
Hopefully some of the younger halves turn out to be gems (Turpin, Dearden, …) and we don’t have to go to market to fill 7 & 9.
If they can get the defence and attitude sorted, I think the attack will naturally evolve with the new wave of players coming through in the spine.
Still, this year will be another year since the premiership in 2006, I’m reasonably confident of making the finals and hope for better than last years capitulation but a premiership is not on the cards this year.

Mate, the Super League war ended over 20 years ago. Move on.

As a Broncos member I went with the club and the whole second chance and rehabilitation story when they signed him and he’d certainly spent plenty of time out of the game. But two years on he still gets booed and people still talk about the incident. In a way I was hoping he might follow Wayne to Souths, and the issue would move to another club. That hasn’t happened and now we have the potential captaincy issue.
I can’t say that making him captain is something I am personally comfortable with and it will make me think about my club membership. I’d still support the club but perhaps not financially.
It’s a tough one, he did his time, he has paid the victims via the civil suit. How long until all is forgiven and forgotten. I think making him captain is something that Wayne could have done, given his long term history with the Broncos. With Siebold seemingly on a short leash with the fans I think this is a risk he probably shouldn’t be taking with the board and public.

One of the more ludicrous “expansion/relocation” posts I’ve read. So we go from 8.5 Sydney teams in an area with population of 5 million in greater Sydney to 6-7 teams in Sydney and 5-6 teams in SE Qld population 3 million.
Maybe Reduce Sydney to 7 (Dragons 100% Wollongong/South Coast) and Sharks to Perth and/or Roosters to Adelaide/Central Coast. Add a 2nd Bris team and a 2nd NZ team.
Don’t flood SE Qld with teams and repeat the problem in Sydney. Central Qld can’t support a team, sorry Gladstone/Rockhampton/Mackay, not enough money/population if Cowboys to stay viable as well. Sunshine Coast would struggle to support a team financially too, especially if GC can’t, given less industry and half the population.

When there’s already 90 odd billion being spent in NSW on school, hospital, rail, light rail and road infrastructure over the next 3-4years the saving of maybe 100-200million be rebuilding SFS to 30k instead of 45k is farcical. A mix of stadium sizes is needed to cater for different events. And 2-3billion in today’s money spent every 30years to renew 3 stadiums in sydney is hardly profligate spending (2 rebuilds and one renovation). When that money wouldn’t pay for a quarter of Sydney Metro West or half of Sydney Metro North West.

Shocking game. Bris has enough ball and field position in opening 30mins to win that game a few times, but couldn’t. Decision in question was at 48min mark, that is far to early to directly impact the result, and law is not if they still had a chance but was their original chance impeded, which it was.

I agree with PP and BA no one really deserved the points last night and even as a Broncos supporter I don’t want to ever see that game or highlights (lowlights?) of it again.

Did you actually watch the games or did you just look at the numbers, and decided to find a convenient scape goat?
1. If you watched the games you would have seen that pretty much all the leg injuries were due to impact from other players, not the surface.
2. The number of injuries is broadly inline with averages from other rounds.
3. The number of injuries is broadly inline with recent seasons.
Yes the field did look a little tired in yesterday’s game, but still in better shape than Brooky pretty much ever.
Check out NRLPhysio’s posts on Twitter re injuries he covers cause, severity and historic relevance, and does a damn good job.

Agree on so much of this. As for the commenters saying they watch Brisbane for comedic value, as a Brisbane supporter I think I might try that. It might save me from throwing something through the TV next time they should be setting up for a field goal…
Going to neutral games is great too, I go to more neutral games than Broncos games, probably as I now live in Sydney and love going to games. Think I’ve been to on average 1 game per round so far this year, and this weekend’s a bumper for me, Dogs and Souths on Friday after some time at the Easter Show, then a trip to Canberra on Sunday for the Broncos comedy show and finally back home to Sydney on Monday for the Parra vs Eels opening game at bankWest!

You also have the problem of building a “BankWest” on Northern beaches would not get near as much use as one at Parramatta. Not the fault of Manly but a difficult case to justify the spend for teams isolated by geography. Sharks would be similar.

Far easier to justify at Parra especially with three NRL teams already committing and I wouldn’t mind betting Penrith will play some games there in the future too. Plus they have Wanderers playing out of it too.

Then you need to consider public transport to it, specifically a decent rail solution. And there isn’t any sign of that in northern beaches, rightly or wrongly.

Melbourne is not more compact, but it’s CBD is far more centralised in the greater Melbourne region than Sydney’s. And hence all the traditional AFL teams and their historic venues are relatively close to the city. So moving all their games to MCG and Docklands/Colonial/Etihad/Marvel (whatever it’s called this week) was a lot easier as most fans from outer suburbs were used to coming to inner suburbs to watch AFL and by moving to the big two venues they actually made it easier as they both have excellent public transport links and in the MCG’s case oodles of parking.

Sydney has teams that have historically played all over the metropolis (Penrith, West’s, Bulldogs, Parra, Sharks, Dragons, Manly) and not concentrated just in the inner ring (Balmain, Newtown, Easts, Souths, Norths). And with CBD in the east the geography of Sydney is not conducive to do what Melb can. Olympic Park would be the right place to do this, and if there was a smaller rectangular venue their to go with ANZ that might work. But until the Parra Light Rail phase 2 gets there and the Sydney Metro West get there the existing public transport to the precinct is too difficult to use for small events. BankWest Stadium may help here with Eels, Tigers and Dogs all playing all/some/one games there. It’s hard to know what to do with Manly and Sharks, but pretty much the rest could use a combo of Penrith/BankWest/ANZ/SFS and Dragons at Wollongong.

Any new venues though I think must have good public transport links. Campbelltown is probably the only one of the old suburban grounds with rail access. North Sydney also has decent public transport, even Gosford Stadium has the train close by, its barely an hour by train from northern suburbs of Sydney.

Are you sure on AFLW out rating NRL?
These articles would suggest that is incorrect:
https://mediaweek.com.au/tv-week-13-nine-almost-unstoppable-seven-again-closes-the-gap/
https://mediaweek.com.au/sports-week-record-game-attendance-and-tv-ratings-for-aflw-gf/
They have AFLW with:
National FTA: 409K
Capitals FTA: 321K
Fox: 73K
For 482K national.

They have NRL (Tigers vs Bulldogs):
National FTA: not listed
Capitals FTA: 262K
Fox: 212K
For 480K Capitals + Fox

So NRL Capitals + Fox is 2K short of AFLW National + Fox
BUT AFLW National includes 88K regional, and NRL figure shows no regional and would comfortably have > 3K for the win seeing as NSW/Qld are far more decentralized than other states and are far more likely to have people watching NRL.
AFL often touts its national ratings as capital cities only as it knows when it factors in regional that NRL is usually ahead.
VIC/SA/WA: Capital city population ~7.0million, regional ~2.4million
QLD/NSW: Capital city population ~7.4million, regional ~5.2million
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Australian_capital_cities

It’s great that AFLW is doing well, particularly considering all the other sports the AFL has had to recruit players from to get it going, and good for women’s sport in general, but please stick to the facts. WBBL final rated well too, and even though it only had around 10,000 people at the final, they all had to book tickets and pay money to be there, and people were still turned away.

Look, I have no great love for football (I am an NRL fan, who doesn’t follow a Sydney team, but probably goes to at least 15 Sydney based NRL games a year, i.e. one of the rare few that actually goes to a game live), but I find the pretense that when the state government is already spending at record amounts on Health, Education and Public Transport at levels well over $80 billion over the next 3 years, that we can’t afford 1-2 billion to upgrade/rebuild 2-3 stadiums that then won’t need to be done for another 25 years a little bit absurd.

The result being that we get a good network of stadiums, a small (Western Sydney), a medium (SFS) and a large (ANZ), that are then suitable for events of any size, football, NRL, Rugby, concerts, whatever…

I disagree that SFS should have taken precedence over ANZ, but Alan Jones and his mob at the SCG Trust just did their job and did it well, sadly. In the aftermath of all this I would hope that the SCG Trust gets disbanded and that ANZ, Western Sydney, new SFS and SCG all get folded into Stadiums NSW (which I believe also manages Newcastle Stadium, which the government also funded for all the regional complainants 🙂 ).

Especially when current State Govt is probably spending more on school and hospital infrastructure then ever before. They are definitely spending more on public transport than ever before with 3 Metro projects, 3 light rail projects and numerous new train orders for existing networks currently in place.

Except they aren’t, government is spending something in the order of 80-100 billion over next few years on schools, hospitals and public transport. 1-2 billion saved from stadiums won’t make a difference given current spending plans.

The Health, Education and Public Transport sectors are all getting plenty of funding and if they can’t manage with what they have splitting up the $700million from the new SFS will make SFA difference.

Health – new northern beaches hospital, plenty of major upgrades elsewhere, near me Ryde hospital is about to get an SFS sized upgrade of $570 million.

Education – new and improved schools going up all over the place including country with Ballina just opening a new high school, near me there is tonnes of new and upgraded schools going on in Ryde.

Public Transport – where to start, new Metro, Newcastle Light Rail, Sydney Light Rail, inner west light rail extensions and updated rolling stock. New trains B Sets for Sydney and almost here inter city sets. City and south Metro, western Metro. All of which cost factors of 10 to 100 more than a new SFS.

Roads – North Connex, West Connex, Pacific Highway, Princes Highway upgrades. Again all have bigger price tags than SFS along with myriads of smaller programs like upgrades around Northern Beaches Hospital and many country bridge replacements.

So I think with the 80-100 billion of planned infrastructure spend in next few years, 1-2 of that can be used for new stadiums every 20-25 years should be easily affordable and not have a material impact on the areas Labor is whinging about.

As a Crushers fan at the time, and with the Knights 97 GF win still being one of my favourite GFs, Brisbane win this match up every time. They were a far better team in the tougher comp that year. Also what’s with the latent anti-Qld bias with the 118,000 heads comment, why not just keep to the facts and say close to 60,000 in attendance, completely unnecessary cheap shot in an otherwise solid debut article.