SportsFanMelb,
1. IMO membership ranks a clear third to attendances and TV viewership. Of course it means something, but memberships have been basically diluted to $50-100 donations basically these days. GSW has 10k members but averages 6k crowds in Sydney, doesn’t mean as much if they aren’t going through the turnstiles, buying merchandise or watching on TV to increase the next TV rights deal.
2. Do you have the ability to analyse the stats yourself? Start by looking at these pages for attendances and let me know when you catch up to an informed level to join the debate properly. http://stats.rleague.com/afl/crowds/swans.html and http://stats.rleague.com/afl/crowds/gws.html.
3. Noted.
4. Noted. Don’t really have the time to do a proper analysis for you now, would you care to do some analysis yourself to prove my claim wrong? From memory a recent draft had no NSW based players and a very small number of Qld based players in spite of having academies in place. Pretty sure the 80’s and 90’s would have had a similar at worst percentage of NSW and Qld players.

Demetriou’s NSW / Qld growth strategy was highly expensive (albeit they could afford it) and so far has proven little growth in return. For example, the lavish spending on Falou and K. Hunt could backfire big time (esp. if Hunt returns to NRL next year), as it will basically say to the kids of NSW and Qld that yeah we are over that sport and at the end of the day it was all about money.

I don’t think Demetriou stopped FIFA staging a World Cup in Australia, we had a rubbish bid that had a zero percent chance of winning even with the AFL’s full support. Agree he was a powerful leader though.

HarryHP
Increased membership doesn’t necessarily mean the game is growing, especially when attendances and TV viewership has continually dropped over the past decade. You could argue that GWS are actually decreasing AFL interest given they have cheapened the product of a match and have no real identity that connects or resonates with anyone beyond those 10,000 token members.

Brisbane’s crowds should increase again in 2050 when they might be good again. They will have lost hundreds of millions of dollars along the way though.

The NSW and Qld Academies are noted but they don’t seem to be increasing the proportion of NSW and Qld players in the AFL compared to the 1980’s and 90’s. Plus people generally play a sport by their own choice through liking an athlete or the way the game is played or to join in with friends, hard to say it is due to a CEO injecting $20million or so.

Redevelopment of MCG meant there were modern facilities with 30,000 more covered seats. This translated in MCG attendances increasing from an average of 43,000 (between 1999-2003) to 51,000 (between 2007-2013). Also, the bigger Victorian clubs representation in the Top 6 during those to periods increased from 40% to 50% respectively, which also contributed to the increased attendances.

If anything, the NRL have been able to close the gap between the AFL during Demetriou’s tenure.

How has Demetriou grown the game nationally? NSW and Qld interest in the sport peaked 10 years ago, due to initiatives from previous administrations, and has been in decline ever since (in terms of general interest, attendances and TV viewership).

Yearly AFL attendances have been upheld purely due to the redevelopment of the MCG and the dominance of the bigger Victorian clubs, both of which had nothing to do with Demetriou.

He was simply handed the keys to a ferrari, and kept in on the road without too much damage. Good job, he had his own useful style but he is by no means irreplaceable, especially when you can end up having a bank account like his!

People are often far too obsessed with statistics for justifying Test selections. Sometimes it is best to select players based on what you see with your eyes and whether the batsman has the technique to withstand the international standard bowling on a variety of surfaces and conditions. This is especially the case when there is a limited supply of quality batsmen in Australia.

On the above basis, Marsh should have returned to the Test arena over 12mths ago when he had suitably recovered from his injury and personal issues. He would have done a superior job than Warner, Rogers, Watson, Hughes, Kawaja, Cowan and Bailey at least.

Precisely, just move them to Perth already. Nine & Fox would love it with the live Friday / Saturday night football at 9pm. Make it happen NRL!

Same for the Rugby Championship & Bledisloe Cup!

To be honest – this barely deserves to be published as an article on this website, at best it should belong as a comment to one of the previous 20 articles about this topic in the past month.
The article doesn’t even offer anything new that everyone doesn’t know already, ergo the RLWC is not a charade!
The problem the writer seems to have a lack of understanding of is people watch sport for entertainment, not what passport each player owns, so there is not much point in waving a red flag about such an trivial issue.
At the end of the day the RLWC eligibility rules has maximised the event’s ability to celebrate the game to its global participants and fans, however big or small they are viewed by others. This is just what every sport on earth does and is entitled to do!

The parameter should be the clubs ability to play in a stand alone regular season match in Sydney with a crowd of more than 30,000. I don’t think Cronulla or Penrith have ever achieved this, Manly used to in the 70’s and haven’t done so since 1996 when the Roosters gave away free tickets to pull a crowd of 37,000.
Ultimately the NRL is better of pulling crowds of 10-20,000 in Perth, NZ or Qld than in Cronulla or Penrith as it expands the games public’s interest, increases corporate dollar investment and raises the TV ratings deal.
It might be difficult to play politically, but it is David Smith’s and the ARLC’s job to make the tough decision to enforce such a parameter without hurting too many people. If they do not do this by the next TV rights deal they have failed the game.

Unfortunately plans like this are unattainable for the next 30yrs due to incompetent governance / player behavior over the past 20yrs. The best the NRL can hope for in the next 5 yrs is:
1. Remove / relocate two Sydney clubs that are unable to contribute to regular season matches with +30k crowds (i.e. Cronulla / Penrith / Manly)
2. Form an 18 team competition with new clubs in Perth (relocated – Sharks ideally), Central Coast (new Bears), West Brisbane (relocated – Panthers ideally), South / Central Qld (new).
3. Go back to a 22 round competition whereby teams are split into 3 groups of 6 to determine who plays each other twice (i.e. Group 1 – Nth Qld, Sth Qld, West Bris, Bris, GC, NZ. Group 2 – Newc, CC, Man, Parra, WT, Cant. Group 3 – Perth, Melb, Can, St GI, SS, Syd.)

Great point oikee.

The muck around comp with no history behind it argument I believe is weak. T20 was a muck around comp with no history, now it drives the economy of international cricket. The first NSWRFL grand final drew a crowd of 4,000 when it had no history, look where it is now. Like T20 cricket, all you have to do to start making it serious is be innovative in creating an attacking competition and through in some big prize money then clubs and players will take it seriously, then over years the history will come over time!

As for the maximum of 32 games over 32 weeks, it would only be for a maximum of 34 players out of 400 contracted players and only if they finished 5-8th and made the Grand Final otherwise they would earn a week’s break. And under this system, at least there wouldn’t be the current situation of rep players playing 2 matches in 2-3 days. To offset the potential “heavier” workload, shorten the pre-season and reduce the season to 22 rounds which I don’t think will really hurt the TV and club coffers too much as the Challenge Cup could generate more than 12 home games a year and it would only result in a total reduction of 3 matches per year (from current 199 matches to 196 matches).

And any scenario that has NRL regular season matches with representative players unavailable I believe is an inferior solution and the TV execs should feel the same as well. You may as well turn those weekends into a Challenge Cup format.

I still don’t see too many of these problems being created that you claim that should stop going ahead with this idea. The NRL need to stop thinking of problems being created by new ideas, and working on how to solve and improve them!

Appreciate what you’re saying but what I’m proposing isn’t to have mid-season Melbourne v Newtown games every year. If the NRL Challenge Cup were to include non-NRL clubs, it would have to be a seeded system where all non-NRL club pre-season matches would be replaced by the first round of the Challenge Cup so there would be effectively no difference to what is occurring now in terms of NRL vs non-NRL clashes.

Don’t worry Barry, I’ve thought about it logistically and it works better than the current system for everyone. Currently it’s a 27 week season with 192 regular season games, 2 Tests, 1 C-C, 3 Origins and 1 U/20 Origin totalling 199 matches. This system would be a 28 week regular season with 192 regular season games, 15 NRL CC games, 2 Tests, 3 Origins, 1 U/Test, and 1 U/20 Origin totalling 210 matches (week 13 & 16 effectively being a bye for most clubs). Am sure the TV execs and players would jump at the chance of having this system logistically.

Week 1 NRL R1 8 matches
Week 2 NRL R2 8 matches
Week 3 NRL R3 8 matches
Week 4 NRL R4 8 matches
Week 5 CC R16 – Tests 7 matches
Week 6 NRL R5 8 matches
Week 7 NRL R6 8 matches
Week 8 NRL R7 8 matches
Week 9 NRL R8 8 matches
Week 10 CC QF – SOO1 5 matches
Week 11 NRL R9 8 matches
Week 12 NRL R10 8 matches
Week 13 CC SF – SOO2 3 matches
Week 14 NRL R11 8 matches
Week 15 NRL R12 8 matches
Week 16 CC F – SOO3 3 matches
Week 17 NRL R13 8 matches
Week 18 NRL R14 8 matches
Week 19 NRL R15 8 matches
Week 20 NRL R16 8 matches
Week 21 NRL R17 8 matches
Week 22 NRL R18 8 matches
Week 23 NRL R19 8 matches
Week 24 NRL R20 8 matches
Week 25 NRL R21 8 matches
Week 26 NRL R22 8 matches
Week 27 NRL R23 8 matches
Week 28 NRL R24 8 matches

Agree about welfare issues, I’d imagine it would be best to just have an NRL only 16 team knockout comp initially and work on a program see if it is feasible to introduce non-NRL sides. That being said, the Round of 32 matches would be played in the pre-season with all matches being NRL vs non-NRL and effectively turn those existing pre season warm-ups into something non-NRL sides could actually play for, generating more interest. Realistically you would think none of the non-NRL sides would make it to mid-season in the Round of 16 matches and if they do it would be a rare / “cindarella” occasion.

Agree it will be very difficult to turn it into something as big as the UK Challenge Cup given its history. A lot of prize money would have to be on offer if an NRL version were to generate near as much hype.
It’s not really much of a change, the middle of the NRL season is littered with non-rep player club matches which weakens the competition and fans and TV execs complain that there are no club games on City-Country weekend. This would solve the latter and improve the NRL competition such that rep players are involved in every round.

Yeah, just thinking about it a little more, it could become rugby league’s version of T20 where more attacking rules can be implemented and teams would then have more freedom to be innovative in their style compared to the pressure of the NRL season where it is all about completing the sets. This would hopefully have the effect of improving the quality of the sport across the board.
In regards to cost, hopefully a portion of the latest TV rights revenue could cover the first few years before it gains momentum and is self-sufficient.

Ideally it would be viewed differently by coaches due to getting some big prize money at stake for club and players. Hopefully the QF an onward the clubs would at least be throwing the strongest squads out there while experimenting with the best talent in the U/20 comp.

I’d guess the Top 4 NSW & Qld Cup sides would qualify for the Round of 16, plus 8 of the best country Group representative sides.
Having Origin on Sunday or Monday night is better than mid-week as it does not disturb the NRL competition in terms of rep players sitting out a round or 3.

hahaha – that’s a fair whack!

Warner was basically picked from T20, then converted to ODI, then converted to Test. Why not Marsh?

Yet in his last Shield match he scored 84 and smashed Qld for an unbeaten 155 in the Mercantile Mutual Cup. I reckon Marsh isn’t far off realizing his potential which is far superior to all left handers in the squad.

Um I didn’t refer to his 1st class record. Marsh has had seasons where he dominated at FC level but has fallen away due to a combination of injury and disciplinary reasons. What are CA doing to get the most out of his talent? Because if they can get Marsh firing we have a ready made replacement for Hussey.
If you’re happy plodding along with Cowan and Khawaja while looking at a temporary fix in Rogers fine – enjoy mediocrity!

Didn’t say Rogers has done nothing, was referring to Test level.
I agree that his selection is a good one, but leaving Marsh out isn’t.

Great post Bearfax, obviously I’d be inclined to replace Khawaja in that line up with Marsh though but I wouldn’t mind too much if Usman had first crack at the first test and if he struggles have Marsh ready in the squad to replace him.