Just on a couple of points.
First why do we need expansion or more to the point why do we need to expand in areas that are not in league heartlands. It's simple economics really, we have to increase the rugby league pool in Australia. I mean both financially and in terms of players.
Rugby League in Australia is a unique and difficult position. No other country has 4 major codes of football all offering proffesional opportunites. Not only that once we get a player to choose our code to play we face challenges from Euro super league, ARU and NZRU teams, Japanese rugby, various European rugby teams and bizarrely now even AFL. If the NRL cannot offer it's players a high quality salary which is somewhat comparible with these other options we will lose more players, both in development stage and once they are professionals.
We will not increase our pool unless we expand into new areas, which is what the AFL and all other codes have done and are doing. The AFL realise the value of sydney and brisbane, they expanded into hostile territory in 1982 and 1986 and it took them. In their first 13 years they averaged crowds of about 13000 in sydney, not too disimilar to the storm. Brisbane averaged only 10000 in their first 10 years worse than the storm. But the AFL pushed on, it took 15 years for either side to gain any sort of foothold.
But the AFL are now able to command much higher TV deals because they have a national comp, even if AFL is still not that popular in nsw and qld, the fact that most sports fans still take a slight interest is enough.
So yes we can just play in nsw and qld but long term its not enough, because other codes will expand their pools and be able to offer kids and proffessionals better more lucrative options. While we never get bigger.
I am not against a team on the central coast, just think there are other priorities. As stated it is already a league stronghold, and even though it would be ideal to have a team there it does not offer any great advantage to the game outside of the great benefits to that community.
Perth or Adelaide are brand new markets with a great chance to expand. Just as there are kids now playing in Victoria who would have never played without the expansion to melbourne. Perth was building when they were booted and still have a solid league comp. In the SL perth u/18s actually won the comp with a primarily made up of WA younsgters. Sideshow bob Matt Peterson was from WA.
PNG was thrown up which ideally is a good idea. The simple problem is they would have to have double the salary cap to get people to live there. Aussies living in Moresby (not everywhere else), generally live behind 10 foot fences and have armed security out front in some instances. They often call their houses compounds, which gives you the impression. It took 10 years to get any decent players to live in townsville which is safe.. A PNG qld cup team is a good idea. But the NRL is light years away due to safety and standard of living, an NRL superstar will not be moving there anytime soon.
