Why wouldn't you follow the Dragons they play in the Illawarra?
Locality isn't everything. But you can see the odd thinking that eminates out of the Doc! At least he has a club he follows. That's a good thing.
Why wouldn't you follow the Dragons they play in the Illawarra?
But you want the bears to look after the central coast plus there own local area? WTF?
But you want the bears to look after the central coast plus there own local area? WTF?
Correct, for the good of the game.
But Politis will stop it happening as the Roosters want it for a breeding ground.
Agreed...one of the big problems in the history of rugby league is as soon as it gets too hard we move away and give up, take the easy option.
I followed the Steelers until the merge, now i am a Knights fan...
(I will never support a Dragons team, but i am not delusional enough to think the Steelers could have survived on their own. I DEFINITELY dont think they have some divine right to a place in the NRL.)
That’s a strange way of saying it?? I would of thought keeping failing clubs afloat by continually giving them money would be the easy option? Would it not? The hard option is to cop the barrage of criticism and potential anger from members/fans. All the merging and relegating of clubs happened to clubs that financially hadn’t truely made it in or out of the super league fiasco. The hard option is definitely to relegate a team.
All the merging and relegating of clubs happened to clubs that financially hadn’t truely made it in or out of the super league fiasco. The hard option is definitely to relegate a team.
Isn't it funny how so many of us on this side of the argument have lost clubs, you the Steelers, PR the Reds, myself the Bears, and yet we are the ones arguing most fervently for further rationalisation against a group of people that haven't lost a club and only have a fear of it and secondly swear that all the fans of the dead teams are lost to the sport forever.
Just an interesting observation.
You must not have been much of a passionate Bears fan if you can move on so easily.
Ever seen the English signs at games like "Wigan 'till I die" etc. It is unheard of in Melbourne AFl, people stick through thick and thin and fight for their clubs, that's passion, rugby league sadly lacks it.
You must not have been much of a passionate Bears fan if you can move on so easily.
Ever seen the English signs at games like "Wigan 'till I die" etc. It is unheard of in Melbourne AFl, people stick through thick and thin and fight for their clubs, that's passion, rugby league sadly lacks it.
You must not have been much of a passionate Bears fan if you can move on so easily.
Ever seen the English signs at games like "Wigan 'till I die" etc. It is unheard of in Melbourne AFl, people stick through thick and thin and fight for their clubs, that's passion, rugby league sadly lacks it.
I'll cop that, kind of at least, though I wouldn't say that I', not a passionate Bears fan or that I moved on from the Bears easily, I wouldn't even say that I've moved on from the Bears at all... Things just changed radically for RL in Canberra and the surrounding regions in between the time that I got into RL as a child and the time that the Bears dropped out of the NRL...
I was born and raise in Canberra (lived most of my life here), but I grew up before the Raiders were even a twinkle in Les McIntyre's eye, my dad was a Rabbitohs fan and my mom was a Bears fan and I basically had a choice between the two and I went with the Bears cause I liked bears more then fluffy white bunnies.
Anyhow long story short like most RL fans in Canberra and Queanbeyan at the time I had my team in the NSWRL (and the BRL for that matter) that I'd been following for most of my life when the Raiders started up but picked up tickets to the Raiders cause it was a chance to see good footy regularly, the Raiders quickly became my "second team" as they did most of the RL fans in Canberra at the time, and eventually they took over as my "main team" around 87ish (in my case) again like most RL fans in Canberra.
None of that negates my being a Bears fan, I still love the Bears to this day, I still have a massive soft spot for them, still have most of my old Bears stuff (the only stuff I don't still have is the stuff that broke or fell apart from use), and if I had the time I'd follow them more closely (the same is true of the Raiders honestly), it's just the whole paradigm shifted when the Raiders came into the NSWRL, it gave us (the people of Canberra) a club that we could call our own, that wasn't an option before but it was now, and even though we resisted it at first (I can remember saying stuff like 'I'll always be a Bears fan first' etc, early on) eventually almost all of us jumped at the opportunity to support a team that we could really call our own and that really represented us.
I would love to see the Bears back in the NRL, however I understand that it'd be a very bad thing for the competition and sport as a whole if they were to come back on the CC, and dispite my emotions for the Bears what is best for the sport and as many of it's stakeholders as possible should always come first. However if the Bears were to move to Brisbane, Adelaide, etc, and had a good business plan and bid maybe I'd support that bid.
I've always been a fan of the game as much as my clubs.
Its going to be interesting now clubs have no excuses with $3mill a year coming in, a salary cap significantly lower and a football cap that should ensure financial management.
The excuses really are over for them and if they cant make it now they probably never will. Next step would have to be to go to a AFL system and having unequal grants to save failing clubs, but good luck getting the big NRL clubs to agree to that!
Wouldn't it be great if we could have both. Why would it be bad if the Bears came back in? I don't see it.
Nrl hasnt a great track record of regional clubs viability. Steelers had to merge, Gosford was abandoned, Townsville had to be bailed out and needed a once in a lifetime player to come along to get them out of the sht, Canberra only survive due to a pokie empire, knights have gone bust, bailed out, gone bust and bailed out again, gc have c9me and gone numerous times. Is there a reason the afl stick to capital cities I wonder?
100,000 people marched through the streets to keep their club and took it to court. That is passion in the extreme.
It wouldn't necessarily be bad if the Bears came back, however it would be bad if the CC got a team.
The lack of value that the CC add to the broadcasting rights, the fact that the CC almost certainly wouldn't be able to support a club on their own which would mean that they'd have to lean on the Sydney market, which in turn leads to problems with the over saturation in the Sydney market, the fact that realistically the NRL and RL as a whole has already got a dominate market share on the CC and I can't see that being changed significantly by adding a team in the NRL and that of course means that they aren't a new market that the NRL would be cracking into which is what it desperately needs right now, I could go on but I think you get the idea, but the main reason is simply that there're heaps of better options out there that would add more value in a whole range of areas then the CC and that we don't need another club in NSW when we already have 10 in a competition of 16.
Who's talking about 16 teams I want the comp to have 20 plus teams.
It shouldn't matter what states the cities or regions are in as long as big population areas are represented. The area from the Sydney harbour bridge through to Newcastle has no team. Must be an area of near 1 million and growing.
I was talking about the amount of representation and market share that the clubs have as a whole in the current competition, and NSW and Sydneys' is way to high by the current numbers.
I'll let you do the exact maths for yourself, but Sydney doesn't represent more then 50% of the population of Australia or more then 50% of the money circulating in the economy, but it does represent more then 50% of the representation of the NRL and 50% of the NRLs' 'franchises' (for lack of a better word), are you starting to see the problem.
And as for a 20 plus team comp, the NRL would have be able to support that amount of clubs, under the current structure of the NRL it could support 24 at a stretch (realistically only 20-22), but 8 more spots in the competition isn't enough spots for everybody that should be in the NRL long term, so for the NRL to grow as big as possible and be as successful as possible it's going to have to rationalise and restructure the competition, it's just an inevitability.