Nothings changed with your points and I disagree it happens. The irony in fact you brought up the emotional BS when you mentioned your club was flicked.Rugby league is an emotional game for followers,if you don't believe that you haven't been following it for long.
The whole point of bringing up the fact that I'm a Bears fan was to show that all this talk of people being lost to the game is just emotional BS that is completely subjective to each person in their own personal situation and completely outside of our control, in other words your whole argument that can be pretty much summed up as 'but think of the fans that will leave the game like the Bears/whoevers fans did' is just an emotional appeal that is yet to be shown in any hard way as a serious problem, and completely misses the point, it's not whether or not you'll lose fans by moving/removing a club because you certainly will lose some maybe even a majority of that clubs fans, it's whether or not by moving/removing the club you can replace those lost fans and then some in the new location and mitigate the losses in the old region!
I don't think that anyone can seriously argue that over the long run (50-100 years time long run) that the small Sydney clubs have the same potential as a club based in Perth, Brisbane 2, etc, etc, in terms of growth in almost every regard. They (a Perth, Adelaide, or the like) have larger potential growth for the sport in regards as far as fans, sponsorship, broadcasting money, corporate support, prestige, etc, etc, then a Cronulla, Balmain, Bondi, whichever Sydney suburb does by themselves.
The competition should be looking at having 4 or 5 big Sydney clubs surrounded by big "interstate" clubs that have been given as much room to grow as possible in a hundred years time, not 9 small struggling Sydney suburban clubs holding back the potential growth of the sport as a whole in the Asia pacific.
What's better for the game- for it to grow as big as possible and to be as popular as possible, or for it to still grow but not nearly as much because a handful of people don't want it to happen at the expense of their club?
It's a waste of my valuable time debating with someone who ignores basic things like the impact of competition from other fully professional codes
I've never denied the competition from other codes, only you did that when you denied it's existence in Sydney before the 90's.
,compares the early 1900s with the 2000s,(like comparing a Vauxhall with Lexus,)
In many ways the happenings of the pre-1960s NSWRL are directly comparable to the place that the NRL finds it's self in now.
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana.
implies the SL war had little impact on peoples' choices
Never said that, only that the SL war isn't comparable to what a modern rationalisation plan would be for many reasons, and that the NSWRLs' treatment of Glebe and Annandale is a better likeness to what a modern rationalisation plan would/should be.
worksd on the threadbare notion that removing a club with X number of supporters and replacing it with an another club with X number of supports is another area is therefore the answer(as the Titans has shown)
I've not a clue what that is supposed to mean.
ignores the fact that many people are club aligned and as such will look to be entertained elsewhere.
Sure there are club aligned people, their young children and yet unborn kids are not, their next door neighbors are not, etc, you are looking through a 5 - 10 year prism and that is simply far to short sighted to see the big picture.
Let me put it this way, how many descendants of Glebe or Annandale fans do you know that are refusing to watch the sport because their great grandfathers club was cut and they feel the injustice of that, I'll answer your question- not one!
If they are still in living in Sydney (or wherever in the RL world) and they are RL inclined they are watching whichever club they have taken a liking to and probably don't even know that Glebe or Annandale even existed let alone the that their great grandfathers club was one of the two.
The same has happen to the descendants of Jets fans and is rapidly happening to the Bears fans, go talk to a six year old about the North Sydney Bears and watch their reaction of "who", I've done it with my brothers and cousins kids, most of whoms' parents were Bears fans and all of whom don't really understand what the Bears where, and many of whom are fans of all sorts of NRL clubs from the Raiders, to the Tiger and Storm.
To remove A to replaced by B.You likely end up with no more crowd increases, no increase in TV audience.You are back to square one.You have spread you game geographically, yes,but not bums one seats nor eye on the box.
Inceasing the number of teams, is a different matter.
Over a short period of time this is true yes, because you have to give the club and the sport time to grow a culture in a new location, just look at the growth of the Swans in Sydney, they already bigger then South Melbourne ever was in only 30 years and they are still growing.
Obviously the Swans are a best case scenario given their very good management and how they are extremely good on the field, and the Lions are a worst case scenario, but that's why I argue for replacement with a local club instead of relocation.
I've already stated and you have not been paying attention in my earlier postings, if a club cannot function financially with the 130% salary cap monies, then by all means the clubs is under the threat of the knife, and that means any club from Raiders,Sharks and Broncos.
Lol.
Using that logic we should cut everybody but the Broncos because in a few years every club bar the Broncos will still be losing money despite the increase in funds, the problem is the culture of football first business second in the game (every sport in the country has this problem to varying degrees), which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it doesn't lead to well run businesses.
Why the hell should any Sydney club able to function financially,grow its membership, improve facilities
be relocated or chopped, just to put a pin on a map which may or may not be successful in any case.Not one thing you have stated changes my stance on that point.Many people wanted the Warriors,Titans,and Storm chopped at various stages ,the fact they remained and offered something to the game shows perseverance is worth it..
It's pretty bloody simple, because even at their very best in a perfect world the Sydney clubs will never grow as big as a Perth or Brisbane 2 can grow! So long as they are fighting for space in an over saturated market that is.
We could have 4 or 5 really big Sydney clubs and a cornucopia of big "interstate" clubs or we could have 9 Sydney clubs unable to reach their full potential due to over saturation and not enough room in the competition to expand to all those other places that could support clubs that could grow bigger then the small Sydney clubs.
By all means increase the number of clubs, such as Brisbane 2 and Perth,but I repeat one more time not at the expense of any club financially viable.
You can only expand the competition so much before you water down the talent so much that the quality of the competition suffers.
North Sydney league had the money to underpin and grow their junior league,the fact it didn't happen is testimony to their lack of nouse.
North Sydney run their juniors like it's 1994, they have a dead end once it gets to first grade, and they refuse to allow a well placed club to take over.
They are killing their juniors either for ego or for the fanciful dream that they'll get back in the comp, either way they should have handed them over to either Manly or maybe the Roosters 15 years ago.
It's also arguable whether they really do have the cash at the moment as well.
NB if the Force get chopped by union,I see that as a tremendous opportunity to expand the NRL into Perth,and add Brisbane 2.
We had plenty of tremendous opportunities to expand to Perth during the last mining boom and didn't take them, we've had ample opportunity to expand into Brisbane since 2000 yet we haven't. So I'm not optimistic that the NRL will expand even if the Force goes tits up, nor am I confident that the Force going tits up would be a good thing for a Perth based NRL team.
The real shame is that the Crushers and the Reds (and Rams for that matter) were allowed to die after the war in the first place.
