This all stems from the rigged criteria in 1999, I made a post on the same topic on another Rugby League forum yesterday. If they set fair and proper criteria and not just one that the Roosters couldn't fail the game would have been far better off in the long run.
They should have merged teams based on geography, common sense and forward planning. If they had done it properly they would have ended up with 6 full-time Sydney clubs covering every area of Sydney with 2 part-time Sydney clubs filling in the gaps and covering other big areas.
First thing's first relocations
* North Sydney relocate to the Central Coast whilst playing a couple of games a year at North Sydney Oval. Only the weather and the rigged criteria stopped this from coming to fruition which is why I will always have sympathy for the bears.
* St George still merge with Illawarra but are more based in Wollongong with maybe 3-4 games per year at Kogarah.
Now we move on to the Mergers
* Easts and Balmain ( Sydney Tigers/ some new name) - This merger makes far more sense than Balmain and Wests or allowing the Roosters to stand alone.
Both clubs complimented each other's weaknesses.
Easts are renowned for having no real junior base with only four clubs Balmain currently have a junior base of roughly 11 clubs after several folded in the '90s with the merger these clubs maybe could have stayed around giving this club a junior base of 15 clubs and most of the inner city to Bondi.
Easts with the exception of the Macca's giveaways for the early Monday night games in 1996 weren't massively supported. If you remove those two crowds their average since moving into the SFS in 1988 was roughly 9,143 per game. Though their averages were improving after their spending spree. Balmain, on the other hand, drew an average of 8,917 at Leichhardt since 1988. But Balmain's crowds rose rapidly when moving back to Leichhardt in 1997 they averaged 10,213 which doesn't seem massive but Balmain was a poor team at the time with no star players and Leichhardt oval was basically dilapidated when I went there in 1996.
So you have one club the Roosters beginning to grow by signing every decent player on the market and you have the Tigers who were starved for success since their last finals appearance in 1990. Yet the difference in attendance really wasn't that great so putting them together could have driven their attendance to close to 20,000 per week.
In terms of success, the Roosters and the Tigers from the first season after WW2 1946-1999 both had only won two premierships each so neither were massively successful for a long period of time the Roosters hadn't won the competition for 24 years and Balmain 30 years.
The main reason though this merger makes sense is due to geography and demographics. When the new AFL team moved to Sydney everyone took the piss out of them because they dubbed their Sydney derby as the battle of the bridge, Sydney Harbour Bridge and Anzac Bridge. The main reason for this is that nobody considers Anzac bridge which is in Rozelle which is one suburb away from Balmain in Western Sydney everyone sees it as part of the actual city of Sydney and has about as much to do with Western Sydney as the Opera House. So Balmain should have been considered an inner city club but for some reason with their move to Parramatta in the mid-'90s and merger with a club based in Campbelltown were more considered a Western Sydney club.
Leichhardt Oval is only 8.9km from the SFS, compared to the 47km it is away from Campbelltown, 21km from Parramatta stadium. So asking a team to merge with another team from less than 10km away who isn't your main rival isn't really a huge ask in the grand scheme of things.
* Canterbury and Wests (South-West Bulldogs)
Another merger which made complete sense both clubs are situated in the South West there is a big gap of 37km between them but the reason this merger makes sense is very simple. Canterbury in the late '90s was looking at relocating to Liverpool which is only 20km from Campbelltown. Wests had only been in Campbelltown for 12 years and were the club most in danger of merging due to appalling on-field results.
So all that had to happen was the NRL encouraging Canterbury to press ahead with plans to relocate to Liverpool they could have played at Campbelltown also.
Basically, this club covers the South-West of Sydney given Campbelltown only get about 4 games a year this would have been a big improvement for the area. The club would have a huge catchment area from Bankstown to Campbelltown.
* Souths and Cronulla (South Sydney Sharks)
I will be honest this would have been the toughest merger but it makes sense if St George all but relocate to Wollongong, It just incorporates Cronulla into South Sydney, The distance between Cronulla's stadium and SFS is 24km which would be asking a lot but it's still close enough you could still play a couple of games in Cronulla but this team would represent Southern Sydney from Redfern to the Shire.
Souths were terrible on the field for most of the '90s whereas Cronulla was good if both sets of fans could have accepted this merger you could have potentially two really big draws playing out of the SFS.
You keep both clubs rivalries going, St George and Cronulla and Souths and Easts they may have gotten bigger.
Stand Alone clubs
* Manly the game needs a presence on the North Shore, the bears would have still existed and the best local rivalry of the '90s would have lived on. Manly could have concentrated on refurbishing Brookvale Oval but they are a vital and important part of the league and shouldn't have been forced to merge with their main rivals.
* Parramatta which is practically a city within Sydney so they were easily the main team to keep.
* Penrith now Penrith aren't a massive club but due to the enormous junior base available to them, they will always be valuable to the game. They are also too far away really to merge with any other side except Parramatta who should be big enough to stand alone.
So there you have it this is what should have happened. You have 6 full-time Sydney clubs all representing geographically logical parts of the city in fact here are the catchment areas of all clubs in terms of population.
Central Sydney/ Inner West (Easts/Balmain) - 420,000
Southern Sydney (Souths/Cronulla) - 330,000
South West Sydney (Canterbury/Wests) - 580,000
Central Coast (Norths) - 395,000
Wollongong (St George/Illawarra) - 428,000
Manly - 365,000
Parramatta - 500,000
Penrith - 370,000
It would have been an even spread of the population amongst 8 teams in greater Sydney along with Canberra and Newcastle.
That would have left room one day for at least 8 logical expansion clubs.
Auckland
Brisbane x2
Gold Coast
Melbourne
North Queensland
Perth
Wellington
Then you can add Adelaide and another one, realistically we could have gone to 24 teams over 23 rounds if this had happened because all teams in Sydney could cultivate their own players easier.
But unfortunately, Rugby League didn't do things properly and allowed a criterion which was really to protect one team in the competition. If that never happened we could have saved every club in some form and the majority of people would have eventually accepted it because they would still have a team rather than the mess of forced relocations we face today.
