Things change. You can't predict the future but you still plan ahead. If the NRL doesn't have a clear 20 year mission plan then they're idiots and anyone who argues against having one is an idiot too.
And you could slip on a bar of soap tomorrow. You still make business plans. The population projections are from the ABS. If the Storm aren't selling out MRS in a city of 7 million then they're incompetent.
Nobody said that business plans are a bad idea, or that the NRL shouldn't have one, that's just a ridiculous strawman.
All that I was saying is that an expansion plan that looks 20 years ahead is at best fanciful given the rate at which the landscape changes, and especially considering the NRL's MO and reactionary business practices...
Unless the NRL's organisational structure, values, and attitudes completely changes they'd be forced to redraft their expansion plan every few years in response to market forces. Considering that it'd make sense to work towards a smaller scale, more flexible plan, that's achievable rather than to build a grandiose 20 year plan that will quickly fall apart (likely because of factional infighting), be branded a failure, then be forgotten without replacement. You've gotta learn to walk before you can run.
Sink source dynamics of positive feedback loop capital attraction work at both a micro and macro economic level. The bigger the salary cap and average salary, the more incentive there is for players to switch codes. I hate to break it to you but it's already happening. More and more high school union players in Oceania are picking the NRL over Super Rugby as their professional target because they can make more money there. Rugby union are now having to pay overs to get back talent they originally developed that they could have retained in their own systems if they had been more competitive in market place in the first place. If you don't understand this as a business dynamic then we'll best leave it at that.
That's a lot of words just to ignore the point that was actually being made...
The NRL already more or less has the pick of litter of RU juniors in Australia, so I was talking about the global RU talent market, you know, the only one where there's significant potential for the NRL to access a new talent pool by poaching Union players. The NRL's salary cap is largely irrelevant in that market as there're Union organisations and competitions around the world that are offering similar wages for the players that are worth taking a punt on, without the need for them to take the risk of switching codes.
On average attracting half decent RU talent (i.e. solid professionals or juniors with potential) from e.g. France, South Africa, the British Isles, Argentina, etc, willing to up sticks and move to Australia to play RL would be difficult and expensive. Almost all that might be inclined to consider the move would at least be offered a similarly lucrative contract in their home nation, France, or Japan, without the need to switch codes.
The NRL hasn't really had any success attracting established Super Rugby players, let alone internationals or Union's top talent prospects in NZ or the PI's either. Considering that it seems totally unrealistic to the point of being disconnected from reality to suggest that a program to poach RU players from further afield than the local region could be a reliable source of NRL quality talent.
