18th club, whose next?

[Get Rid of The Donkeys]

I was talking about the early days of Rugby, pre-schism. What the ARU/RA did later is irrelevant to my point, which is that the early purveyors of Rugby rules didn’t have your attitude, hence the spread of the game.

Without the early expansion and spread of Rugby rules from where it began, the NRL wouldn’t have existed. At least not in the form we know it today.

Rugby league spread to Adelaide, Melbourne and Perth in the mid-20th century. The problem is it never caught on like it did in Queensland and NSW. You cannot blame Queenslanders and New South Welshmen for the apathy shown towards the game by Victorians, South Australians and Western Australians over the last 70 years.

TBH, it's a wonder the game managed to survive in Queensland. It's faced all sorts of obstacles since 1909. Not only did it survive, but it has gone on to thrive over the last 30 years. The game's growth and success over the last four decades is due to the Queensland vs NSW rivalry. We need to preserve this at all costs because if if declines then so does the game.

It doesn't surprise that wankers from Canberra, Hull and Perth are happy to erode the Queensland vs NSW rivalry. They're bitter because they'll never be part of it.

I'm shocked that you're singing from the same hymn sheet.

We should be doing all that we can to make the Queensland vs NSW rivalry stronger. Pissing money up a wall on Adelaide and Perth while fumbleball has its eyes on Queensland is one of the dumbest strategies we could take. For a start, we don't have the money to match them on junior development and marketing. Secondly, if fumbleball makes further inroads in Queensland then it could weaken RL in Queensland. We've now got about 34k registered fumbleball players competing in organised competitions across Queensland. AFLQ has seen a huge growth in Ipswich and is investing heavily in Logan. The last thing the QRL and NRL can afford is to lose their stranglehold on cities that have produced stars like Langer, the Walters brothers, Walker brothers, Corey Parker, Tony Carrol, Cam Smith and the Smith brothers.

Another team in Brisbane is needed to provide the juniors in Ipswich and Logan with a pathway to the NRL. Kids in Ipswich and Logan don't grow up dreaming of playing for upstart clubs in Adelaide and Perth. They want to play for Queensland and the local club that they support. A third club will allow more to do just that.

 

[The Great Dane]

Lmao union. Was about limiting or excluding the working class from the game

Soccer went through a similar schism to rugby's in the 1800s as well.

Sheffield Rules was an alternative version of soccer created in the 1850s in opposition to the FA's ruleset of the time. It lead to the creation of the Sheffield Football Association in the 1860s and was basically the same as the RFU vs NRFU/RFL spilt with hostile debate over the rules, professionalism, etc, that pit the North and Midlands against the South.

The big difference between soccer's split and rugby's is that the soccer associations reconciled. The FA accepted that a lot of the Sheffield rules were improvements and they valued maintaining unity of the sport over ideological debates about professionalism and the such. Soccer's unity is one of it's superpowers frankly, Rugby has had roughly half a dozen splits in comparison.

How did expansion go for the ARU?

They added teams in ACT, Melbourne and Perth. Brisbane and Sydney were left as one team cities. Now the game is almost dead in its heartland and has fallen over in Perth and Melbourne.

I hear ACT is close to going under, too?

Would you be willing to relocate the Sea Eagles to Perth for the "good of the game"?

If not then why are you telling large clubs like the Brisbane Tigers to stay in the Queensland Cup so we can put a team in Perth that's as small as Manly?

The Brisbane Tigers will be a much bigger and richer club than the Sea Eagles.

The ACT were a foundation member of Super 12 (i.e. professional RU in the Southern hemisphere).

The NSWRU/ACTRU relationship is basically the NSWRL/BRL relationship on steroids with an even bigger power imbalance. You of all people should be able to sympathise with that.

 

[The Great Dane]

All you've done is waffle on about your opinion without providing any evidence to back it up.

Why would I bother collating and presenting "evidence" for you when you have a repeated pattern of behaviour of rejecting any and all "evidence" that's presented to you out of hand? I've played that game before many times, it's a waste of time.

The standard of "evidence" you hold others to is set unachievably high or literally unobtainable, regularly going so far as to effectively demand breakdowns of statistics you know don't exist/aren't public, and ratings, attendance, membership, etc, numbers for teams that don't exist as "evidence" to justify their existence.
Meanwhile the standard of evidence you hold yourself to is in the basement and you almost always respond with a non sequitur, strawman, whataboutery, or straight up try to mindread and manufacture arguments for your opponents out of thin air. That's assuming that you actually understood the argument at all, which you don't as often as not frankly.

Take the rest of your post for example; You dodge addressing the core of the argument to instead insinuate, or outright assert, that I said a bunch of things that I didn't, like that I think that Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth will grow bigger than the Dolphins (which is possible, and Melbourne may already be, but it's not a 'fait accompli') as a single example, then go on to use the existing attendance numbers of the Storm and Dolphins and the Swans ratings as "refutation" of the claim that I never made, even though that doesn't follow at all.

Talking to you is like playing an endless game of Whac-a-mole trying to knock down every time you misrepresent or put words in people's mouth, only for you to abandon that point then misrepresent them again or throw out some random shit you think is connected but isn't.

 

[reanimate]

Rugby league spread to Adelaide, Melbourne and Perth in the mid-20th century. The problem is it never caught on like it did in Queensland and NSW. You cannot blame Queenslanders and New South Welshmen for the apathy shown towards the game by Victorians, South Australians and Western Australians over the last 70 years.

My point is that if the early purveyors of Rugby rules had this attitude, we wouldn't have Rugby League and the NRL. They'd have given up given the popularity of what was to become Association Football and how ingrained it became throughout the UK and stayed a tiny game in a little part of England. Instead, its followers put in the work to spread it throughout the UK and around the world, leading to it becoming a popular game in its own right. A game that will never be as big as soccer/Association Football, but it doesn't need to be.

We aren't taking on soccer in the UK, we aren't trying to take on the world. It's Perth and Victorian Rules, they aren't insurmountable obstacles, we can carve out a niche for RL there.

TBH, it's a wonder the game managed to survive in Queensland. It's faced all sorts of obstacles since 1909. Not only did it survive, but it has gone on to thrive over the last 30 years. The game's growth and success over the last four decades is due to the Queensland vs NSW rivalry. We need to preserve this at all costs because if if declines then so does the game.

It doesn't surprise that wankers from Canberra, Hull and Perth are happy to erode the Queensland vs NSW rivalry. They're bitter because they'll never be part of it.

I'm shocked that you're singing from the same hymn sheet.

We should be doing all that we can to make the Queensland vs NSW rivalry stronger. Pissing money up a wall on Adelaide and Perth while fumbleball has its eyes on Queensland is one of the dumbest strategies we could take. For a start, we don't have the money to match them on junior development and marketing. Secondly, if fumbleball makes further inroads in Queensland then it could weaken RL in Queensland. We've now got about 34k registered fumbleball players competing in organised competitions across Queensland. AFLQ has seen a huge growth in Ipswich and is investing heavily in Logan. The last thing the QRL and NRL can afford is to lose their stranglehold on cities that have produced stars like Langer, the Walters brothers, Walker brothers, Corey Parker, Tony Carrol, Cam Smith and the Smith brothers.

Another team in Brisbane is needed to provide the juniors in Ipswich and Logan with a pathway to the NRL. Kids in Ipswich and Logan don't grow up dreaming of playing for upstart clubs in Adelaide and Perth. They want to play for Queensland and the local club that they support. A third club will allow more to do just that.

What I would like to see is the AFL version of you saying something like this in 30-40 years:

Pissing more money up a wall on Sydney and Brisbane while the NRL has its eyes on WA is one of the dumbest strategies we could take. If the NRL makes further inroads in WA then it could weaken AFL in WA. We've now got a huge number of registered players competing in organised tackle, tag and touch NRL competitions across WA. NRLWA has seen huge growth thanks to migration trends favouring them and is investing heavily in all of our growth areas. The last thing the WAFL and AFL can afford is to lose their stranglehold on areas that have produced stars like *insert various coke sniffing fumblers here*

This we can only add more teams in our heartland talk reeks of Peter Fitzsimons-esque stay in your lane RL white anting. We need to be getting our slice of their traditional territories as you are pointing out they are doing in ours. Queenslanders and New South Welshmen aren't a different species of human that are uniquely vulnerable to developing interest in non-traditional sports. The AFL has created these circumstances through continued investment and time. We can do the same in a city that is projected to have a population of 3.5 million in the future, especially given that the city will hit that population mainly through migration.

Also, WA getting in is hardly going to shut out future QLD options. You'll more than likely get Brisbane 3 at some point in addition to WA, they aren't mutually exclusive.

 

[The Great Dane]

What I would like to see is the AFL version of you saying something like this in 30-40 years:

There were plenty of opinion pieces and commentary from the time that were exactly that.

Adding teams outside of Victoria was doomed to fail, the northern states were a wasteland, everybody already has a VFL team, it'll hurt the WAFL and SAFL, the WAFL and SARL are too popular for a VFL side to survive in either state, expansion isn't fair to heartland clubs, heartland teams are more deserving, the northern states don't produce any players, they won't be able to attract players, they'll suck too much depth out of the heartlands, not until we get the house in order first, etc, etc, all the same shit.

Wasn't as constant or as loud in the pre-social media age though and only a relative handful of media professionals personalities in the game had a genuine platform to have their opinions heard.

 

[Canard]

There is still a large portion of the RL fanbase that insist Origin shouldn't be taken interstate.

 

[mongoose]

You really need to see a psychiatrist about your paranoia. It's not normal to think the lack of an NRL team in Perth means there must be a conspiracy between the ARLC, ARU, News Ltd and Ch9 to give the Force "space". There's zero logic to your conspiracy.

Why are you so obsessed with plonking unwanted teams in fumbleball markets?

No one other than a nutcase thinks an NRL team in Perth will make any difference to the city's sports landscape. AwFuL couldn't care less because they have the market sewn up. A third AwFuL club in Perth would make life very hard for an NRL club.

I've seen you admit in the past that fumbleball is followed in Perth to a far greater extent than rugby league in Brisbane and Sydney.

So what is there to gain from creating a Perth-based team that will be lucky to carve out a very small niche within a parochial fumbleball market?

The guy who has poisoned every thread with repetitive anti-perth rants is giving mental health advice lol

You know just because you repeat yourself over and over and over, doesn't mean what you say is going to come true.

 

[Get Rid of The Donkeys]

Why would I bother collating and presenting "evidence" for you when you have a repeated pattern of behaviour of rejecting any and all "evidence" that's presented to you out of hand? I've played that game before many times, it's a waste of time.

You don't present evidence to support your assertions.

Your assertions are based on faith, tunnel vision and confirmation bias.

The standard of "evidence" you hold others to is set unachievably high or literally unobtainable, regularly going so far as to effectively demand breakdowns of statistics you know don't exist/aren't public, and ratings, attendance, membership, etc, numbers for teams that don't exist as "evidence" to justify their existence.

If you're going to assert that the game needs to expand into new markets to increase the value of the broadcast rights and size of its supporter base then you need to provide evidence to validate your position.

The fact is you don't know how much money the Storm provide to the broadcast rights. Despite not having any evidence to support your assertion, you and your expansionazi colleagues cite the Storm as the reason we should add teams to Adelaide and Perth. What we do know is Ch9 don't value the Storm enough to air their games on the network's main channel in Melbourne. Ratings for Storm in Melbourne are comparable to reruns on secondary channels. The difference is the reruns do not cost the broadcaster much money to air. On top of that, a rerun of a 1990s movie on 9Gem in Melbourne provides the network with more advertising space to recoup money. That makes the Storm a liability to Ch9 in Melbourne.

The Storm's only value is having a large audience of neutrals watching them in Brisbane and Sydney because they're the most successful club of the NRL era. Take away the on field success and the neutrals will tune out. The Storm's on field success is due to preferential treatment and access to more resources from News Ltd when 50% od the game was under that company's control. It was a huge conflict of influence that led to the Storm salary cap scandal and an incessant pattern of the club bending the rules to gain an unfair advantage.

The Storm's model cannot be replicated in Adelaide and Perth, yet the viability of teams in these markets is probably dependent on achieving a similar level of on field success that will require investment from the ARLC and special provisions, such as the ones gifted to the Lions and Swans a 20 years ago.

The ARLC isn't going to provide special provisions to Adelaide and Perth. There is no variable funding scheme in the NRL and the ARLC's structure ensures there never will be one.

Long story short, you're arguing for NRL to adopt the same model as AwFuL, despite the former being run on a way that prevents it from being like the latter. It's why you and your ideological brethren have been arguing the same shit for years and not seen any change. You're no different to a Jehovah's Witness proselytising on people's doorsteps, talking about "The End Days" looming nearer unless everyone converts to their religion.

Meanwhile the standard of evidence you hold yourself to is in the basement and you almost always respond with a non sequitur, strawman, whataboutery, or straight up try to mindread and manufacture arguments for your opponents out of thin air. That's assuming that you actually understood the argument at all, which you don't as often as not frankly.

Provide a valid example.

Take the rest of your post for example; You dodge addressing the core of the argument to instead insinuate, or outright assert, that I said a bunch of things that I didn't, like that I think that Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth will grow bigger than the Dolphins (which is possible, and Melbourne may already be, but it's not a 'fait accompli') as a single example, then go on to use the existing attendance numbers of the Storm and Dolphins and the Swans ratings as "refutation" of the claim that I never made, even though that doesn't follow at all.

I cited television ratings for the Swans in Sydney and attendances for the Storm and Dolphins. My point was the Swans and Storm have had 40 and 25 years to carve out a following, yet still draw terrible television ratings in their respective markets. The Storm's on field success hasn't been enough to generate a larger active fanbase than Brisbane's second team, which finished 13th on the ladder.

If the Swans and Storm are still struggling to create an active fanbase after 40 and 25 years, then why should I believe your claim that they will work out in the long run?

How many years will it take?

Talking to you is like playing an endless game of Whac-a-mole trying to knock down every time you misrepresent or put words in people's mouth, only for you to abandon that point then misrepresent them again or throw out some random shit you think is connected but isn't.

Pot. Kettle. Black.

 

[Get Rid of The Donkeys]

The guy who has poisoned every thread with repetitive anti-perth rants is giving mental health advice lol

You know just because you repeat yourself over and over and over, doesn't mean what you say is going to come true.

You've been saying the same shit about expansion on numerous forums for years. None of your assertions have come true.

Remember when you argued as nauseum that Logan isn't a city?

When it was pointed out that Logan was officially declared a city over 40 years ago you said that's not evidence. You're narrow-minded and too stubborn to accept defeat.

 

[Get Rid of The Donkeys]

My point is that if the early purveyors of Rugby rules had this attitude, we wouldn't have Rugby League and the NRL. They'd have given up given the popularity of what was to become Association Football and how ingrained it became throughout the UK and stayed a tiny game in a little part of England. Instead, its followers put in the work to spread it throughout the UK and around the world, leading to it becoming a popular game in its own right. A game that will never be as big as soccer/Association Football, but it doesn't need to be.

We aren't taking on soccer in the UK, we aren't trying to take on the world. It's Perth and Victorian Rules, they aren't insurmountable obstacles, we can carve out a niche for RL there.


What I would like to see is the AFL version of you saying something like this in 30-40 years:


This we can only add more teams in our heartland talk reeks of Peter Fitzsimons-esque stay in your lane RL white anting. We need to be getting our slice of their traditional territories as you are pointing out they are doing in ours. Queenslanders and New South Welshmen aren't a different species of human that are uniquely vulnerable to developing interest in non-traditional sports. The AFL has created these circumstances through continued investment and time. We can do the same in a city that is projected to have a population of 3.5 million in the future, especially given that the city will hit that population mainly through migration.

Also, WA getting in is hardly going to shut out future QLD options. You'll more than likely get Brisbane 3 at some point in addition to WA, they aren't mutually exclusive.

Some one has to miss out if Brisbane 3 and Perth are added. People on here have said they want anyone but a third Brisbane team. They're the same people who hate State of Origin and continuously try to undermine the game in its heartland. I couldn't give a f**k what these wankers want because they have a chip on their shoulder and don't represent the average rugby league fan.

I believe NZ 2, Brisbane 3 and NZ 3 will more likely than not provide a better return than Adelaide, Melbourne and Perth.

What you're arguing is we can follow the AwFuL model and get the same results. I'm not convinced it is probable or even possible. Fumbleball's share of the market in Queensland and NSW has always dwarfed rugby league's share in Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia because the former is a much older game and established itself nationwide well before the latter was invented. My prediction is NRL teams in Adelaide, Melbourne and Perth will have fewer active supporters than the Lions and Swans. The same will hold true with regards to participation. The end result is three NRL clubs that rely on the heartland for survival, despite the ARLC not having a variable funding scheme. Despite AwFuL providing a variable funding scheme to prop up the Lions, the club has accrued the largest debt in the game.

 

[Get Rid of The Donkeys]

The ACT were a foundation member of Super 12 (i.e. professional RU in the Southern hemisphere).

The NSWRU/ACTRU relationship is basically the NSWRL/BRL relationship on steroids with an even bigger power imbalance. You of all people should be able to sympathise with that.

The Brumbies were created in 1996.

Which is beside the point. I said the Brumbies' introduction hurt the game in NSW and Queensland.

Before Super 12 was created in 1996 there was the Super 10 (1993-95), Super 6 (1992) and South Pacific Championship (1986-90).

Queensland won the Super 10 in 1994 and 1995.

 

[mongoose]

You've been saying the same shit about expansion on numerous forums for years. None of your assertions have come true.

Remember when you argued as nauseum that Logan isn't a city?

When it was pointed out that Logan was officially declared a city over 40 years ago you said that's not evidence. You're narrow-minded and too stubborn to accept defeat.

the whack a mole pops up with something I said 3 years ago and taken out of context

 

[Penrith fan]

PNG, a second New Zealand team, a Perth and then a second Melbourne team.

 

[Matiunz]

The Brumbies were created in 1996.

Which is beside the point. I said the Brumbies' introduction hurt the game in NSW and Queensland.

Before Super 12 was created in 1996 there was the Super 10 (1993-95), Super 6 (1992) and South Pacific Championship (1986-90).

Queensland won the Super 10 in 1994 and 1995.

Not quite, pre super 12 the comp was an invitational comp based on provincial /state/international rep teams, ie Auckland NPC vs Blues franchise.
When super 12 launched NZ and later SA and to an Extent Aus moved to multi provincial franchise model. Brumbies were actually an example of successful expansion as they’ve consistently been Aus most competitive team, I’d even argue WA was a worthwhile market to look at, Melbourne was too much too soon and killed it off .
NRL/AFL suburban model is different to the Super Rugby rep team model in that putting another team in Union heartlands would have actually weakened the existing franchises.
League has the advantage where it can easily add another NSW or QLD team but it may prove a better growth opportunity to go to a growth market.

 

[Wb1234]

You've been saying the same shit about expansion on numerous forums for years. None of your assertions have come true.

Remember when you argued as nauseum that Logan isn't a city?

When it was pointed out that Logan was officially declared a city over 40 years ago you said that's not evidence. You're narrow-minded and too stubborn to accept defeat.

Didn’t he have some weird conspiracy theory about the force being kept alive

 

[Canard]

The fact is you don't know how much money the Storm provide to the broadcast rights.

Circular argument, you don't know either, so why are you assuming its little or nothing?

We do know that the Storm have 20,000 members and an average crowd in 2024 of 20,800.

Thats more than the Dolphins, Souths, Cowboys, Eagles, Tigers, Dragons, Raiders, Titans, Sharks and Bulldogs.

Thats real geniune growth in a non-traditional area. Why would we not want to try to replicate that.

Even if we got around 60% of that, it would still better than half the teams in Sydney and the Gold Coast.

 

[reanimate]

Some one has to miss out if Brisbane 3 and Perth are added. People on here have said they want anyone but a third Brisbane team. They're the same people who hate State of Origin and continuously try to undermine the game in its heartland. I couldn't give a f**k what these wankers want because they have a chip on their shoulder and don't represent the average rugby league fan.

I believe NZ 2, Brisbane 3 and NZ 3 will more likely than not provide a better return than Adelaide, Melbourne and Perth.

Someone does, but it doesn’t have to be Bris 3, there’s room for both.

What you're arguing is we can follow the AwFuL model and get the same results. I'm not convinced it is probable or even possible. Fumbleball's share of the market in Queensland and NSW has always dwarfed rugby league's share in Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia because the former is a much older game and established itself nationwide well before the latter was invented. My prediction is NRL teams in Adelaide, Melbourne and Perth will have fewer active supporters than the Lions and Swans. The same will hold true with regards to participation. The end result is three NRL clubs that rely on the heartland for survival, despite the ARLC not having a variable funding scheme. Despite AwFuL providing a variable funding scheme to prop up the Lions, the club has accrued the largest debt in the game.

That’s why I said I’m glad the early followers of Rugby rules didn’t have your attitude, we wouldn’t have Rugby League or the NRL if they did. They’d have given up at the spectre of Association Football and the grasp it developed in the UK and around the world.

It’s projected that 1.5 million more people will call Perth home by 2050. That’s an entire city sized population on top of the existing population to appeal to. It’s growth the NRL needs to get in on so they can grow the WA team with the city.

 

[Get Rid of The Donkeys]

Didn’t he have some weird conspiracy theory about the force being kept alive

Yes.

I have a theory which might be a bit tin foil hat but I reckon the NRL (news) has or had a secret agreement with ARU to stay out of WA to give the Force and Australian Rugby "space".

 

[Wb1234]

Yes.

Hahahhaha

Hahhahaaa

 

[Wb1234]

Someone does, but it doesn’t have to be Bris 3, there’s room for both.

That’s why I said I’m glad the early followers of Rugby rules didn’t have your attitude, we wouldn’t have Rugby League or the NRL if they did. They’d have given up at the spectre of Association Football and the grasp it developed in the UK and around the world.

It’s projected that 1.5 million more people will call Perth home by 2050. That’s an entire city sized population on top of the existing population to appeal to. It’s growth the NRL needs to get in on so they can grow the WA team with the city.

The early followers of rugby rules weren’t not some evangelical expansionists

they were the opposite

they were happy for rugby to die in Manchester rather than it go to rugby league

the northern union were no better re expansion