Are The Dragons Relocating?

[alien]

The Swans only work so long as they are making the finals every year.

Wrong!

 

[sensesmaybenumbed]

Wrong!

Spoken like a true bandwagoner.

 

[alien]

Spoken like a true bandwagoner.

I'm a Collingwood Magpies supporter in the AFL, but what he said was wrong.

 

[Willow]

St George is not a place but Kogarah is a suburb.

It's called the St George Parish and was established in 1835, it is one of the largest and oldest in Sydney. It can be called a district, area or region if you like but historically it began as a Parish.

St George includes loads of suburbs from Botany Bay in the east to the Georges and Cooks Rivers inland. There are countless businesses and organisations based in large suburbs like Hurstville, Rockdale and Kogarah and they use the name "St George" in their title.

So it is very much a "place".

 

[RoosTah]

I'm a Collingwood Magpies supporter in the AFL, but what he said was wrong.

I suspect there's more than a kernel of truth in it actually - a lot of Swans fans are disillusioned Waratahs fans and the Swans in general have a very posh support base in Sydney and I'd wager that if Union got its act together (got Super Rugby limited to Aus and NZ and had games on FTA) the Waratahs crowds would start to leech the Swans again and go back to their averages back in the mid 00s. If the Swans started losing and the Waratahs looked like winning another title, the effect would be doubly big.

 

[Pommy]

Wrong!

Unlikely, you only have to look at Sydney crowds to see Sydneysiders are proper badwagoners.
Souths we're getting great crowds now shit. McWanderers crowds have tailed off a bit. Cronulla have suddenly pulled a million fans out of the woodwork.
Of course if swans didn't get a leg up from the AFL and their performances took a nose dive their position would look a little more suspect.

 

[sensesmaybenumbed]

I'm a Collingwood Magpies supporter in the AFL, but what he said was wrong.

If that's true, they would have had massive crowds and loads of members and financial independence when they sucked.

They didn't, and they still depend on concessions and assistance to the tune of millions, even with all the advantages and success they are given.

 

[The Mad Hatter]

In the early 80s there was no Sunday VFL and it was pooh poohed big time.

To get around it, the VFL put a team in Sydney so they could put a live game on in Melbourne on a Sunday afternoon.

 

[alien]

You guys are fooling yourselves. Swans are the biggest club in Sydney. Their attendances and memberships would suffer a bit if they started being less successful, but that's not what "The Frog" said. He said "The Swans only work so long as they are making the finals every year." and I disagree with that. I reckon it's just wishful thinking from the AFL haters on here!

 

[RoosTah]

You guys are fooling yourselves. Swans are the biggest club in Sydney. Their attendances and memberships would suffer a bit if they started being less successful, but that's not what "The Frog" said. He said "The Swans only work so long as they are making the finals every year." and I disagree with that. I reckon it's just wishful thinking from the AFL haters on here!

Again, a lot of their Sydney base are disaffected Union people in my experience, and their membership numbers are buoyed by their South Melbourne following, so it's not quite as rosy as it seems. They're a successful club without a doubt, but it's quite telling that in spite of those superficially impressive numbers more people in Melbourne tuned in to watch the storm in the NRL GF than there were in Sydney watching the Swans in the AFL.

 

[T-Boon]

Getting rid of the Roosters would completely cede the east to the AFL and Union, and what's more is we're a rich club that don't need any help from the NRL so how are you going to convince Politis and the board we should go to a shitty place like Adelaide?

In my view organic growth is better - The Rams were ok and you want an identity that doesn't mark your side as outsiders from the start. The Swans have worked in Sydney, but they're about the only relocation success story out there and it took 30 years.

The way to reduce the bleed out of fans to rugby and the swans is at the same time as announcing relocations start a brand new sydney club representing all of Sydney City - not a suburb.

 

[T-Boon]

You guys are fooling yourselves. Swans are the biggest club in Sydney. Their attendances and memberships would suffer a bit if they started being less successful, but that's not what "The Frog" said. He said "The Swans only work so long as they are making the finals every year." and I disagree with that. I reckon it's just wishful thinking from the AFL haters on here!

This is the painful & shameful truth for the NRL.
It should be goal number 1 for the game to have an NRL club the biggest sporting team in Sydney.

 

[RoosTah]

The way to reduce the bleed out of fans to rugby and the swans is at the same time as announcing relocations start a brand new sydney club representing all of Sydney City - not a suburb.

I get your thinking on this - in fact I've posited that in an ideal world a solution might be to hold a "Sydney regions origin" semi rep comp in preseason with Sydney split between East,West,North&South with entirely new rep identities that you could then phase in to supersede all the current Sydney sides.

However, I've long since concluded that would only ever work if human beings were vastly more dispassionate than we are, but if that were the case we probably wouldn't care about football to begin with.

In short, you can't just rip away people's tribal attachments and replace them with something new and expect people to just go along with it. You can't and they won't.

 

[T-Boon]

I get your thinking on this - in fact I've posited that in an ideal world a solution might be to hold a "Sydney regions origin" semi rep comp in preseason with Sydney split between East,West,North&South with entirely new rep identities that you could then phase in to supersede all the current Sydney sides.

Thats a damn good idea.

I was thinking some similar type of thing - creating new clubs using a Nines tournament concept (if you made considerable changes to the way the game is played ((11 aside)) at the same time as bringing in the new club/s you could almost get around that later issue you correctly raise).

The Clubs would see the threat I guess. They are old, clunky and dumb but they have managed to survive by having some type of rat like cunning.

 

[siv]

The way to reduce the bleed out of fans to rugby and the swans is at the same time as announcing relocations start a brand new sydney club representing all of Sydney City - not a suburb.

Isnt Easts working ? They were rebranded in 2000

 

[taipan]

You guys are fooling yourselves. Swans are the biggest club in Sydney. Their attendances and memberships would suffer a bit if they started being less successful, but that's not what "The Frog" said. He said "The Swans only work so long as they are making the finals every year." and I disagree with that. I reckon it's just wishful thinking from the AFL haters on here!

Know the history.SL war gave them the biggest leg top they could only dream of.They have been in the G/F 5 times since 2005.Their TV G/F ratings in Sydney in 2016,were the lowest for any of those 5 G/F.

Heaven help,when they have a sh*t of a couple of years.The Surry Hills,Paddington latte sippers will drop them like a hot cake.
The Shark's entry into the G/f sucked out a lot of their PR oxygen also.

 

[Perth Red]

There was a massive jump in their attendances from 96 onwards which peaked in 99 and then dropped to a consistent level since, with obvious form variation.

I really don't understand how a RL fan can drop the game all together and follow AFL because they don't like some decisions by the governing body or because their team was cut? Tried to get into AFL when I arrived in perth but despite having one of the biggest clubs in the country to follow I only lasted a handful of games and had to give it up as boring and too hard to see what was going at the ground due to sixe of the stadium/pitch. Going from watching RL to watching AFL is a big step down in sports viewing imo.

 

[The Mad Hatter]

There was a massive jump in their attendances from 96 onwards which peaked in 99 and then dropped to a consistent level since, with obvious form variation.

I really don't understand how a RL fan can drop the game all together and follow AFL because they don't like some decisions by the governing body or because their team was cut? Tried to get into AFL when I arrived in perth but despite having one of the biggest clubs in the country to follow I only lasted a handful of games and had to give it up as boring and too hard to see what was going at the ground due to sixe of the stadium/pitch. Going from watching RL to watching AFL is a big step down in sports viewing imo.

You tell ardent Steelers, magpies and Bears fans that.

I didn't have Souths for two years and I drifted away.

It's easy when you're sad, gutted and/or bitter. And f**k loads of other rl fans liked reminding those fans their team was now dead and didn't matter. Some real shit stuff.

And as much as I hate Afl, I can understand. They join in, see a mostly winning team but don't have to invest the passion or care. Like a league or bbl. Go for fun without giving a shit.

 

[T-Boon]

I really don't understand how a RL fan can drop the game all together and follow AFL because they don't like some decisions by the governing body or because their team was cut? Tried to get into AFL when I arrived in perth but despite having one of the biggest clubs in the country to follow I only lasted a handful of games and had to give it up as boring and too hard to see what was going at the ground due to sixe of the stadium/pitch. Going from watching RL to watching AFL is a big step down in sports viewing imo.

Agreed, AFL offers nothing I want to see.

I suspect that Sydney fans that jump ship from Rugby League will start looking to American Football more in the future. There is plenty of it on TV and it is pretty satisfying for people who want a collision sport with a great battle between defence and offence.

 

[TheFrog]

You guys are fooling yourselves. Swans are the biggest club in Sydney. Their attendances and memberships would suffer a bit if they started being less successful, but that's not what "The Frog" said. He said "The Swans only work so long as they are making the finals every year." and I disagree with that. I reckon it's just wishful thinking from the AFL haters on here!

It's a long time since Sydney was not a regular fixture in the AFL finals. It goes back to 1995. They've had a Bronco-like regularity of making it since then. But the few years prior to that, when they were known disparagingly as The Excitement Machine, were quite different. Crowds of 7,000 at the SCG were commonplace.