Given the nrl bears are gone and never coming back surely they have the most to gain? To be a part, even if it’s a minor part, of a northern Sydney nrl club or remain a nswrl leagues club suburban entity? Id have thought the former would be a more preferential choice. Given Manley’s lack of money they migh end up one day in charge anyway ala wests in the West’s Tigers merger.
From the Bears point of view I'm sure a merger with Manly now would be great, it'd basically be a role reversal of last time they merged, they'd be the 'rich' club coming into save the other club that's going broke, they'd probably be able to muscle Manly out of the club just like Manly did to them last time as well...
But though a new merger might be great for the Bears (and not only would I personally love to see them in the top tier again, but on some level I'd love to see the poetic justice of them doing to Manly what Manly did to them), what's great for the Bears isn't necessarily what would be best for the NRL, the NS region, or indeed the sport it's self, and we've got to keep that in mind.
Big question would be do you brand the new merged club as one, both or neither of the two co-owners?
Maybe better to call them northern Sydney somethings tather than NS Sea eagles playing in red and black or northern Sydney bears paying in maroon.
Also gives the better option of the new club going it alone if they fall out again!
IF all other options were exhausted and two clubs were effectively forced into a merger then the way I'd do it is more like a traditional business merger instead of how sports clubs are traditionally merged.
So instead of a new business being started that both the old clubs own a percentage of but their other operations are still separate entities that the other side of the merger has no interest in, I'd merge all of both the merging clubs owners assets into one entity, so e.g. instead of NS leagues and the Penn family both being 50% owners in a new 'merged' NRL club, all of their RL related assets would be merged together under a new business that each relevant share holder owns a percentage of, so instead of NS leagues and the Penn family (and all the relevant Manly assets) owning a percentage of this merged entity NS leagues club (NS juniors, etc) and all the Manly assets (Manly, Manly juniors, etc) would become assets owned by the new merged entity, that way if things go south then everybody is on the sinking ship together, so they better work together or they are all equally f**ked.
And yes if I was going to merge clubs I would support a new brand over a 'merged' brand, as merging the brands just leads to problems and infighting, so yeah instead of the new club being called the North Sydney Sea Eagles and playing in red and black, they'd have a completely new brand and be (e.g.) the North Shore Nightmare and play in a dark smokey grey, with touches of bone white and a vibrant but dark purple, so there'd be no fighting over the brand and how much each club is represented in it as there'd be a new brand as a representation of the merger of the clubs creating one new entity.
I'd probably hold a competition where local fans submit an idea for a new brand that must not be a merger of the old brands or analogous to either of the old brands (so no e.g. Grizzlies, Sea Hawks, etc, either), then get a handful of local design artists to mock up each of the ideas and then have a public vote (where members of either of the old clubs get two votes maybe) for the best design, but now I'm rambling a bit (me rambling, never!) , but I'm sure you get that the point of the competition or something similar would be to take the brand out of the clubs hands and put it into the fans hands as much as possible.
