Perth Red
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Got invited to the WARL breakfast this morning were John Grant gave a presentation on the strategy and fielded questions from the audience. He got hammered re expansion!
Here's my take on his answers:
Q. Why still no expansion?
A. When the commision took over the previous regime had done nothing of any substance about expansion. There was no vision, no strategy, no criteria and basically nothing that you could base a decision on.
Q. Have bids been falsely led to believe expansion was going to happen?
A. Yes, the previous regime had no idea of when or where or even if, the bids should not have been encouraged to spend $'s and time.
Q. (from WA govt rep!) We are building a quality rectangular stadium and investing in the code, when will we see an NRL team in Perth?
A. Perth is a key market for the game, we will bring 3 games a year, we will work closer with the WARL to grow the game and we will keep the supporters of the game in WA engaged
Q. You talk about a grass roots up approach but AFL have taken a big club down approach with success, why don't you do the same in perth to help grow the game?
A. We don't have the money AFL has! There are different ways to achieve the same goal
Q. Why are you not announcing what you are going to do to grow the game in WA?
A. It is very early in how we will implement the strategy. I have spent the last 3 days with the WARL and bid team learning about the game here and talking to them about an achievable WA strategy with key goals that allign with ours. there will be money for development, $200million and it is up to the WARL board to work with us to develop the game here
Q. If you are waiting two years to start looking at expansion does that mean it will be 5 years before we get a team on the pitch?
A. not necessarily, we could run a bid process alongside the review process. We are looking at possible expansion in the mid term not the long term.
Q. Given there are a number of developed bids why don't you just choose what areas you want to see a team in? Will you pick two areas and call for bids or have an open sweep stake of bids?
A. We need to do due dilligence on where is sustainable, where offers most value to the game and the reaching of our strategic goals and who can get an income of $20mill a year. I have talked to all the bids and some are hot air whilst others are very legitimate and developed.
Q. Should unsustainable clubs be forced to merge or relocate?
A. All clubs are important and we believe we can support them all to be sustainable within 2 years. However if clubs agreed to it then the ARLC would be very supportive.
Q. Was the expansion decision made by Gygnell, he seemed to be in control at the press conference
A. (Grant answered somewhat uncomfortably I have to say!) We could not get any more money out of our TV partners for an extra game. In hindsight if we had offered them an extra game for $10-15mill a year they may have taken the offer.
The questions where very well worded by the audience (most came from RL fans from the Perth ABC!) and a couple of times Grant was squirming. What was clear to me was that Gallop/previous NRL had done nothing of any substance about expansion and the commision expected to see a great deal of research and assessment done but found nothing. Was also clear that they will choose where expansion will be and not go to open tender for bids. Grant hinted that the WARL should look to set its next goal on the journey to an NRL team which reading between the lines sounded like possible NSW cup team for the Pirates. He mentioned a number of times that any succesful bid would have to show how it would be sustainable in the long term and have a very sound business case. He also stated that he shares my dislike of the term "affiliated" states and would make sure it was no longer used. Every state governing body would be equally respected. I also got the sense that the ARLC would be expecting each State governing body to be developing operational plans for the strategy and solid plans would be well resourced.
He mentioned that he was very impressed with what he had seen of the WARL, felt we were on a very solid footing, intimated there would be a much closer working realtion between the WARL and ARLC and that they saw WA as a key market for the game to grow in.
No groundbreaking news unfortunately but I left very positive that we could see a NRL team in Perth by 2016/17 and in the mean time we would see more NRL games and better grass roots funding.
