Prior to News Corporation's Super League proposal, the New South Wales Rugby League (NSWRL) and Australian Rugby League (ARL) had planned to rationalise the number of Sydney teams. In July 1986 The Daily Telegraph reported:
"Ken Arthurson has proposed a Super League... comprising four or five teams from Sydney, two from Brisbane, three New South Wales Country teams, Queensland Country and Auckland. You could amalgamate Manly/Northern Suburbs, Eastern Suburbs/Souths, Parramatta/Penrith and so on."
Following the expansion of the competition throughout the 1980s and 90s many clubs were not financially viable in the long term. The NSWRL solution was to eject them from the competition when they no longer met prescribed criteria. Although Newtown were ejected from the competition in 1982, attempts to remove Western Suburbs were unsuccessful after court action. Thereafter the NSWRL introduced an invitation-based system whereby it could fail to invite a club, thus excluding it. This left clubs without the security of continued participation in the premiership.
On 9 April 1992 A blueprint for the expansion of Rugby League was tabled by the Premiership Policy Committee of the NSWRL , followed in August by an Organization Review, by Dr G. Bradley, which was distributed to the premiership clubs. The Bradley Report, as it became known, was central to the ARL replacing the NSWRL as the governing body of the premiership. The report concluded that:
"...to reduce the number of clubs in Sydney, will be very hard for the League to implement given the long playing traditions of some of those clubs. In the long term, however, it is likely that Sydney is not going to be able to support eleven clubs as it does at present. Therefore in the long term this is the only viable solution. Sydney based clubs are going to have to move to new areas, merge or be relegated from the League. This is going to be a painful process. In the long term I believe that the ARL should be looking to reduce the number of clubs in the National Competition to fourteen, thus allowing clubs to play two complete rounds. This will mean, assuming that only four new clubs are admitted from areas outside Sydney, that there will be only five clubs based in Sydney."
Each club received a letter of invitation for the 1995 season on 2nd May, 1994. Included were a number of admission criteria including the ability to "attract a minimum average home attendance of 10,000 people". Balmain, Easts, Gold Coast, Illawarra, Parramatta, Penrith, Souths, St George and Wests failed this criteria for 1995 . After the privately owned Brisbane Broncos transferred a 20% share of their company to Northern Rivers Ltd, the new shareholders received the following:
"Under the terms of the League's Constitution, it is necessary that, without exception, all clubs which wish to participate in the League's Premiership competition, must apply each year for admission. No club has any automatic right to participate in any year's competition and the League has the unfettered right to reject any club's application for participation."
