I honestly need my head checked for wasting my time responding to this rambling nonsense...
If you care so much for the good of the game then you'll advocate for the Raiders to relocate to Adelaide, yeah?
Canberra is not one of the five metro areas and they draw shit ratings in Brisbane and Sydney because ACT is a separate territory in the middle of no where. Adelaide is one of the 5 metro areas.
I actually think that the Raiders are the most likely team in the NRL to relocate at the moment, but that's because of politics and the stadium situation down here. It's a slim chance of actually happening, but it could happen if the stadium negotiations go really south, and a slim chance is still larger than no chance, but I digress.
The chances of an NRL side relocating any time soon is so slim that it isn't really worth discussing seriously, but it wouldn't be in the sport's interest to relocate the Raiders. The Raiders are the only club in the region and are also one of the more successful and financially stable clubs in the league. If you were going to relocate a club ATM it'd be one of the weaker Sydney clubs.
I know what you and The Goose will say.
"Cowboys and Titans are also regional".
Yes, Cowboys and Titans are regional clubs, but the former draws a lot of support in Brisbane. The latter is included in the Brisbane OzTam ratings. Both clubs matter to rugby league fans in Brisbane and draw good ratings for Ch9. Raiders don't mean anything to anyone from Brisbane and Sydney. The only person in Brisbane who follows them is some wanker from Canberra who won't live down there because he reckons it's a shitty boring city. He also thinks the ARU and ARLC have conspired with one another to not have an NRL team in Perth, so forgive me for thinking he's a nutcase. If a Raiders fan won't live in Canberra, what chance does the club have of enticing marquee players from interstate to sign with them?
You're talking to a Raiders fan who lives in Canberra lol. In fact the vast majority of Raiders fans are from Canberra or the surrounding region, so I don't know what the f**k you're talking about lol.
The Raiders don't struggle to sign and retain marquee players anymore than any of the other regional clubs either, and the meme about them struggling to sign players because "there's no beach in Canberra" comes directly from hacks in Sydney whom don't want to address the fact that the salary cap and structure of the competition significantly advantages certain clubs over others. However this is a giant tangent, then again everything you've said is a giant tangent from my original point...
What part of my alleged narrative is wrong?
Canberra were a basketcase until they poached Meninga, Belcher, Bennett, the Walters brothers and plenty of other Queenslanders from the BRL. Their last premiership was Mal Meninga's final rugby league game in 1994.
What has Canberra won since the BRL died in 1997?
Ch9 won't touch them with a 10 foot pole because they're worthless to the commercial sector. The Raiders Group has bought up God knows how many sporting clubs in SEQ to offset their poor returns from football operations. They're a classic example of a club that provides nothing and relies heavily on Queensland and NSW for survival, yet their fans want to dictate how the game is run in Brisbane and Sydney.
Pretty much all of it.
The Raiders were steadily building before they signed those players from Qld. They didn't 'raid' anybody, simply signed said players from Qld because they were the best available to them to fill those positions at the time, just like any other team would have. They would have been fools to overlook them because they were from Qld. Local players were also just as important to those squads of the 80s and 90s as imports from Qld, NZ, Fiji, etc, and for every Meninga, Belcher, and Walters there was a Daley, Stuart, and Clyde.
We know exactly how many clubs The Raiders Group owns in Qld; zero. They sold The Logan rec club and The Toowoomba Sports Club back to local owners in 2019 and a couple of months ago respectively. They do however own businesses and assets all over the joint. How many, if any, of those are in Qld specifically IDK, but again they'd be fools to turn down a business venture simply because it isn't located in the Capital Region.
They've also done a damn sight more than the ex-BRL clubs since 97, and have never felt the need to abuse the sports rorts to achieve what they have like Redcliffe did. . . But I digress... They've also done it all with massive handicaps compared to most of their competition. There's plenty you can criticise the Raiders for, but their success off the pitch is actually very impressive given their circumstances.
Finally, nobody in Canberra wants to 'dictate how the game is run in Brisbane and Sydney'. Literally couldn't care less, just keep it in Brisbane and Sydney where it belongs, and allow the national competition to develop into it's own independent thing, for it's own independent audience, instead of trying to warp it into a repackaged version of your suburban comp that nobody cares about.
I don't disagree with what you're saying here. It doesn't change the fact our game is practically governed by the broadcasters because that's where it sources the bulk of its income. Officials who've tried to stand up to te broadcastera have been knifed in the back by the clubs and RLPA because all they care about is the money on offer from Ch9 and Foxtel. Based on those parameters we're highly unlikely to see the game head in the direction that you and The Goose want it to go.
What is and what should and could be aren't the same thing, and, to an extent, the broadcasters only have as much power as they are given.
You've also shifted the goalposts from arguing that it's right that Brisbane should have more NRL licenses in the next 10 years at the expense of other markets, to arguing that it's a regrettable inevitability because of the broadcasters.