Lessons for the NRL in shaky AFL expansion strategy
The Australian
April 15, 2015 12:00AM
Kevin Sheedy has set his compass and studied his maps for Melbourne and returned home. Dora The Explorer of the AFL is back, if not in familiar territory at Tullamarine at least in familiar surroundings. The Essendon Football Club.
Sheedy, who has spent a lifetime selling hope trinkets to Australians and even internationally, has finished up his commitment to have NSW awash with Greater Western Sydney stickers, scarves and jumpers. He now wants to explore ways he can help put Essendon back together again.
Sheedy, one of the most important figures in AFL history and a four-time Essendon premiership coach, was the perfect choice to take the notion of a second league side to the heathens of western Sydney.
GWS have struggled since their debut in 2012. The first two years the Giants finished last and the season just gone the club sewed up 16th place. Success has been slow in terms of wins but that is not the only marker that charts the clubs progress. Sponsorship, crowds and memberships are important, too.
This year GWS have won their first two matches and meet their big city rivals the Swans on Saturday at the SCG. Last year, GWS had their finest moment in their short life when they beat grand finalists the Swans in the opening round.
The AFL had set up camp at the Gold Coast a year before the Giants. The Suns were expected to have their best and most influential year this winter but they have lost their first two matches under new coach Rodney Eade. They should have been gimmes against Melbourne and St Kilda.
Worse, their prize signing for their start-up years was Gary Ablett, the countrys best AFL player Brownlow medallist, premiership player with Geelong and a heap of other things. Yesterday the club announced Ablett would be sidelined indefinitely by an irrepressible shoulder injury.
This expansion/exploration into Sydney and the Gold Coast has cost the AFL a minimum $110 million (that does not include annual AFL dividends) for the return of a collective 35 wins out of 158 games.
This is the world of sensitive costing the NRL is getting jelly legs about, as revealed exclusively by The Australian yesterday.
A word of caution from the AFL experience. Dont march forward. Shuffle. Obviously expansion it would mean exploration for any team in Western Australia is based in tiny part on growing the empire but mostly giving the Nine Network or any other broadcaster more product for broader, more flexible coverage. Or simply put ratings.
It was what mainly drove the AFL to expand, though it did want to get a footprint into new markets and create a buffer for the exploding soccer interest.
NRL expansion is essentially an equation. Will the cost of setting up two new clubs lets say one in Western Australia and another in Brisbane be matched by the extra money in the new TV deal?
If it is not then expansion becomes a drain on the competition coffers obviously, but it is also a financial sore the rest of the clubs will not stop scratching in frustration. Why do they have to carry large debts when the newbies are gifted millions that the competition might never see again?
The NRL is already effectively banker to four clubs. It will be automatically an ATM for expansion teams. And the AFL has discovered it is not the budget costs that kill you but the unknowns.
Gold Coast had momentum coming into this season. Ten wins last year put them just two games away from a spot in the finals. Many experts tipped them to make that graduation this season. After such a poor start and with the injury to Ablett, that might be impossible now.
It is apparent that Gold Coast should have started off with an experienced and hardened coach. Rodney Eade is there now but the grand final coach should have been running the show from the start. That is not to criticise the clubs first coach, Guy McKenna, but his style of mentoring was not the right fit for a group of kids with giddy heads. After four seasons the Suns are not ready for the harsh reality of AFL football. They havent got a clue. Ablett did and everybody thought that was good enough.
New clubs need the best coach available. More money if the right man needs to be winkled away from a club. The head coach needs a thick spread of assistants so that the message and the culture of the club is held tight.
They need a core of experienced players who will complement their younger teammates. GWS have got that right now with the recruiting of Ryan Griffen and Joel Patfull and the menacing presence of Shane Mumford.
If the NRL is going to expand to make the broadcast deal beyond 2017 sweeter then they need the clubs in place by 2016. As the AFL has found, there is no end to the way expansion clubs drain money away from the established sides. Even though the 18-team competition would not start until 2018, the NRL might have left it too late already.
