Cronulla to Perth

[The Great Dane]

Moving Manly to Perf would make a lot more sense. They’ve easily got the worst facilities out of all the clubs, plus I don’t like silver tails.

It makes no sense to let the only team north of the bridge in Sydney go under while there're multiple teams in each other sub-market all fighting over the same territory.

What Manly needs is an administration that realises that the club can no longer survive as solely a Manly club, and that if they wish to survive into the future they need to go about making themselves a team for all of North Sydney.

 

[The Great Dane]

It’d be better just to let Cronulla fold and start up a new franchise that the fans can get behind

Though I agree new teams in new markets is generally the best way to go, why let them fold?

Cronulla (or pretty much any other NRL club) could be a very useful asset if they were to go tits up in the NRL, for example dropping them down into the second tier could be a win win for everybody.

No need to let them die.

 

[flippikat]

Though I agree new teams in new markets is generally the best way to go, why let them fold?

Cronulla (or pretty much any other NRL club) could be a very useful asset if they were to go tits up in the NRL, for example dropping them down into the second tier could be a win win for everybody.

Yep. It ties in with the whole idea of a 2nd tier that has traditional clubs that have dropped out from NRL level or been lost via mergers (Jets, Bears.. add in Sharks if they go under, Steelers, Magpies as well..)

 

[flippikat]

It makes no sense to let the only team north of the bridge in Sydney go under while there're multiple teams in each other sub-market all fighting over the same territory.

What Manly needs is an administration that realises that the club can no longer survive as solely a Manly club, and that if they wish to survive into the future they need to go about making themselves a team for all of North Sydney.

Spot on. The Sea-Eagles can still have a "fortress" mentality.. the whole "Us against them" thing.. but the "Us" can potentially be all the suburbs north of the Harbour Bridge.

They don't have to add the Central Coast into the mix, either - actually best they don't IMO, it just spreads their focus too thin. The Central Coast can stay a potential location for another club to relocate to (Roosters? Tigers? Sharks?).

 

[The Great Dane]

Spot on. The Sea-Eagles can still have a "fortress" mentality.. the whole "Us against them" thing.. but the "Us" can potentially be all the suburbs north of the Harbour Bridge.

They don't have to add the Central Coast into the mix, either - actually best they don't IMO, it just spreads their focus too thin. The Central Coast can stay a potential location for another club to relocate to (Roosters? Tigers? Sharks?).

Everybody with half a brain can see that Manly should be aggressively marketing themselves in NS outside of just Manly Warringah, and should have been doing so for 15 years now, except them of course.
They should be re-branding as the North Sydney Sea Eagles (or some other similar name) and absolutely assaulting the NS market with marketing, advertising, and constant community outreach.

But Yeah they should definitely stay away from the CC, they'd be spreading themselves to thin at that point and IMO it'd be unnecessary.

Also on the CC, nobody should relocate there, nor should it be held as a place for an NRL club to relocate to in a time of need, or even as a potential expansion market for an NRL club (outside of extraordinary circumstances), and realistically if relocation was on the cards then there're way to many better options on the table that'd get a club over the CC anyway.
The only scenario where I'd consider them for relocation would be if it was part of a rationalisation plan that was specifically designed with the intention to take as much pressure off the Sydney market with as little impact on the clubs fan bases as possible, but I'm pretty much against relocation full stop (again outside of extraordinary circumstances) so I wouldn't even really support that...

 

[taipan]

Begs the question, what if interstate or intrastate teams get into the financial poo?
Based on the NRL announcement, no more financial support .

 

[flippikat]

Begs the question, what if interstate or intrastate teams get into the financial poo?
Based on the NRL announcement, no more financial support .

That's a good question. Maybe that the club would be supported to play out the season (remember, the broadcast contract requires 8 games per week), but the NRL would move as quickly as possible to facilitate a sale to new owners - either the whole set of assets (from intellectual property to equipment), or at the other extreme just the license.

I guess one of the conditions of sale of the license-only (if it came to that) would be "you have to put the new team in the same city as the broke team, for strategic reasons".. I mean, can you imagine the Knights or Cowboys license being bought by a Syndicate that wants to move the license to Melbourne as a 2nd team there?

 

[The Great Dane]

Begs the question, what if interstate or intrastate teams get into the financial poo?
Based on the NRL announcement, no more financial support .

We know exactly what they'd do...

They'd do exactly what they did with the Titans and Knights, take ownership of the clubs to maintain their contracts with broadcasters until such a time as they can flip the club and all it's assets to the highest bidder with an interest in maintaining the club in it's current location.

If nobody is interested in buying the club with all it's assets then things really get interesting, cause that really begs the question of what they would do!
Who really knows if they would be open to just selling the license to a new consortium or even allowing an interested consortium to relocate the license...

However if I had to guess I'd say that it probably depends on which club and where it's located, lets say that hypothetically the Broncos or Storm go under and nobody is interested in buying the club, in that scenario it's extremely unlikely that the NRL would be willing to relocate the license cause having a club in either Brisbane or Melbourne is extremely valuable to them and broadcasters, so if absolutely nobody was interested in buying the club then they'd probably look to sell the license to a local consortium that is interested in the license but none of the other assets (e.g. Redcliffe were interested in the license but not the Broncos brand and other assets, nobody bought the Broncos brand and other assets along with the license so the NRL sold the license to Redcliffe and the Dolphins entered the NRL the next season), however if no local consortium was interested in the license either then the NRL would probably continue to own and operate the club out of their own pocket for the foreseeable future and try to sell it to local consortiums again some time in the future cause losing the club in Brisbane or Melbourne would be a bigger hit to them then the benefits of relocating the only Brisbane or Melbourne license to other markets.

However lets say that it is Canberra or Newcastle that are going under and no consortium was interested in the club and all it's assets and no local consortium was interested in the license either, but their were consortiums in other markets (e.g. Perth and/or Adelaide) that were interested in the license, then I reckon that after they'd doted the i's and crossed the t's that the NRL would sell the license to one of those consortiums interested in relocating the license, cause a club in one of those markets like Perth or Adelaide is more valuable to them and broadcasters then a club in either Canberra or Newcarstle. But of course this is just speculation at this point and we don't really know what they'd do if things went that far.

 

[Rhyno]

Shark fans don’t even care enough about their team to comment here more proof it’s just better to let the sharks fold

 

[flippikat]

However lets say that it is Canberra or Newcastle that are going under and no consortium was interested in the club and all it's assets and no local consortium was interested in the license either, but their were consortiums in other markets (e.g. Perth and/or Adelaide) that were interested in the license, then I reckon that after they'd doted the i's and crossed the t's that the NRL would sell the license to one of those consortiums interested in relocating the license, cause a club in one of those markets like Perth or Adelaide is more valuable to them and broadcasters then a club in either Canberra or Newcarstle. But of course this is just speculation at this point and we don't really know what they'd do if things went that far.

Good expansion on what I was hinting at above, right there.. and a pretty good point in closing (quoted above).

You can probably group the non-Sydney clubs in 2 categories - Big city (Brisbane, Auckland, Melbourne) and medium-city (Canberra, Newcastle, Townsville).

I can't see the NRL ever wanting to lose Brisbane, Auckland or Melbourne.. but it could get interesting *if* the Raiders, Knights or possibly even Cowboys fall over and the only buyer for the license is a syndicate wanting to move the license to a big city (e.g. Perth or Adelaide).

Unlikely scenario, but food for thought.

 

[2012....Sharks Year]

Shark fans don’t even care enough about their team to comment here more proof it’s just better to let the sharks fold

Not a matter of not caring.... more a case of can't be bothered contributing to a thread that Is clueless in the least. The fact that you are lurking here further emphasises this....

 

[taipan]

Just thought I'd throw in a few extracts from a story by Roy Masters in the Snoring Herald 30/12/18 , to those content playing armchair generals:-

"
The NRL and News Ltd promised us the joint ventures would become super clubs, greater than the sum of the two.However crowd figures of the surviving franchises demonstrates this is not so.
In 2018 West tiger's home crowds averaged 17,291 ,compared to the Magpies 1999 home attendance of 8,224 and Balmain 9,710.St George -Illawarra 2018 home crowd averaged 16,606, while the Dragon's home crowd pre-merger was 10,394 and the Steeler's 9,248.
In each case the sum of the pre-merger crowds is greater than the 2018 attendance.This is despite Sydney's population growth over the past 20 years.
The popularity of the code was at a low in 1998 ,the year following the morale-sapping SL war.North Sydney fans didn't shift to follow Manly, whose crowds have not increased.Fans of the Bears probably switched to the Waratahs or Swans or justifiably abandoned any winter sport.
The lesson? Should the under-siege Sharks be relocated to Perth,
NZ or Queensland, it doesn't mean their fans will follow the Dragons.Cronulla is solid rugby league territory and there is a degree of antipathy to the Dragons who now border them in the North and South.
It is more likely Shark's fans will follow the example of North's supporters and abandon the game.
The question for the NRL boffins, as they spend a year pondering expansions whether the growth of the game in a new territory ,evidenced by Melbourne ,will be greater than the loss of fans in the homeland, like Cronulla."

Roy is pretty close to the mark, and it's fairly obvious the NRL is taking 12 months to make a decisions as to what lies ahead, as they realise continuing white anting your home base ,when other codes like soccer and AFL are expanding here ,is a recipe for further fan disillusion and desertion.
That doesn't mean expansion should not go ahead BTW.

 

[Perth Red]

Just thought I'd throw in a few extracts from a story by Roy Masters in the Snoring Herald 30/12/18 , to those content playing armchair generals:-

"
The NRL and News Ltd promised us the joint ventures would become super clubs, greater than the sum of the two.However crowd figures of the surviving franchises demonstrates this is not so.
In 2018 West tiger's home crowds averaged 17,291 ,compared to the Magpies 1999 home attendance of 8,224 and Balmain 9,710.St George -Illawarra 2018 home crowd averaged 16,606, while the Dragon's home crowd pre-merger was 10,394 and the Steeler's 9,248.
In each case the sum of the pre-merger crowds is greater than the 2018 attendance.This is despite Sydney's population growth over the past 20 years.
The popularity of the code was at a low in 1998 ,the year following the morale-sapping SL war.North Sydney fans didn't shift to follow Manly, whose crowds have not increased.Fans of the Bears probably switched to the Waratahs or Swans or justifiably abandoned any winter sport.
The lesson? Should the under-siege Sharks be relocated to Perth,
NZ or Queensland, it doesn't mean their fans will follow the Dragons.Cronulla is solid rugby league territory and there is a degree of antipathy to the Dragons who now border them in the North and South.
It is more likely Shark's fans will follow the example of North's supporters and abandon the game.
The question for the NRL boffins, as they spend a year pondering expansions whether the growth of the game in a new territory ,evidenced by Melbourne ,will be greater than the loss of fans in the homeland, like Cronulla."

Roy is pretty close to the mark, and it's fairly obvious the NRL is taking 12 months to make a decisions as to what lies ahead, as they realise continuing white anting your home base ,when other codes like soccer and AFL are expanding here ,is a recipe for further fan disillusion and desertion.
That doesn't mean expansion should not go ahead BTW.

He’s totally missing the point of sustainability. 17k for the Tigers makes them a hell of a lot more sustainable than 8k for Balmain and9k for magpies!

We all know you’ll lose the rusted on sharks fans, some will stop following the game in protest, some will follow the game more apathetically, the softcocks might become swans fans but the kids, there’s no reason to lose them if the nrl does it’s job correctly. As they growup, and as long as RL is still,aged and talked about at school then they will grow up following one of the other Sydney teams, probably whoever their mates are following.

After that factor in the new fans you gain in a new expansion area and things don’t look so bad for the game overall, sucks for the fans of the lost club though.

 

[taipan]

He’s totally missing the point of sustainability. 17k for the Tigers makes them a hell of a lot more sustainable than 8k for Balmain and9k for magpies!

We all know you’ll lose the rusted on sharks fans, some will stop following the game in protest, some will follow the game more apathetically, the softcocks might become swans fans but the kids, there’s no reason to lose them if the nrl does it’s job correctly. As they growup, and as long as RL is still,aged and talked about at school then they will grow up following one of the other Sydney teams, probably whoever their mates are following.

After that factor in the new fans you gain in a new expansion area and things don’t look so bad for the game overall, sucks for the fans of the lost club though.

You missed the point.The fans lost in a growing population not a stagnant nor falling one ,is his point.
JVs don't solve all the problems. Robbing Peter to pay Paul and finding the amount taken is getting less each year, solves little.
It's not much use having a joint venture if your crowds keep dwindling.That in the long term does not represent sustainability.

Balmain were in dire straits so agree they needed support, and had no way of financially getting back on their own.They lost fans as a result, and so did Illawarra.And they haven't been made up ,as Masters has elaborated upon.

As far as Shark fans goes, as North Sydney has shown, it's not just the rusted on fans ,but the casual ones that drop off.And the Sharks have plenty of casual ones as semis and finals have shown.The ones who attend a couple of local games a year with their mates are also important.They also buy merchandise and final's tickets and watch on TV>

I saw the antagonism and people throwing in the rugby league towel when the Sharks decided to go to SL.I attended the meeting then, you didn't.
You appear to have little idea of the attitude of Shark's fans, if they lose their team.They won't be talking about their team at school, because the area won't have one.Some will protest LOL.
You may as well be spruiking that view from Hull.

And you're also surmising the Sharks will not be financially sustainable, yet the NRL want to see a viable long term presence by the Sharks in the Shire , and Beattie has admitted expansion it's not an easy matter anyway.

As to the the younger generation, there are other options now ,which did not exist to that extent in 1995.The Sharks were just about the first to push for rl for women, and bring in womens and girl's teams.

Masters does (and he is pro expansion viz a viz Melbourne),and I would also back his judgement as well as my decades following the team in my local area.As well as opinions of locals who have similar interests to me.

It's well presented on these and other sport sites, the local press, the position that would prevail should the team relocate or be axed.

Ironic, when SL came in fans dropped off all over the place ,and when Perth Reds were on the way to losing out ,their numbers dropped off markedly.Soft cocks !!!!! The argument just some would drop off ,is thus flawed.
Just as it was also for the JV teams

You still work on the armchair general approach, without knowing the conditions on the "battlefield"

The point you missed in my addendum, expansion can be achieved without the need for further cuts.

 

[The Great Dane]

You missed the point.The fans lost in a growing population not a stagnant nor falling one ,is his point.
JVs don't solve all the problems. Robbing Peter to pay Paul and finding the amount taken is getting less each year, soles little.
It's not much use having a joint venture if your crowds keep dwindling.That in the long term does not represent sustainability.

Balmain were in dire straits so agree they needed support, and had no way of financially getting back on their own.They lost fans as a result, and so did Illawarra.And they haven't been made up ,as Masters has elaborated upon.

As far as Shark fans goes, as North Sydney has shown, it's not just the rusted on fans ,but the casual ones that drop off.And the Sharks have plenty of casual ones as semis and finals have shown.The ones who attend a couple of local games a year with their mates are also important.They also buy merchandise and final's tickets and watch on TV>

I saw the antagonism and people throwing in the rugby league towel when the Sharks decided to go to SL.I attended the meeting then, you didn't.
You appear to have little idea of the attitude of Shark's fans, if they lose their team.They won't be talking about their team at school, because the area won't have one.Some will protest LOL.
You may as well be spruiking that view from Hull.

And you're also surmising the Sharks will not be financially sustainable, yet the NRL want to see a viable long term presence by the Sharks in the Shire , and Beattie has admitted expansion it's not an easy matter anyway.

As to the the younger generation, there are other options now ,which did not exist to that extent in 1995.The Sharks were just about the first to push for rl for women, and bring in womens and girl's teams.

Masters does (and he is pro expansion viz a viz Melbourne),and I would also back his judgement as well as my decades following the team in my local area.As well as opinions of locals who have similar interests to me.

It's well presented on these and other sport sites, the local press, the position that would prevail should the team relocate or be axed.

Ironic, when SL came in fans dropped off all over the place ,and when Perth Reds were on the way to losing out ,their numbers dropped off markedly.Soft cocks !!!!! The argument just some would drop off ,is thus flawed.
Just as it was also for the JV teams

You still work on the armchair general approach, without knowing the conditions on the "battlefield"

The point you missed in my addendum, expansion can be achieved without the need for further cuts.

Nope you and Masters are the ones that are missing the point...

You are making three mistakes:

1. Your ideas only make sense if fans aren't a perishable resource, when fans (like all other humans) certainly are perishable.

2. You assume that the fact that an area loses a local team salts the earth for future growth when that is objectively false.

3. You assume that fans aren't interchangeable, when realistically they are.

If it was the case that fans were immortal you'd have a point, cause those fans would be bitter towards the sport forever more and would poison the well for the sport within their communities forever more, but we aren't immortal, and memories only last so long.

There're are kids right now in NS who are RL fans that haven't really got the faintest clue who the NS Bears are/were despite the fact that their farther and his farther's before him were all lifelong Bears fans, and when you start talking about older clubs like Glebe and the Dales there're whole communities of people who have roughly the same rate of participation as the rest of Sydney per capita most of whom don't even realise that they once had 'their' own club and have no emotional attachment to those old clubs what so ever (it's pretty hard to have an emotional attachment to something when you don't even realise that it ever existed isn't it!).

Once you take those things into account the argument falls apart and all that is left is the emotional appeal...

 

[The Great Dane]

Good expansion on what I was hinting at above, right there.. and a pretty good point in closing (quoted above).

You can probably group the non-Sydney clubs in 2 categories - Big city (Brisbane, Auckland, Melbourne) and medium-city (Canberra, Newcastle, Townsville).

I can't see the NRL ever wanting to lose Brisbane, Auckland or Melbourne.. but it could get interesting *if* the Raiders, Knights or possibly even Cowboys fall over and the only buyer for the license is a syndicate wanting to move the license to a big city (e.g. Perth or Adelaide).

Unlikely scenario, but food for thought.

It's probably three groups in my estimation.

Brisbane and Melbourne in one group and Canberra, Newcastle, and NQ in the second like you say and then NZ and the GC that are more complicated due to outside influences.

 

[Fat Tony Kandos]

The Canberra Raiders would be relocated to Perth before the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks.

 

[Perth Red]

Not to mention some nice selctive cherry picking of years by masters, in 1994 Balmain avg’d 7,800 and west’s avg’d 6,800. A total of 14,600.
In 2006 wests tigers avg 18,100.
Wow look at how successful mergers are!

 

[taipan]

Not to mention some nice selctive cherry picking of years by masters, in 1994 Balmain avg’d 7,800 and west’s avg’d 6,800. A total of 14,600.
In 2006 wests tigers avg 18,100.
Wow look at how successful mergers are!

Regardless of his cherry picking ,which is also your expertise,he has had more experience in rugby league than you or I put together.He was also involved in the Australian Sports Commission.He was also a coach of Western suburbs Magpies before I'd suggest you ebbed in on these WA shores and a coach of the Dragons.And you somehow know more than he.

And in 1994 there was no SL wars much for selective cherry picking.Pot v kettle.And who won the G/F in 2005 ....you fill in the blanks .
Yeah let's ignore the current period 2018,I mean it has zero bearing sheesh.

 

[Perth Red]

Regardless of his cherry picking ,which is also your expertise,he has had more experience in rugby league than you or I put together.He was also involved in the Australian Sports Commission.He was also a coach of Western suburbs Magpies before I'd suggest you ebbed in on these WA shores and a coach of the Dragons.And you somehow know more than he.

And in 1994 there was no SL wars much for selective cherry picking.Pot v kettle.And who won the G/F in 2005 ....you fill in the blanks .
Yeah let's ignore the current period 2018,I mean it has zero bearing sheesh.

Crowds go up and down. Who’d have thought it? He cherry picked crowd stats to suit his argument, it’s easily done as I’ve just shown to counter argue his point. The cold hard indisputable fact is there are more people watching the game on tv and attending games than before the mergers and Bears removal.

He’s got a great history in the game but his superficial use of cherry picked attendances is lazy journalism and does not stack up when you look at the bigger trend of attendances and tv viewing of the nrl. And that’s without throwing in the argument about a more general decline in sports attendances across all codes in Australia in the last decade.

The other Reality is west’s tigers are far more likely to be long term sustainable than either Balmain or magpies standing alone and melbourne offer a great deal more than ns bears.

Will the nrl decide it has the confidence to expand with more teams added? will it be brave enough to relocate or drop clubs if it wants a stronger national footprint without more mouths to feed? Will it continue to procrastinate and sit on its hands for another decade? I guess we will hopefully know by this time next year.