In 2000-2002, the Northern Eagles were sold to Coast locals as "it's own team". The sad facts were they were "Manly in Norths clothing" so to speak. That left a bitter taste in the mouth of the locals.
Manly would be highly unlikely to move, particularly to Bluetongue. Manly still draw good crowds to Brookvale, most recently they had 19,800 there for a match vs South Sydney. They've had a few lower crowds this season due to poor scheduling and bad weather.
If you've been paying attention to the bid scenario, you'd know that the screaming out for a team on the Central Coast is accounted for - the BEARS have a bid in and it's 7,000 members strong.
Would be different this time, as it would be their team.
They get an average of 12k. As well as full house they had against Souths they also had sub 10k crowds, and whenever they do people whine about the stadium. They can't upgrade that stadium.
If you've been paying attention to what people who actually are the powerbrokers for the expansion say (Gallop, clubs, still waiting for IC), everyone is simpathetic to the 7k members, but it has no influence on expansion. What matters most is TV revenue. BEARS are behind other bids in this regard, and the biggest argument in their favour is they got shafted unjustly last time. That is a sad story, but not going to make the NRL put a club there. It's irrelevant what you or I think of the situation, someone is going to sit down and do a research on how many new people are going to tune in on FTA, how many of new subscriptions on PayTV and that's going to be the bottom line.
..and we should take this onto another thread if continued..
