The whole rationalization period was a disaster for Rugby League and had a far bigger impact on the game than the Super League season. Reducing the teams from 22 in 1997 down to 14 was a ridiculously dumb idea and the number should have been at least 16.
in 1998 there were 12 Sydney clubs ideally you would want to half this number. There was a very simple and logical way to do this just by going using Geography and looking at the strengths and weaknesses of each club.
Sydney geographically can really be split into 7 areas.
City/Inner City (Easts,Balmain,Souths)
North Shore/Northern Beaches (Manly,Norths)
Southern City/The Shire (Souths,St George,Cronulla)
South Western Sydney (Canterbury,Wests)
North Western Sydney (Empty)
Centralish Sydney (Parramatta/Balmain/Canterbury)
Outer Western Sydney (Penrith)
St George has volunteered to merge with Illawarra which should lead to a relocation of the club to Wollongong for the most part.
North Sydney has volunteered to move to the Central Coast, which would mean another relocation.
Canterbury has announced that they intend to build a stadium and complex in Liverpool which would remove them from the Central Sydney clubs.
City/Inner City (Easts,Balmain,Souths)
North Shore/Northern Beaches (Manly)
Southern City/The Shire (Souths, Cronulla)
South Western Sydney (Canterbury,Wests)
North Western Sydney (Empty)
Centralish Sydney (Parramatta,Balmain)
Outer Western Sydney (Penrith)
This leaves the following mergers viable.
Souths & Easts
Easts & Balmain
Souths & Balmain
Souths & Cronulla
Canterbury & Wests
Parramatta & Balmain
You would need to make 3 teams out of those 6 viable mergers with 1 club left to stand alone.
With Canterbury and Wests being the most logical teams for a merger out of that group join together and base themselves out of Liverpool.
It leaves just two teams with one viable merger partner.
Cronulla and Parramatta. I would argue at the time Parramatta had a lot more upside as a stand-alone entity than Cronulla did. They had the 2nd best Stadium in Sydney, they had a larger junior base, more money and a larger fan base as well as Parramatta basically being a city in all but name they are in a strong position and don't have to merge.
So Parramatta is the stand-alone club. This leaves us with.
Souths & Easts
Easts & Balmain
Souths & Balmain
Souths & Cronulla
Of those 4 clubs, two were major rivals Souths and Easts so ideally they wouldn't have been made to merge.
This leaves the final two mergers as
Easts and Balmain - This merger makes perfect sense the clubs home grounds are only 8.5km apart. Easts bring to the table good administrative skills and a good stadium and recent success. Balmain brings in a decent enough junior base to make the club self-sustained when combined with Easts meagre junior base. Balmain has a loyal following so they could have brought an extra 5-8k a game to games which would have seen average attendance around the 17,000 per game mark, with room to grow. Games which would struggle to sell at the SFS can be moved to Leichhardt Oval.
Souths and Cronulla - This merger is a lot tougher the clubs are roughly 20-25km apart Redfern Oval to Shark Park is about 19km but SFS is further away. both clubs could help each other mainly through fan base they would have a very strong junior catchment area but neither club was ever well run so combined they may have done better it also shores up southern Sydney.
So with these mergers taking place, you would have been looking at 6 full-time Sydney based clubs with Central Coast and St George Illawarra occasionally playing in Sydney part-time.
Every single geographical area in Sydney is covered and all clubs still exist in some form.
This is how they should have done it.
What we got was a stupid criterion which had no thought put into it at all and it was all rushed and made no logical sense.
Wests Tigers existing is a miracle Balmain and Wests are located 48km apart and should never have been made to merge, Norths and Manly both hated each other so it was never going to work.
The reason why the joint ventures have failed is that they made sure Eastern Suburbs couldn't fail the rationalization process and would be a stand-alone club and they just weren't strong enough in any way other than who owned them to be a stand-alone club.
Because we had to keep the Roosters as a stand-alone club everyone else has suffered and the joint-ventures with the exception of St George-Illawarra were doomed to fail.
All the clubs which tried to stand alone Penrith,Souths and Norths and others all fought so hard to stand alone because Easts were going to be a stand-alone club. All of those clubs rightly thought that they had as much or more going for them than Eastern Suburbs did at the time.
So they shouldn't have allowed the clubs to decide they should have just looked at a bloody map and then joined the most vulnerable clubs together who didn't hate each other together.
If we did the rationalization process properly we would have 10 teams from the NSW and ACT with strong junior bases and fan bases so they would be more self-sufficient. It would be easier to upgrade stadiums because only three Sydney teams would need it.
It would also give room for 10 expansion clubs may be more because we wouldn't have to worry so much about Sydney clubs being weak because they would all be fairly strong.
