The problem with all the Sydney teams playing out of one or two central stadiums is you take away the need to have so many Sydney teams. if Manly, Cronulla and Penrith play away from there areas then what is the point of them?
It seems from these boards (and correct me if i'm wrong because i have never been) but people from these regions don't like to (or find it hard to) travel out of these areas. So if Manly play out of the SFS then the fans may as well support the Roosters and the Sea Eagles can move to the central coast/perth/wherever. Same for the sharks.
Its the same argument against ground sharing over here. Its the first step in a merge or a removal of a team.
Good point.
There are metropolitan clubs that attract a lot of their support from outside their districts - mostly SS, SGI, BUL, PAR, WT - but several are very much district clubs with a very large proportion of their membership and support base confined to the district. PEN & CRO were expansion clubs introduced to represent the growing areas of these regions.
The comparisons to the AFL model which some ill-informed journos like to make are not comparing a like for like. The NSWRL competition didn't develop in the way the VFL competition did. Much of the foundation clubs in the NSWRL have disappeared. Expansion focused on district representation, not necessarily club strengths in the lower tier VFA such as in the cases of North Melbourne, Hawthorn & Footscray in VFL expansion. Furthermore, although many of their clubs are named and based in inner-city areas, the support base of all their clubs come from across the melbourne metropolitan. To compare the locality of AFL clubs such as Melbourne, North Melbourne, Carlton, Collingwood, Richmond & Hawthorn down there to the Sydney metropolitan, it would be like having clubs in Sydney, North Sydney, Glebe, Pyrmont, Darlinghurst & Surry Hills. Collingwood isn't the biggest club in the country because of their support base in Collingwood. If anything, they probably have little support within Collingwood these days due to getrification in inner city slums as we have had here in Sydney.
Finally, and something that had a huge impact not only on the expansion of the NSWRL, but also, the development of micro-cities within the Sydney metro, is the sprawl. The Sydey metro area is a big area of land and extends about 65km from Bondi Beach to Emu Plains. The last thing a resident of Fairfield who works in Chatswood, wants to do is leave their district yet again in their days off, particularly with how geographic and transport infrastructures work up here. The CBD and transport hub where much of the public transport infrastructure centres on is in the far east of the metro. Compare this to the best example of stadia rationalisation in Melbourne, their sprawl is smaller, the CBD and transport hub is located in the centre of this, and their residents access to it is fairly adequate.
The issue is, governments and councils don't want to pump millions into stadia development for the ultimate benefit of 12 games a year, and likewise, there is no justification for clubs to invest in it as the return (@$25 or $30 an average ticket for 20k per game + advertising, etc) for the cost (labour cost in particular is huge on AUS building projects) is small. The model in Europe where clubs own their grounds works for them because they can play upwards of 30 home matches in these grounds. In the US, cities will fund stadiums (through city taxes) for teams because the economic benefits of having pro sports teams in their city is huge. In the case of Sydney metro clubs they are all competing for funds from mainly two sources - NSW State & AUS Federal govts - who also argue that they already have 3 stadia which they own and should be used. Most of the clubs who are desperate for stadia funding have no leverage.
