I do understand your point (so please don't tell me what I do and don't understand); however this has so far been the only example of this sort of thing happening and it is only because of the current and very unique situation the clubs and game find themselves in.
Do you honestly believe that when the inevitable happens and a club is struggling financially in the future that they are not going to touch the NRLW department?
What business do you know of that would cut costs in their most important income stream when they have another part of their business that is a net cost?
Even if the NRLW department does eventually become profitable in it's own right, it will still always play second fiddle to the NRL department, because the NRL will always be where the clubs make the majority of their money.
The NRLW has otherwise been popular and why other clubs want to buy into it. It's easy to be a naysayer and use this one example as your catalyst for saying the whole NRLW is flawed. Up until the shut down of the competitions the NRLW was still going ahead, they even had clubs recruiting and blooding girls at the 9s, so it's not like either the Roosters or Warriors had intentions of pulling out prior to the shutdown of the competition. There were no issues prior to coronavirus affecting the whole sporting landscape. This current issue may just mean the the NRLW, much like many other competitions in all sports, needs to be put on hiatus for 2020. I don't see this as "all is lost".
This is the
first example, it's inevitable that it'll happen again.This is also just one of many reasons why the NRLW as a business is flawed, not the only reason, not even the biggest reason.
Also I know it's not politically correct, but can we not blow smoke up peoples arses by saying that the NRLW has been popular. Lets be honest, it has to be less than one percent of the NRLW's audience that is paying for a ticket to see them. Basically everybody in the stadium is there for the game afterwards. I'm not knocking them for that, I'm just being honest.
You'll probably find this is also to do with the State Leagues (NSWRL & QRL) cancelling their competitions for the year and as such the women, who are not full-time professionals, suffer because they haven't had the year to condition, go through selections (National Women's Championship), etc and all the lead up that prepares them for the NRLW at the end of the year.
They were very clear that it was a cost cutting exercise.
As for your point that the NRLW should have been started up with individual/unique clubs away from the NRL; I think you would have found that the NRL/ARLC didn't want to do this because of the cost to set up 4 non-affiliated women's teams. Having them aligned with NRL clubs gives them exposure to an established fanbase, facilities to use, stadiums are already locked in so they don't have to compete for venues with other sports/club + the extra rent, lowers the financial burden on the NRL to fund it, etc.
It wouldn't have cost the NRL anything more, they'd have just been giving their grants to 4 new clubs instead of the NRL clubs, and lets be honest, there is no added exposure or benefit from an established fan-base by playing for a pre-existing club.
Anybody that was interested in following or supporting the NRLW would have done it with or without the NRL clubs (if anything you've turned away people who don't support the NRL clubs with NRLW teams), and 95%+ of the fans of those clubs couldn't care less about the NRLW team aside from the novelty factor.
It's the difference between Canberra United and Sydney FC's female team. Sydney FC is better funded and is a bigger club, but Canberra United has way more fans than Sydney FC's women's team.
Maybe in the future we'll see some stand alone clubs, much like the NBL/WNBL, but the NRL needed somewhere to start it off with the lowest burden.
We won't see that.
The NRLW isn't about trying to legitimately build another product for the NRL to sell, it's about ticking political boxes.
Any future NRLW expansion will be through the NRL clubs, most of the clubs won't put any effort into it and will just use it as a tool to gain extra funding from the NRL, and the NRLW will probably never be profitable in it's own right and will continue to be totally subsidised by the men's competition.
