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<HEADLINE>Rugby league fumbles as footy goes upmarket</HEADLINE>
<BYLINE>By PAUL SHEEHAN,</BYLINE>
<DATE>Tuesday, October 2, 2001</DATE><WOF> </WOF>
<table border=0 cellpadding=2 cellspacing=1> <tbody> <tr> <td bgcolor=#333366 nowrap>email to a friend</td> <td bgcolor=#333366 nowrap>printer version</td></tr></tbody></table> <hr size=1 width="100%"> <BOD> Huge crowd. Passionate tribes. Olympic Stadium. High TV ratings. The climax to an exciting, wide-open finals series. Sunday night's National Rugby League grand final was a showpiece for the game, but when all the cheering has died down for another year, league will find itself trapped inside its own limitations. It will find that the most successful executive in the game, Denis Fitzgerald, is spending the off-season trying to pour millions of dollars into league's traditional class enemy, rugby union. Does Fitzgerald, general manager of the Parramatta rugby league team for the past 22 years and manager of the wealthy Parramatta Leagues Club, think the class warriors inside league will give him flak for this? Yes. "I think there'll be some adverse comments but I don't think there is much they can do about it." No, there isn't. Fitzgerald knows how to read a map: "The big growth area for rugby is in north-west Sydney. Look at the demographics. Look at the Super12 tickets purchased through Ticketek 65 per cent were from the north-west. It encompasses a huge growth area, all those big homes in the Hills, Pennant Hills, Cherrybrook, Baulkham Hills, Castle Hill, Dural, Kellyville, Rouse Hill ... So there is a big supporter base. There's certainly the grassroots talent looking to play rugby locally and to aspire to elite rugby. And we already have a superb purpose-built stadium which we want to develop." What he politely neglects to mention is that the north-west boom belt is middle class, and much of the middle class has a limited tolerance for going to games where bogans scream, "Break the c---! Break him in two!". Given a choice between a complex, international game (rugby) and a simpler, more insular, increasingly isolated one (league), the middle class is going where it always goes, upmarket. Or to the AFL. While corporate wars turned league into a slaughterhouse, liquidating 11 teams and manufacturing several more, the Australian Football League transformed itself into the national powerhouse that league wanted to become but now cannot. On Saturday, the Brisbane Lions, wearing the colours of the old Fitzroy club (the AFL, unlike the NRL, is acutely sensitive to tradition), won the grand final and brought the pennant to Queensland for the first time. The Lions have also attracted bigger crowds in Brisbane than the former league champion Brisbane Broncos. By contrast, league's remaining colony, the Melbourne Storm, is a financial disaster, a grassroots non-event that survives on the largesse of News Limited. It is expected to be rolled up and shipped to the Gold Coast. League's national strategy has failed, and it has lost ground to rugby union, which is thriving in the new professional era. Having won the head-to-head battle in Canberra, having seen the Wallabies outrate league's State of Origin showpiece, rugby now wants and needs to expand. Which brings us back to Fitzgerald. What he is offering appears more compelling than anything coming from the other cities that want a new Super12 rugby franchise Melbourne, Perth, or the Central Coast. League's experience has shown that teams imposed on communities by corporate boardrooms have a high mortality rate. So what is the point of colonising Melbourne or Perth while the vastly bigger rugby territory of western Sydney remains untapped? Western Sydney has by far the strongest demographics and grassroots infrastructure of the four contenders. The brutal reality is that a fourth franchise will be fed from the Sydney club competition, which provides all the Super12 players for the NSW Waratahs, half the ACT Brumbies and four for the Queensland Reds. The only first grade club near the north-west boom belt is Eastwood, which now has the deepest strength in the Sydney competition, making all six grand finals in the club competition this year. There is also Parramatta Stadium, and the millions of dollars that Fitzgerald is willing to put on the table. He has been propping up the Parramatta rugby union club for 10 years. "None of this diminishes our development of league," he says of his beloved game. "We've just won the club championship for the fifth year in a row. Our junior league is one of the few areas where player numbers are increasing. But we've not just been putting time and effort and money into junior league. We've put millions into soccer. We want to see as many kids as possible in western Sydney playing sport. It doesn't have to be league. With the diversity of backgrounds here, it is better if they are playing football league, soccer, union than not." The prize he wants is Parramatta Stadium, owned by the State Government. The Premier, Bob Carr, has promised $1.5 million to fund terraced seating on the hills at either end of the ground. Parramatta is willing to spend millions more to build covered stands at either end and expand corporate facilities. In return for these millions, the club wants management rights of the stadium. Fitzgerald may not get them if he cannot strike an alliance with rugby and bring a Super14 franchise to western Sydney. This presents an obvious opportunity for the Australian Rugby Union. It must expand by building on grassroots strengths, not corporate strategies. And there already is a fourth rugby franchise in Australia with a great heritage NSW Country the Cockatoos, which has been playing internationals for a hundred years. Based at a refurbished 25,000-seat stadium, the Cockatoos could be the apex of a territory that includes NSW country and western Sydney. Right in the heartland of rugby league. Denis Fitzgerald is a smart man. And a brave one.</td></tr></tbody></table>
<HEADLINE>Rugby league fumbles as footy goes upmarket</HEADLINE>
<BYLINE>By PAUL SHEEHAN,</BYLINE>
<DATE>Tuesday, October 2, 2001</DATE><WOF> </WOF>
<table border=0 cellpadding=2 cellspacing=1> <tbody> <tr> <td bgcolor=#333366 nowrap>email to a friend</td> <td bgcolor=#333366 nowrap>printer version</td></tr></tbody></table> <hr size=1 width="100%"> <BOD> Huge crowd. Passionate tribes. Olympic Stadium. High TV ratings. The climax to an exciting, wide-open finals series. Sunday night's National Rugby League grand final was a showpiece for the game, but when all the cheering has died down for another year, league will find itself trapped inside its own limitations. It will find that the most successful executive in the game, Denis Fitzgerald, is spending the off-season trying to pour millions of dollars into league's traditional class enemy, rugby union. Does Fitzgerald, general manager of the Parramatta rugby league team for the past 22 years and manager of the wealthy Parramatta Leagues Club, think the class warriors inside league will give him flak for this? Yes. "I think there'll be some adverse comments but I don't think there is much they can do about it." No, there isn't. Fitzgerald knows how to read a map: "The big growth area for rugby is in north-west Sydney. Look at the demographics. Look at the Super12 tickets purchased through Ticketek 65 per cent were from the north-west. It encompasses a huge growth area, all those big homes in the Hills, Pennant Hills, Cherrybrook, Baulkham Hills, Castle Hill, Dural, Kellyville, Rouse Hill ... So there is a big supporter base. There's certainly the grassroots talent looking to play rugby locally and to aspire to elite rugby. And we already have a superb purpose-built stadium which we want to develop." What he politely neglects to mention is that the north-west boom belt is middle class, and much of the middle class has a limited tolerance for going to games where bogans scream, "Break the c---! Break him in two!". Given a choice between a complex, international game (rugby) and a simpler, more insular, increasingly isolated one (league), the middle class is going where it always goes, upmarket. Or to the AFL. While corporate wars turned league into a slaughterhouse, liquidating 11 teams and manufacturing several more, the Australian Football League transformed itself into the national powerhouse that league wanted to become but now cannot. On Saturday, the Brisbane Lions, wearing the colours of the old Fitzroy club (the AFL, unlike the NRL, is acutely sensitive to tradition), won the grand final and brought the pennant to Queensland for the first time. The Lions have also attracted bigger crowds in Brisbane than the former league champion Brisbane Broncos. By contrast, league's remaining colony, the Melbourne Storm, is a financial disaster, a grassroots non-event that survives on the largesse of News Limited. It is expected to be rolled up and shipped to the Gold Coast. League's national strategy has failed, and it has lost ground to rugby union, which is thriving in the new professional era. Having won the head-to-head battle in Canberra, having seen the Wallabies outrate league's State of Origin showpiece, rugby now wants and needs to expand. Which brings us back to Fitzgerald. What he is offering appears more compelling than anything coming from the other cities that want a new Super12 rugby franchise Melbourne, Perth, or the Central Coast. League's experience has shown that teams imposed on communities by corporate boardrooms have a high mortality rate. So what is the point of colonising Melbourne or Perth while the vastly bigger rugby territory of western Sydney remains untapped? Western Sydney has by far the strongest demographics and grassroots infrastructure of the four contenders. The brutal reality is that a fourth franchise will be fed from the Sydney club competition, which provides all the Super12 players for the NSW Waratahs, half the ACT Brumbies and four for the Queensland Reds. The only first grade club near the north-west boom belt is Eastwood, which now has the deepest strength in the Sydney competition, making all six grand finals in the club competition this year. There is also Parramatta Stadium, and the millions of dollars that Fitzgerald is willing to put on the table. He has been propping up the Parramatta rugby union club for 10 years. "None of this diminishes our development of league," he says of his beloved game. "We've just won the club championship for the fifth year in a row. Our junior league is one of the few areas where player numbers are increasing. But we've not just been putting time and effort and money into junior league. We've put millions into soccer. We want to see as many kids as possible in western Sydney playing sport. It doesn't have to be league. With the diversity of backgrounds here, it is better if they are playing football league, soccer, union than not." The prize he wants is Parramatta Stadium, owned by the State Government. The Premier, Bob Carr, has promised $1.5 million to fund terraced seating on the hills at either end of the ground. Parramatta is willing to spend millions more to build covered stands at either end and expand corporate facilities. In return for these millions, the club wants management rights of the stadium. Fitzgerald may not get them if he cannot strike an alliance with rugby and bring a Super14 franchise to western Sydney. This presents an obvious opportunity for the Australian Rugby Union. It must expand by building on grassroots strengths, not corporate strategies. And there already is a fourth rugby franchise in Australia with a great heritage NSW Country the Cockatoos, which has been playing internationals for a hundred years. Based at a refurbished 25,000-seat stadium, the Cockatoos could be the apex of a territory that includes NSW country and western Sydney. Right in the heartland of rugby league. Denis Fitzgerald is a smart man. And a brave one.</td></tr></tbody></table>
