off topic..but...I hate it when people say that the ARL was not interested in expanding the game....
They had started to prior to the super league war....Western Reds, Gold Coast Seagulls, Nth Queensland Cowboys, Adelaide Rams? and Crushers were all in place before super league jumped in. The difference was these teams were not being propped up by news limtied at the time.
youre right, after previous success with already established clubs like brisbane and newcastle in 1988, they did try to expand the game in the early to mid 90's with the cowboys, warriors, reds, crushers and seagulls. superleague introduce teams such as the rams, mariners and i think gold coast at the time were called the chargers. only 2 of these clubs have survived in the cowboys and warriors (even though they have had a name change), you cant count gold coast as they collapsed 3 times (giants, seagulls, chargers) before becomming the titans. the reason for this is the arl failed to do what the nrl have been doing for the past half a dozen years or so in building a foundation. after those failed ventures they realized they needed to create a junior base before launching an nrl team. now they have junior systems all over the place, north queensland & central coast have had junior systems for a long time but only recently theyve introduced systems to melbourne, adelaide and perth. where the arl went wrong, for whatever reason, is they tried to go too big too quick and it hurt them in the end when they poured heaps of cash into these ventures only for them to go belly up. and ever since the arl have been a bit shy about expanding, the only reason melbourne are in the comp is because of the superleague era. had that not happened, i doubt their would be a team in melbourne or on the gold coast now. in the next decade we could have teams in perth, adelaide and on the central coast, but if that is to happen we may be looking at losing teams here in sydney. hope im wrong but we may only end up with teams like western sydney, north sydney or central coast, sydney and southern sydney or south coast. but back to the point, the last thing this game needs is for some fly blown twat constantly putting the game down. we have a better product than the other rival codes and in time people will see that. gallop would be under immense pressure right now with everything going on in the game at the moment and we just need to have faith in him and allow him to do his job.