"It’s very realistic to say that we’ll have a second team in Brisbane in 2023": V'landys

[Get Rid of The Donkeys]

So Brisbane just got to keep their entire playing list, the same board, all home games in Brisbane. Fitzroy did not approve or want the ‘merger’. There was no votes and technically, no merger. The AFL on behalf of Brisbane simply bought eight players and a new mascot.
After 1997, Fitzroy partnered with a Coburg in the VFL, then with Uni Reds to become the Fitzroy Red. It is legally and morally the same club that was formed in the 19th century.
Brisbane gained around a third of Fitzroy supporters, a third changed to other clubs and a third were lost to the game. Perhaps they became Storm fans.

It was a merger/relocation/take over. It would have made no sense playing games in Fitzroy when there was just one club in Queensland and a gazillion in Melbourne. AwFuL has a better run administration than the turkeys running our game. I hate AwFuL and wish it was dead, but I cannot deny how much better they are at running their game.

 

[Jamberoo]

It was a merger/relocation/take over. It would have made no sense playing games in Fitzroy when there was just one club in Queensland and a gazillion in Melbourne. AwFuL has a better run administration than the turkeys running our game. I hate AwFuL and wish it was dead, but I cannot deny how much better they are at running their game.

It was the purchase of some of Fitzroy’s assets. There were in receivership and had lost their AFL licence. It was a fire sale.
It was a massive win for Brisbane, and a big loss for Fitzroy and their fans. The AFL made a mess of a number of proposed mergers in 1996 and have since abandon all talk of future mergers. The AFL has been run a lot better since. They are now pressuring North Melbourne to relocate, or partially relocate to Tasmania.

 

[titoelcolombiano]

what about the Western Dragons. Move them to Perth.

Move them to the English Superleague and call them the St George Dragons

 

[Get Rid of The Donkeys]

It was the purchase of some of Fitzroy’s assets. There were in receivership and had lost their AFL licence. It was a fire sale.
It was a massive win for Brisbane, and a big loss for Fitzroy and their fans. The AFL made a mess of a number of proposed mergers in 1996 and have since abandon all talk of future mergers. The AFL has been run a lot better since. They are now pressuring North Melbourne to relocate, or partially relocate to Tasmania.

To be fair, Fitzroy should have relocated to Brisbane in 1986 as they were broke. The only thing that kept them alive was licence fees they got from the introduction of West Coast Eagles and Brisbane Bears. It kept them going for another decade, but their financial problems never improved and they ended up dead. AwFuL didn't have the massive TV deals to bail out strugglere like the Lions.

Of course Brisbane only took 8 players. Bears finished 3rd in 1996 while Fitzroy were down the bottom of the ladder.

The licence fees the VFL charged and unfair terms they placed on the Eagles, regarding accommodation and travel fairs of all Victorian teams needing to be paid by West Coast, led to the club almost going under. It had to be rescued at the last minute by a major company (Indian Pacific?) to avoid going bankrupt. NSWRL in all their wisdom put the same stipulations on the Reds almost a decade later and it led to their extinction. Quayle and Arthurson will go down as the biggest donkeys in the history of sports administration.

 

[Get Rid of The Donkeys]

Move them to the English Superleague and call them the St George Dragons

Pastoral Brothers Leprechauns should relocate to Ireland and join the Super League.

 

[titoelcolombiano]

Firehawks has the best bid.

South of the river.

Large footprint from Bulimba through to southern suburbs of Logan.

Strong Leagues Club at Coorparoo which is linked to the Eastern Busway.

Kick the Lions out of town, turn the Gabba into a rectangle and play out of there

 

[titoelcolombiano]

Brisbane needs more than two teams. It is twice the population of Adelaide (two AFL teams) and half of Sydney (8.5 NRL teams). That Sydney has more AFL teams than Brisbane has NRL teams is the most ridiculous anomaly in Australian sport.
GO with the strength.
Bring in the South East Firehawks (2023) and North Brisbane Dolphins (2024). That gives you at least one game at Suncorp each week and six Brisbane derbies. Huge for RL.
Now that might actually kill off the current Brisbane Lions revival.

Yes, and even worse, the fact that the AFL has as many teams in SEQ as the NRL does is an absolute embarrassment and a failure on the part of the NRL.

I would spread the teams around a little more but by 2050 I'd like to see QLD full at NRL level with:

NQ Cowboys
Redcliffe Dolphins (North)
Brisbane Broncos (City)
Ipswich Jets (West)
Gold Coast Titans (South)

 

[Hartwood]

Jets can represent all of SW Brisbane, including Logan, but also Ipswich and as far as Toowoomba. I don't mind if the dolphins or Jets get in, but whichever does, I hope Broncos focus more on the region that missed out, effectively dividing the city between north and SW

 

[titoelcolombiano]

Jets can represent all of SW Brisbane, including Logan, but also Ipswich and as far as Toowoomba. I don't mind if the dolphins or Jets get in, but whichever does, I hope Broncos focuse more on the region that missed out, effectively dividing the city between north and SW

Very good point

 

[flippikat]

Yes, and even worse, the fact that the AFL has as many teams in SEQ as the NRL does is an absolute embarrassment and a failure on the part of the NRL.

I would spread the teams around a little more but by 2050 I'd like to see QLD full at NRL level with:

NQ Cowboys
Redcliffe Dolphins (North)
Brisbane Broncos (City)
Ipswich Jets (West)
Gold Coast Titans (South)

I suspect this may be the long-game that the NRL is jockeying for, with the Jets catchment skewing inland to the likes of Toowomba, and the Dolphins skewing out towards the Sunshine Coast - as much as catchments are a thing anymore... which probably amounts to a trial game each yeah, and maybe a regular season game against a lower-pulling opposition.

 

[Get Rid of The Donkeys]

Kick the Lions out of town, turn the Gabba into a rectangle and play out of there

Perfect location for the Brisbane Firehawks.

 

[The Great Dane]

I suspect this may be the long-game that the NRL is jockeying for, with the Jets catchment skewing inland to the likes of Toowomba, and the Dolphins skewing out towards the Sunshine Coast - as much as catchments are a thing anymore... which probably amounts to a trial game each yeah, and maybe a regular season game against a lower-pulling opposition.

The AFL don't give a f**k about catchments and that is why they are murdering RL at the grassroots.

As much as possible they take a national approach to junior development, and they don't rely on the professional clubs to administer it. That makes them more streamlined with the vast majority of decisions about the grassroots coming directly from a handful of organisations, while RL has dozens of bodies spending all there time fighting over catchments and whom has jurisdiction over what.

Basically what I'm saying is that giving disparate regions to clubs as "their" catchments is extremely archaic and only creates problems, and until we do away with that sort of BS we'll always be on the back foot.

The one and only job that the new Brisbane club, or any of the professional clubs, should have is to run a successful professional club in their market. Anything else should be a job for the NRL and it's organisations to run.

 

[The Great Dane]

Very good point

Yeah except that it's BS.

No matter what you do you're not going to see a significant amount of people traveling from e.g. Toowoomba to Suncorp to support a team that supposedly represents Ipswich.

And before somebody says it, don't give me that 'what about fans that watch on TV' crap. They don't matter unless they are regular customers of the club, i.e. they are putting their money directly into supporting the club by buying it's products.

Any talk of this or that team representing this or that region outside of their target market will only result in tokenism in reality, and that sort of tokenism does more harm than good more often than not.

 

[Hartwood]

Yeah except that it's BS.

No matter what you do you're not going to see a significant amount of people traveling from e.g. Toowoomba to Suncorp to support a team that supposedly represents Ipswich.

And before somebody says it, don't give me that 'what about fans that watch on TV' crap. They don't matter unless they are regular customers of the club, i.e. they are putting their money directly into supporting the club by buying it's products.

Any talk of this or that team representing this or that region outside of their target market will only result in tokenism in reality, and that sort of tokenism does more harm than good more often than not.

I just mean in the same way that Penrith supporters stretch all the way out into western NSW. Take a couple games to Toowoomba each year and build a supporter base, people will then buy merchandise. Many people move from Toowoomba to Brisbane after they graduate highschool and will go to games in Brisbane

 

[The Great Dane]

I just mean in the same way that Penrith supporters stretch all the way out into western NSW. Take a couple games to Toowoomba each year and build a supporter base, people will then buy merchandise. Many people move from Toowoomba to Brisbane after they graduate highschool and will go to games in Brisbane

Tokenism, like I said.

Self serving tokenism as well.

 

[Hartwood]

Tokenism, like I said.

Self serving tokenism as well.

Ok, but it'll help generate profit and an identity. At the end of the day whichever team comes in will be a Brisbane team, I just think it's a good idea to build some identity and a point of difference from the Broncos

 

[titoelcolombiano]

Yeah except that it's BS.

No matter what you do you're not going to see a significant amount of people traveling from e.g. Toowoomba to Suncorp to support a team that supposedly represents Ipswich.

And before somebody says it, don't give me that 'what about fans that watch on TV' crap. They don't matter unless they are regular customers of the club, i.e. they are putting their money directly into supporting the club by buying it's products.

Any talk of this or that team representing this or that region outside of their target market will only result in tokenism in reality, and that sort of tokenism does more harm than good more often than not.

I was more referring to the point that whichever bid wins, the Broncos should lean towards the market that missed out.

Agree with your point on people travelling from Toowoomba but people from Redcliffe, Ipswich or any other outer suburb of greater Brisbane are used to having to travel to Suncorp to watch NRL footy so I don't think it will be a problem.

 

[The Great Dane]

Ok, but it'll help generate profit and an identity. At the end of the day whichever team comes in will be a Brisbane team, I just think it's a good idea to build some identity and a point of difference from the Broncos

You can create a point of difference without strip mining another region, that really you have no connection to, of their resources and pretending that you are doing them a favor for doing it.

I'm from Canberra, we have a lot of experience with this shit, and it always does more harm than good in the long run.

Trust me you don't want Toowoomba or the Sunshine Coast to be the Canberra or Tasmania to the Jet's or Dolphin's GWS/Hawthorn/North Melbourne/etc.

 

[The Great Dane]

Agree with your point on people travelling from Toowoomba but people from Redcliffe, Ipswich or any other outer suburb of greater Brisbane are used to having to travel to Suncorp to watch NRL footy so I don't think it will be a problem.

Honestly you are beyond delusional if you think that a significant number of people are going to travel 40km+ to Suncorp in peak hour after work on a Thursday or Friday night every second week in Brisbane.
A few thousand maybe, but not the tens of thousands that are needed to support an NRL club.

That there is the big problem with Ipswich and Redcliffe, they're outer suburbs clubs whom unless you make significant changes to their brand, will appeal almost exclusively to people from those outer suburbs and will alienate large portions of their potential fan-base elsewhere in the city, whom will be forced to play the vast majority of their game on weeknights in the heart of the city.

It would be like if Penrith, as the Penrith Panthers, came into the comp playing out of the SFS. An insanely stupid idea that nobody would take seriously.

If you let them into the comp they are going to have to contend with those factors, but so far Redcliffe has utterly refused to do that in any meaningful way, and who knows what's going on with the Jets at the moment, but considering that they are still referring to themselves as the Jets the odds aren't good.

 

[Get Rid of The Donkeys]

Honestly you are beyond delusional if you think that a significant number of people are going to travel 40km+ to Suncorp in peak hour after work on a Thursday or Friday night every second week in Brisbane.
A few thousand maybe, but not the tens of thousands that are needed to support an NRL club.

That there is the big problem with Ipswich and Redcliffe, they're outer suburbs clubs whom unless you make significant changes to their brand, will appeal almost exclusively to people from those outer suburbs and will alienate large portions of their potential fan-base elsewhere in the city, whom will be forced to play the vast majority of their game on weeknights in the heart of the city.

It would be like if Penrith, as the Penrith Panthers, came into the comp playing out of the SFS. An insanely stupid idea that nobody would take seriously.

If you let them into the comp they are going to have to contend with those factors, but so far Redcliffe has utterly refused to do that in any meaningful way, and who knows what's going on with the Jets at the moment, but considering that they are still referring to themselves as the Jets the odds aren't good.

Distance is definitely a burden. I am against the idea of having 2 teams play at Lang Park for this very reason, unless it's the Firehawks. It would probably be better to give the 17th licence to the Pirates or Firehawks and say to the Queensland Gov, "build a suitable stadium in Moreton Bay Region for the Dolphins and we'll put them in and give you Magic Round until 2050". Both parties win.