2025 Club poll on Expansion issues
If Perth is handed the next licence, which region should be the host of the 20th team?
NZ South Island: 60%
Brisbane: 12%
Central Queensland: 8%
NSW Central Coast: 4%
South-east Queensland: 4%
Auckland: 4%
Melbourne: 4%
19 teams is enough: 4%
What do you think of the NRL’s decision to introduce a team in Papua New Guinea from 2028?
It will fail: 28%
It will be a success: 32%
Doesn’t matter, as long as the clubs are financially compensated: 40%
Do you agree with the NRL’s prerequisite for the Bears to be linked to the team in Perth?
Yes: 56%
No: 44%
These three answers are interesting...
* Great to see NZ is far and away the preference for team 20 - as it should be. Very interesting that Central Queensland is ahead of Central Coast NSW.. and while Brisbane/SEQ rates reasonably well (clear 2nd place if we add those two together), it's pretty clear the opinion is that it's too soon to be going there again.
* The response to PNG is hilarious - just under a third think it'll fail, just under a third think It'll succeed, but just over a third are saying "Just give us money" hahaha...the perfect split between optimistic, pessimistic & greed.
* On face value, the most surprising to me is the North Sydney one - I would've thought that the clubs would go with the "this Bears idea is the ideal brand, it solves so many problems, it should be the Bears in Perth" line that NRL HQ believe ìn..
Could the roughly 50/50 split be mostly Sydney teams voting "Bears should be a pre-requisite" (given some of them may leverage off old Norths rivalries) & non-Sydney teams voting "it doesn't have to be that way"?