With a Northern Territory team a lot has been brought up already in terms of population, stadiums etc which is valid but also look at the smaller stuff.
- With a large amount of proud Indigenous people living in the Northern Territory and it being a predominantly AFL area you'd need a big Indigenous star to market a team around and turn the tide. In my opinion the only people who could bring that kind of press to the Northern Territory who are also Indigenous would be Greg Inglis or Jonathan Thurston. Can anyone here see either man leaving their respective clubs and moving to Darwin to play for a team that is going to need at least five years to become even slightly competitive? Both JT and Inglis want to win trophies and that isn't really possible in a new team.
- Even if you do land a big star to market the team can you imagine how much you'd have to pay them? There is nothing to do in Darwin and it's nowhere near the East Coast where most of these guys grew up and have families. A player like JT who might pull 1.2 million from the Cowboys would be a 2 million dollar player minimum in a place like Darwin.
- Even if you do land your big star who do you put around them as support players? Places like Canberra, Newcastle and New Zealand struggle and have to pay overs because they're not desirable areas for most players (Except those from there). Can you imagine the overs one would have to pay to get them to relocate to the Northern Territory? A 300,000 a year player would probably become a 500,000-600,000 a year player so a Territory team would mainly sign fringe NRL players, average Super League players, above average NSW Cup/QLD Cup players and old timers who nobody else wants.
- What type of crowd could you expect from a city of about 150,000 with a team that most likely be performing badly due to lack of resources for players? I'd say under 5000 most weeks and with that kind of money coming in there is no option for that club to survive.
Those four points aren't even getting into things like lack of juniors, lack of major sponsorship money, lack of third party agreement and also a coaching staff that most likely won't want to uproot to Northern Territory unless major money was on offer.
Unfortunately it's not viable. Wouldn't mind giving them a NSW Cup or QLD Cup team though. Would give them a minor World Cup game or occasional pre season match as well.
