I couldn't give a f**k what people say. I'm a proud fan of Queensland rugby league and don't hide it.
I'm a proud Blue and (unlike yourself, evidently) as well as residing in my state of Origin, I also spent plenty of years living in SEQ. I have friends who grew up/ live/ support teams from both sides of the border in the NRL and Origin too.
How?
Because Sydney is over saturated?
Brisbane having too few teams does not mean Sydney is over-saturated. This is a false dichotomy.
The problem is the rugby league fanbase in Sydney is neither large enough nor passionate enough to support nine professional rugby league clubs.
We'll have to agree to disagree here- although I have stated (many times here and elsewhere) that the Wests Tigers in their current guise are a waste of a team and would serve both S-W Sydney and SEQ better if they disbanded and allowed Wests to focus on one area 100% while Balmain links up with Easts Tigers and focused on the other 100%.
The other problem is the rugby league community in Sydney is in denial about the game's popularity and the value of their clubs. They've deluded themselves into thinking there's enough room for nine to eleven clubs and refuse to see that they're not any more important than any other club in the country.
Culling/ merging a bunch of clubs in Sydney demonstrably doesn't grow the game- quite the opposite. Even then, relocations shouldn't be done willy nilly- it has to be the right relocation in terms of the team relocating and the reasons for doing so.
The QRL/NSWRL were at war with the Broncos from 1988. Broncos weren't innocent but neither were the QRL/NSWRL. The whole problem could have been avoided if Arthurson and Quayle selected one or two QRL-backee bids in 1988 instead of siding with a private consortium. The NSWRL were stupid enough to allow Broncos to be the sole representative of SEQ until 1995. The XXXX sponsored QRL fuedee with the Power sponsored Broncos over advertising. Broncos did f**k with the BRL clubs by scheduling NSWRL games at Lang Park on Sunday arvos at 3pm, after originally agreeing to leave this slot reserved for BRL games.
No argument from me here.
NSWRL played all finals game in Sydney to give their clubs an advantage over the Broncos, despite QEII Stadium having a larger capacity than the SFS. This didn't change until 1995.
This may have legitimately been the reason, although it sounds a little too conspiratorial, a little too much like something you would've read in The Courier Mail circa 1994. Until the ARL took over stewardship of the 1st grade competition, the NSWRL (as the name suggests) was the New South Wales competition. Why wouldn't the finals of the New South Wales Rugby League be played at the biggest stadium in NSW?
Only because they were feuding with the Broncos and wanted to knock them back a peg.
Arthurson and Quayle were trying to use the Crushers to take power away from the Broncos. Like I said above, all comes down to Arthurson and Quayle being stupid enough to choose a private consortium over the QRL-based bid in 1987 and letting it control SEQ.
I don't get it- on the one hand SEQ definitely needed more teams, on the other the Crushers had nothing to do with solidifying the game in Brisbane and everything to do with some bad-faith power play by Arko and Quayle? The Broncos (at the time) had teams stacked full of rep stars, were the most recent back to back Premiers and (as the only ticket in town) commanded huge crowds. Why not try and build the game further on top of that?
Attendances between 1995 and 1997 had Brisbane, Auckland, North Queensland and Newcastle well ahead of the so-called "big" Sydney clubs.
Canterbury didn't draw great attendances around this period.
Cowboys, Warriors, Broncos and Knights drew the largest crowds between 1995 and 1997.
That makes them bigger and better supported than the "big" Sydney clubs.
Brisbane: see my previous point
Auckland, North Queensland: brand new teams with the obvious "shiny new thing" factor contributing
Knights: only ticket in a RL heartland with 500k people
What makes those big Sydney clubs mentioned big is that you find supporters all over the place (again, you know just as well as I do that you see plenty of Souths, Roosters, Bulldogs etc support all through Qld). You find as many of them- perhaps even more- than you find Broncos or Storm fans in NSW. Those people can't exactly make it to their teams' home games every second weekend though.
Up here in Queensland we didn't view the ARL as a serious competition in 1997 because it was Sydney-centric and its attendances were low.
The ARL wasn't viewed as a serious competition because the organisation that owned the Broncos also owned the states' only newspaper and (if it didn't ignore the ARL including the teams on their very doorstep) it rubbished it as an inferior competition. Even if the ARL had both the reigning premiers and runners-up from the previous 20-team season, plus Norths, Roosters, Newcastle and a resurgent Parramatta...
North Sydney, Newtown and Western Sydney are still playing in the NSW Cup, are they not?
There's a difference between BRL clubs continuing to play in the BRL as they always had, vs. being told you can no longer play in a competition you've played in for decades (or the equivalent of a competition you've played in for decades) based on erroneous criteria.
It would be like if, back in 1987, the ARL announced that from 1988 it would establish a new 14-team 1st grade competition with teams from NSW AND Qld and the ARL would deem what clubs worthy of admittance based on their criteria...and then clubs like Wynnum, Easts, Brothers and Souths Magpies got knocked back because their financials were deemed inferior to Sydney clubs like Canterbury, Parra, Penrith etc. Imagine having people dismiss them as "just not being good enough/ not fit for a truly progressive national comp" when you pointed out that they didn't have the pokie money to help their bids like the Sydney clubs and thus the whole criteria was unfair?
Rationalisation was on the table since 1982. Newtown and Western Sydney were given the flick long before the Broncos and News Ltd were involved. The Bradley Report said the league needed to b rationalised down to 14 teams with no more than 5 in Sydney. Arthurson and Quayle were originally in favour of rationalisation in the 80s. It wasn't a News Ltd conspiracy.
Again, I pointed this out earlier and noted that even that dinosaur George Piggins knew there was an agenda in the NSWRL to cut teams from as far back as the early 80's...
Illawarra had a chance to join Super League but shot it down.
If the game let the Cowboys and Warriors go then it would have lost two very important markets.
If we're talking future markets then you're correct. However at the time, the Cowboys and Warriors were brand new with no history to speak of and nothing like the support they've grown since.
Letting a few small and broke NSWRL clubs fold had no impact on the game in Sydney as there was still an oversupply of teams to service the market.
Norths went into the red trying to (ironically) do what people such as yourself are demanding of Sydney clubs- relocate and build the new stadium. Apart from that, Norths had always been a well-backed club. It was just shitty timing combined with a shitty criteria with no forward thinking. Balmain still (to this day) have plenty of widespread support, nothing "small" about them. Wests I could agree with- at the time- yet nowadays they're a rich club and virtually ARE the Wests Tigers.
Cowboys have gone on to become one of the most popular and financially stable clubs in the NRL. In 2021 the Cowboys made $8.9m from their sponsors. Sharks received just $4m. Broncos led the way with $12.7m. It shows the Cowboys always had room to grow. The Sydney clubs cannot grow as they're cannibalising one another.
The Sutherland Shire has one of the biggest league areas in Sydney and (on top of that) they are solvent and asset rich. They have every right to be in the competition, and they aren't cannibalising anyone.
