bad boy bubby
Coach
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Do you know that Cronulla tried to do what you are suggesting 10 or more years ago?You can do two things at once though. Cronulla or Roosters can partially relocate to the Central Coast whilst Manly focuses on North Sydney. Or vice versa. However, to do that there's one thing that Manly might need to do if they want to engage the North Shore and that's drop the Manly name and rebrand to the North Sydney Sea-Eagles.
If I was running the NRL I'd be making a 3 way deal like this:
* Manly --> rebrand to North Sydney Sea-Eagles and take over the Bears junior catchments entirely plus given a 10 year funding boost
* Bears --> full ownership of an Adelaide Bears franchise but have to give up North Sydney junior catchments
* Cronulla --> rebrand to something like Coastal Sharks (find a geographical compromise between Cronulla & Central Coast) - 6 matches in Cronulla, 6 matches in Gosford - Sharks take over Central Coast juniors catchment
They had discussions with the Wyong Roos about starting this up to get traction on the CC, I recall that they were saying it was a goer.
The Roosters caught on and bought off Wyong before the Sharks put a foot hold in.
The same thing happened with the Fiji team scenario playing in lower grades. The Sharks started it, it was pretty big news with Petro onboard. Roosters came in over the top once again.
I'm not having a go at Easts btw, they have done great work on the CC, I'm saying that Cronulla have been exploring avenues for a while now, moreso than what other clubs have. All the while they set up their junior programmes near the end of the Sticky days, and continued on through Flange and Morris, and still going strong. This was before the Panthers set up their programmes with Gould, their resources have a higher gauge and are reaping the benefits.
Cronulla are attempting to get a foot hold at Coffs, once again playing a home game there. They also were going to buy another Club in Coffs but I think that isn't going ahead.