Yeah they are, well strawmen or non sequiturs. Look I'll show you-
Bringing up the NSW and Qld cup ratings is irrelevant because you aren't comparing like for like, and it doesn't follow from my argument that I was suggesting that the NRLW should be treated in the same way as either of those leagues. In other words it's a non sequitur.
Nobody ever suggested that the NRLW would be or should be like women's cricket, that the NRLW should schedule games in the same timeslots as the NRL, or that the NRLW would or should try to 'convert' AFL fans. They are all arguments that you have put in my mouth instead of addressing what was actually said, and as such strawmen.
It is however true that the market place is crammed, but it always has been and always will be, and there's no getting around that. In fact one of the reasons why the NRL should have had independent clubs is so they could target less saturated markets.
So that's 1 non sequitur, 3 strawmen, and a legitimate point that nobody has ever contested.
NRLW and NRL will attract the same fans. you simply aren't going to put them on in competition to each other.
NRL games rate 500k-1m people. So the networks aren't going to move that on the hope that Coffs Harbour v Orange or someone in Womens League pulls the same numbers.
Banking on the NRL fanbase to support the NRLW en masse is an error.
If it was as simple as giving a pre-existing club a NRLW side and that club's fans would follow it en masse then the NRLW's ratings and attendance would already be similar to the NRL's, which simply isn't the case.
They aren't the same product, related but not the same, and as such they appeal to slightly different audiences and trying to force it onto the NRL audience instead of allowing it to fill it's own niche is a mistake.
It's like the music industry; pop, metal, rock and roll, jazz, etc, etc, are all genres of music, but they all appeal to different groups of people (with some overlap obviously).
We should conceptualised the NRL, NRLW, even representative, state leagues, etc, as different genres of RL that will appeal to different types of people for different reasons, and accept that that's okay.
So when do you play these independent clubs games? Is the 1st question
You could use the same schedule that the NRLW is currently using... Honestly WTF is so difficult about this for you.
The only difference would be where the game is held. Instead of the game being held before the men's game on NRL matchday it would be held at the venue of the home team wherever that may be.
2nd to that is what areas are big enough to make it viable?
That's a hard question to answer without doing market research and figuring out what each club's break-even point would be, however I would have targeted markets and fan-bases that are large enough to support a team but that will/should never have a presence in the NRL, or won't for a long time.
So imagine that we are starting the NRLW from scratch, I would have targeted clubs like North Sydney, Newtown, old BRL clubs, strong country clubs, and small-medium size cities/regions like the Central Coast, Sunshine Coast, etc. I also would have looked into the potential of teams in Melbourne, Perth, and Adelaide, but those would admittedly be bigger projects.
