NZ Expansion

[The Great Dane]

jesus christ, no one is saying bring in wellington. it is a SOUTH NZ TEAM which encompasses christchurch dunedin AND wellington.

I'd look to throw in Hamilton in someway as well, but I'm not from NZ so maybe there's some reason why that's not a good idea that I don't know about.

I am the only one who thinks Auckland is the best place for a second team.
The reason why is because big cities, like Sydney, Melbourne, London, Manchester all have big derbies, and they become known worldwide for being the biggest derbies.
This is why i think Brisbane and Auckland and even Melbourne need a second team.

LOL, I doubt that there're many people in London, New York, Beijing, Tokyo, Berlin, etc, etc that are hanging onto the edge of their seats waiting for Collingwood vs Essendon or South Sydney vs Easts.

Just like there's next to nobody in Australia waiting to watch such great derbies as the Toshiba Brave Lupus vs Ricoh Black Rams (or either of those two vs Suntory Sungoliath), NEC Green Rockets vs Kubota Spears, Hamilton Tiger-Cats vs Toronto Argonauts, HIFK Helsinki vs. Jokerit, Hull FC vs Hull KR, etc etc, etc, etc, etc, etc.

If you are going to grow your code, you think big, or in your case and all the other cases, you can think small, and you will get small returns, and struggle, and for all the reasons i mentioned.

Strange... I though we were then ones suggesting a team that would attempt to tap into a few markets equaling about 3 million people (and attempting to create a massive NZ derby, since you're obsessed with derbies), while you were the one toying with splitting a market of 1.5 mil in half and disenfranchising most of the RL fans in NZ outside of Auckland.

 

[warrior poet]

hamilton is almost a suburb of auckland! the separation between the warriors and the southern nz team should be around taupo (in the middle of the north island) as it is pretty much where you can split the population into two equal parts.

plus hamilton (and the greater waikato) is a major rugby area where league is basically dying. (it wouldn't add much to either team)

 

[The Great Dane]

hamilton is almost a suburb of auckland! the separation between the warriors and the southern nz team should be around taupo (in the middle of the north island) as it is pretty much where you can split the population into two equal parts.

plus hamilton (and the greater waikato) is a major rugby area where league is basically dying. (it wouldn't add much to either team)

Fair enough.

 

[warrior poet]

i think alot of people need to look at where league is strongest. The areas where league is strongest seem to be the areas with the highest maori/ polynesian populations.
northland seems to be league country in parts but it's population and poverty levels work against it.
in auckland it is in south auckland (to put that simply it's everything south of mt smart) which is where most of the auckland-based warriors fans live (the other parts of auckland are mainly rugby and are anti-league)
south of there you've got the bay of plenty (tauranga/rotorua/whakatane) along with taupo (which seems to be evenly split between rugby and league). on the west coast is taranaki (isaac luke country).
south of there it drops of in support, there are a few pockets where league is strong. Horowhenua (russell packer's area) does seem to have a decent league culture from the few times i have been there. Other than that there are small comps around the place (wellington and canterbury are the strongest outside of auckland's three divisions)

otago (dunedin) and southland are not league areas. The south islands west coast used to be (not sure of the current state) one of the strongest areas, at one point was the only nz area where league was bigger than rugby.

A southern nz team would cover wellington, taranaki, horowhenua, canterbury and the west coast (and the weaker areas like hawkes bay/otago/southland/tasman).
The warriors would cover auckland, northland, bay of plenty, east coast, central north island (and waikato).
the border would be taumarunui, turangi and gisbourne

 

[pHyR3]

hamilton is almost a suburb of auckland! the separation between the warriors and the southern nz team should be around taupo (in the middle of the north island) as it is pretty much where you can split the population into two equal parts.

plus hamilton (and the greater waikato) is a major rugby area where league is basically dying. (it wouldn't add much to either team)

its over 100km away from auckland! definitely not a suburb, or anything close.

for reference, penrith is around 50km from sydney.

but yea taupo or hamilton really makes no difference in reality. somewhere around there is good enough

 

[Perth Red]

i think alot of people need to look at where league is strongest. The areas where league is strongest seem to be the areas with the highest maori/ polynesian populations.
northland seems to be league country in parts but it's population and poverty levels work against it.
in auckland it is in south auckland (to put that simply it's everything south of mt smart) which is where most of the auckland-based warriors fans live (the other parts of auckland are mainly rugby and are anti-league)
south of there you've got the bay of plenty (tauranga/rotorua/whakatane) along with taupo (which seems to be evenly split between rugby and league). on the west coast is taranaki (isaac luke country).
south of there it drops of in support, there are a few pockets where league is strong. Horowhenua (russell packer's area) does seem to have a decent league culture from the few times i have been there. Other than that there are small comps around the place (wellington and canterbury are the strongest outside of auckland's three divisions)

otago (dunedin) and southland are not league areas. The south islands west coast used to be (not sure of the current state) one of the strongest areas, at one point was the only nz area where league was bigger than rugby.

A southern nz team would cover wellington, taranaki, horowhenua, canterbury and the west coast (and the weaker areas like hawkes bay/otago/southland/tasman).
The warriors would cover auckland, northland, bay of plenty, east coast, central north island (and waikato).
the border would be taumarunui, turangi and gisbourne

Thanks for that, it's good to hear the state of play from someone who actually knows what they're talking about!

 

[Tigers1986]

Expansion should be into areas where teams haven't failed before.

This would rule out perth (western reds), central coast (northern eagles), gold coast (giants/seagulls/chargers), south east qld (crushers), adelaide (rams), newtown (jets), north sydney (bears), a second newcastle team (mariners) and un-merging the dragons and tigers.

Perth didn't fail, the NRL wanted to move into Melbourne instead and Perth were dissolved as a consequence. Gold Coast should have it licence moved to Brisbane2 to fulfill that demand as it's failing for a 4th time.

Wests could survive on their own, whether or not they get the opportunity remains to be seen. The Macarthur/Southern Highlands region is HUGE for talent and exposure.

Interesting subjects, tribes, Cannibals, village people, and then you have the village idiot.

Maybe i was a little over the top with wellington.

I stand by my word on having 3 Brisbane teams. One for Ipswich, one for Logan.

Suncorp needs to have at least 2 games a week at Suncorp.
This will mean bigger massive derbies, and more of em.

Melbourne needs a second team as well. They are heading towards 7-8 million population.
That can not be ignored.

Brisbane with 3 teams? Not with the Broncos monopoly at hand. They didn't give the Crushers a whimper of hope, so why people think a second Brisbane side will succeed amazes me. Perhaps if it was based out of the old ANZ Stadium to give it its own identity and ground it could start to make an in-road.

Melbourne with a second team? Haha. They'll be lucky to stay afloat once the big 3 retire and the team slides down the table. There is only prolonged interest from the NZ/Polynesian population of Melbourne for the Storm.

It's quite simple for expansion - Perth, NZ2, Central Coast & a 4th Queensland side (Central Qld). 2 conferences of 10, play every twice (18 games), plus 5 from the other conference (23 fixtures each year). 3 stand-alone origin games, 8-team finals series, with a knockout cup or 9's tournaments for the origin rounds to allow non-rep players a chance to play.

 

[warrior poet]

Thanks for that, it's good to hear the state of play from someone who actually knows what they're talking about!

just to expand, in NZ there is a zone system (7 of them) that are similar to the groups that the nsw country rl runs.
the zones are
northland
auckland
counties manukau
upper central
mid central
wellington
southern

the way i split the country between the 2 teams in my previous post was simply splitting the zones
warriors get northland, auckland, counties manukau and upper central
southern nz gets mid central, wellington and southern

in the 5 years that we've had a national competition auckland has made the final 4 times (DQ last year), counties has made it 3 times (DQ last year), southern has made it twice and upper central has made it once. this is mainly due to auckland and counties having warrior players available. The non-auckland based teams are quite a bit weaker.

 

[warrior poet]

Perth didn't fail, the NRL wanted to move into Melbourne instead and Perth were dissolved as a consequence. Gold Coast should have it licence moved to Brisbane2 to fulfill that demand as it's failing for a 4th time.

Wests could survive on their own, whether or not they get the opportunity remains to be seen. The Macarthur/Southern Highlands region is HUGE for talent and exposure..

the reds were $10 million in debt after 3 years (and perth is the one team that should get a second chance... with changes to funding, mainly because they have developed there own juniors already). wouldn't the southern highlands be able to be covered by the dragons?

 

[The Great Dane]

plus hamilton (and the greater waikato) is a major rugby area where league is basically dying. (it wouldn't add much to either team)

Isn't that all the more reason to play some games there and shine a spotlight on RL?

Maybe instead of putting Hamilton under the control of either team we should look to have both teams play there regularly, a concerted effort to push RL there could do wonders especially if the local RL competitions (especially Juniors) are involved.

A southern nz team would cover wellington, taranaki, horowhenua, canterbury and the west coast (and the weaker areas like hawkes bay/otago/southland/tasman).
The warriors would cover auckland, northland, bay of plenty, east coast, central north island (and waikato).
the border would be taumarunui, turangi and gisbourne

Good insight.

I think from an marketing, image and even a branding point of view it may be in the Warriors interests to restrict themselves to Auckland at least for a little while after the second team is in the comp.
That way they make it clear that they're Aucklands team now, and hopefully that galvanizes support for them in Auckland and also helps to stop as many fans from jumping ship to the shiny brand new team as possible.

That also opens up a corridor for the new club to push themselves as the new club that represents everybody outside of Auckland alongside the little brother and underdog narratives.

After everybody has settled into their new roles in NZ RL then the Warriors can look to take some of their games abroad again.

I also hope that the NRL and/or the Warriors have the foresight to drop the NZ from the Warriors and reclaim the Auckland Warriors name, otherwise they'll make marketing, branding and the image of both the teams very confused in the future.

 

[The Great Dane]

the reds were $10 million in debt after 3 years (and perth is the one team that should get a second chance... with changes to funding, mainly because they have developed there own juniors already).

Though they were in heavy debt when they folded that wasn't the main reason that they were dropped in the end, News and the ARL folded them (and the Mariners) in favor of a Melbourne team.

If they wanted to News and the ARL could have helped sell them into new private ownership or folded them and restarted a new club in Perth (like they helped to do with the Warriors who were also in heavy debt at the end of SL), but News had their heart set on a Melbourne team and decided that it was cheaper to let them die and use what was left of their resources along with what was left of the Mariners and eventually the Rams resources (though it seems that originally they didn't intend for the Rams to fold, but that decision was taken out of their hands in the end) to create as strong a Melbourne team as possible.

So the Reds were a victum of the stresses of the SL war and others greed.

wouldn't the southern highlands be able to be covered by the dragons?

I don't know about the Dragons, but the Raiders do a fair bit of scouting in the Southern Highlands and have plenty of juniors connections there (but that's nothing new, we have plenty of juniors connections everywhere south of Sydney and north of the border with ViC).

I'd be surprise if the Tigers and the Dragons didn't have their fingers in that pie as well.

As for Macarthur, well that's supposed to be Tigers territory.

I doubt that Macathur and the Southern Highlands could support a team, it'd be a much worse idea then the CC bears and I'll leave it at that.

 

[Perth Red]

the reds were $10 million in debt after 3 years (and perth is the one team that should get a second chance... with changes to funding, mainly because they have developed there own juniors already). wouldn't the southern highlands be able to be covered by the dragons?

Bit of Myth this one. They were in debt but not ten mill. The debt was mainly due to
a) ridiculous travel costs
B) inflated SL contracts

Reds had one of the biggest sponsorships in RL and a backer in the cash Convertors millionaire. He only walked as news ltd came in to take over the club in 1996 to get them signed up to SL with a massive Sunday Times sponsorship offer to get control of the board.

I got all this first hand from someone on the board back in that period.

 

[KeepingTheFaith]

IIRC part of the original agreement was that Perth pay for the travel costs of visiting teams which is why they got into debt because of travel.

I think the Warriors initially had something similar that caused struggle for them financially too.

 

[warrior poet]

Bit of Myth this one. They were in debt but not ten mill. The debt was mainly due to
a) ridiculous travel costs
B) inflated SL contracts

Reds had one of the biggest sponsorships in RL and a backer in the cash Convertors millionaire. He only walked as news ltd came in to take over the club in 1996 to get them signed up to SL with a massive Sunday Times sponsorship offer to get control of the board.

I got all this first hand from someone on the board back in that period.

the 10 million figure was from wikipedia so it may be incorrect. (knowing wikipedia it probably is incorrect). I just remember them being in serious debt at the end. Personally i think more should have been done to keep the rams and reds alive (we could've done without the storm... they could have eventually taken the titans expansion place).

 

[warrior poet]

Though they were in heavy debt when they folded that wasn't the main reason that they were dropped in the end, News and the ARL folded them (and the Mariners) in favor of a Melbourne team.

If they wanted to News and the ARL could have helped sell them into new private ownership or folded them and restarted a new club in Perth (like they helped to do with the Warriors who were also in heavy debt at the end of SL), but News had their heart set on a Melbourne team and decided that it was cheaper to let them die and use what was left of their resources along with what was left of the Mariners and eventually the Rams resources (though it seems that originally they didn't intend for the Rams to fold, but that decision was taken out of their hands in the end) to create as strong a Melbourne team as possible.

So the Reds were a victum of the stresses of the SL war and others greed.
.

From what i remember superleague had already set up the storm (but they hadn't entered yet) but due to the peace settlement (and the contracts in place) they had to decide which clubs were most important (and i guess didn't have long term contracts in place), melbourne being a bigger city was deemed more important.
hunter mariners were pointless (newcastle doesn't need 2 teams), gold coast were unstable on and off field (but financially viable), sydney had to many teams (hence the 3 mergers), and adelaide and perth were unfinancial and not to successful (and so were the warriors)

to the people suggesting that the warriors go back to being an auckland team, please remember that they were auckland for only 7 years out of the 21 years a warrior team has existed. The Auckland Warriors went under, eric watson didn't buy them he brought their position in the comp (and could have named them anything, i think the only condition he had was that they had to be based in auckland). New coaching staff, only 7 auckland players signed... more a spiritual successor than the same club. the nz warriors have never been just an auckland team (the team they replaced were)

 

[oikee]

i think alot of people need to look at where league is strongest. The areas where league is strongest seem to be the areas with the highest maori/ polynesian populations.
northland seems to be league country in parts but it's population and poverty levels work against it.
in auckland it is in south auckland (to put that simply it's everything south of mt smart) which is where most of the auckland-based warriors fans live (the other parts of auckland are mainly rugby and are anti-league)
south of there you've got the bay of plenty (tauranga/rotorua/whakatane) along with taupo (which seems to be evenly split between rugby and league). on the west coast is taranaki (isaac luke country).
south of there it drops of in support, there are a few pockets where league is strong. Horowhenua (russell packer's area) does seem to have a decent league culture from the few times i have been there. Other than that there are small comps around the place (wellington and canterbury are the strongest outside of auckland's three divisions)

otago (dunedin) and southland are not league areas. The south islands west coast used to be (not sure of the current state) one of the strongest areas, at one point was the only nz area where league was bigger than rugby.

A southern nz team would cover wellington, taranaki, horowhenua, canterbury and the west coast (and the weaker areas like hawkes bay/otago/southland/tasman).
The warriors would cover auckland, northland, bay of plenty, east coast, central north island (and waikato).
the border would be taumarunui, turangi and gisbourne

You see this post i like.

And this is why we need to have a team in Auckland and work on changing attitudes.
You say they are anti-league. They should not be.
And the NRL have to sink big funds, 10 million if it changes opinion, 50 million like the AFL do to change attitudes.

The biase against our code needs to change. You do that by sinking big funds into schools in that area, give them a team, and get all the kids playing the code.
Nuff said.

We need to make all of Auckland league friendly.
And sinking money into a stadium of our own is another way to grow Auckland league.

We need to be thinking future and big.

 

[warrior poet]

i think the cities where the super rugby teams are based (auckland, hamilton, wellington, christchurch & dunedin) will always be pro-rugby due to the money that the NZRU put into them. The rest of the regions seem to get ignored a bit by the NZRU and would be fair game for league to develop. Rugby is no where near as big in nz as it was even 10 years ago. NZ being all about rugby has always been a myth.

I do agree that the biase against league needs to change, i can remember at school (couple of decades ago now) where i asked why my college didn't have a league team... the comment 'it's not even a real sport' was used as was a comparison to gangs and crime, i never tried for the rugby team because rugby is boring as hell and i have more of a league halfbacks build (scrawny would be a better description). My old college still doesn't have a league team (none of the colleges in town do)

 

[KeepingTheFaith]

i think the cities where the super rugby teams are based (auckland, hamilton, wellington, christchurch & dunedin) will always be pro-rugby due to the money that the NZRU put into them. The rest of the regions seem to get ignored a bit by the NZRU and would be fair game for league to develop. Rugby is no where near as big in nz as it was even 10 years ago. NZ being all about rugby has always been a myth.

I do agree that the biase against league needs to change, i can remember at school (couple of decades ago now) where i asked why my college didn't have a league team... the comment 'it's not even a real sport' was used as was a comparison to gangs and crime, i never tried for the rugby team because rugby is boring as hell and i have more of a league halfbacks build (scrawny would be a better description). My old college still doesn't have a league team (none of the colleges in town do)

I remember those days. School teachers scouting the fields at lunchtime, pulling kids out when they do something flashy and demanding to know why they're not signed up to play union for the school. "I prefer league" was not an acceptable response at got many sent to the principal's office to be grilled on why union is so important for the school, country, blah blah.

Duanne Mann was a PE teacher for a period of time at my high school and we didn't even have a league team. Always found that odd.

 

[Canard]

CQ isn't a serious expansion proposition for many years. Too little population, no stadium, to remote and lacking corporate support with the end of the mining boom.

Brisbane 2 should be well ahead of it.

 

[oikee]

I think it will all depend on the next TV deal.
If the code is going to receive extra cash to expand into the right areas, then our code can really thrive.

Here is a list of right areas come 2018.
Brisbane Ipswich/Logan
NZ Auckland/Wellington
Perth.

by 2022 the next right areas are
Melbourne
Brisbane
Central QLD/sunshine coast.

These are the right areas.

The next question, does the game want to just expand and stay small, or do they want to grow and become bigger.

They either need a conference system or a PAR. (promotion/relegation)