Peter V'landys - New NRL/ARLC Chairman

[Cactus]

I just want to know when Humphrey B. Bear is going to run out in a Perff Bares jersey. I'm not asking for much.

Right now if you can just allow yourself to close your eyes & picture it.

 

[Wb1234]

Pvl lost a year due to covid

Then added Brisbane 2, png, Perth bears will be announced in a few weeks and then Christchurch orcas next year

This growth will see league the dominant sport of Australia, nz and the pacific islands down the track

 

[MugaB]

Pvl lost a year due to covid

Then added Brisbane 2, png, Perth bears will be announced in a few weeks and then Christchurch orcas next year

This growth will see league the dominant sport of Australia, nz and the pacific islands down the track

Praise be to Yeo

 

[Cactus]

Pvl lost a year due to covid

Then added Brisbane 2, png, Perth bears will be announced in a few weeks and then Christchurch orcas next year

This growth will see league the dominant sport of Australia, nz and the pacific islands down the track

The only sad thing about that of course is we are all missing out on watching the spectacular heights our sport could have risen too under the visionary fiscal & expansion leadership of David "fish where the fish are" Gallop.

 

[MugaB]

We'll find the athletes, we'll grow them if we have to

 

[Foreign Legion]

 

[Brutus]

Nauru will be the 20th team.

 

[MugaB]

Nauru will be the 20th team.

The only nation in the world that has AFL as its national sport

 

[Diesel]

PR must be going apeshit knowing a PNG team was announced before WA

 

[MugaB]

PR must be going apeshit knowing a PNG team was announced before WA

I don't think he cares, but it funny to think about all the naysayers who said this wasn't going to happen coz of x,y,z

 

[Wb1234]

View attachment 97453
I don't think he cares, but it funny to think about all the naysayers who said this wasn't going to happen coz of x,y,z

They have been noticeably absent since the announcement

 

[Captain Apollo]

I can't paste the text of it (its behind the paywall - but I've read it in the printed paper) but this is a really great article on how the PNG came about and the role PVL and others at the NRL played -

The prime minister, PVL and the president: How PNG made it to the NRL

The PNG prime minister told Australian government leaders he didn’t want a gift to celebrate the country’s independence in 2025 - he just wanted an NRL team. Today he got his wish.

www.smh.com.au

Interesting that no Government would try and approach the AFL for such a thing. Bet PR and other AFL lovers will be nashing their teeth

One point that is mentioned in the article, is when the PNG team play at home in Port Morseby, there will be no night games "because the the city's public transport doesn't operate at the hours required to transport people to and from the 15,000-capacity national stadium" (that quote is from the article cited above).

I dare say the PNG Government may not be able to afford to run those extra service (but that is speculation on my part)

 

[RL The greatest game]

I can't paste the text of it (its behind the paywall - but I've read it in the printed paper) but this is a really great article on how the PNG came about and the role PVL and others at the NRL played -

The prime minister, PVL and the president: How PNG made it to the NRL

The PNG prime minister told Australian government leaders he didn’t want a gift to celebrate the country’s independence in 2025 - he just wanted an NRL team. Today he got his wish.

www.smh.com.au

Interesting that no Government would try and approach the AFL for such a thing. Bet PR and other AFL lovers will be nashing their teeth

One point that is mentioned in the article, is when the PNG team play at home in Port Morseby, there will be no night games "because the the city's public transport doesn't operate at the hours required to transport people to and from the 15,000-capacity national stadium" (that quote is from the article cited above).

I dare say the PNG Government may not be able to afford to run those extra service (but that is speculation on my part)

The uneducated posters on bigfooty are in meltdown, but the educated ones can see the reasons behind it

 

[Wb1234]

I can't paste the text of it (its behind the paywall - but I've read it in the printed paper) but this is a really great article on how the PNG came about and the role PVL and others at the NRL played -

The prime minister, PVL and the president: How PNG made it to the NRL

The PNG prime minister told Australian government leaders he didn’t want a gift to celebrate the country’s independence in 2025 - he just wanted an NRL team. Today he got his wish.

www.smh.com.au

Interesting that no Government would try and approach the AFL for such a thing. Bet PR and other AFL lovers will be nashing their teeth

One point that is mentioned in the article, is when the PNG team play at home in Port Morseby, there will be no night games "because the the city's public transport doesn't operate at the hours required to transport people to and from the 15,000-capacity national stadium" (that quote is from the article cited above).

I dare say the PNG Government may not be able to afford to run those extra service (but that is speculation on my part)

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[MugaB]

Government sources believe it puts Australia in a strong position given how unpopular it would be for a future PNG government to risk being stripped of the team should it entertain advances by China.
The security aspect aside, the PNG NRL deal hasn’t been without hurdles. In May this year, the NRL was ready to walk away from negotiations after a perceived shifting of the goalposts from the government.

Among points of contention was a government suggestion that the cost of building a secure complex to house players, coaches and club officials and staff would have to come out of its $600 million, decade-long package.
“What the PM and I and [Minister for International Development and the Pacific] Pat Conroy agreed to wasn’t the final thing that came back to us,” V’landys said. “We had to sort it out once and for all because we were willing to walk away.”
V’landys went public with his warning, declaring it “D-Day” for the Australian government during a press conference outside the NRL-owned Gambaro Hotel in Brisbane on the eve of Magic Round, in which every match of the round is played in the Queensland capital.
The next day, at the same time the fans began piling into Suncorp Stadium for the first day of games, NRL and government officials locked themselves in a private room inside the iconic Brisbane venue for an at-times heated, hour-long negotiation. The NRL would get its way.

“One thing is, when you do a deal, you honour it,” V’landys said. “To be fair, Pat Conroy and the prime minister were always going to honour it. Some people in government might have wanted to negotiate a better deal for themselves but we said you can’t. The deal is the deal. This could be the prime minister’s greatest ever legacy for the safety of Australia”.
Under the 10-year deal, the Australian government will direct $290 million to funding the PNG NRL team itself while $250 million will go towards rugby league development in the Pacific. The remaining $60 million of government money will be paid directly to the NRL as a licence fee and split among the existing 17 clubs.
The funds to build what V’landys has dubbed “NRL Village” have been sourced from the PNG government. It has committed 100 million kina ($38 million) a year for the next four years to construct the built-for-rent facility that will be designed to provide its residents with everything they need within the compound.

For up to the first 10 years, the NRL will share control of the board with the PNG government, who will both appoint representatives.
The new team will be owned by a conglomerate of PNG superannuation funds. Players and staff won’t be taxed by the PNG government, which has introduced changes to its income tax laws as an incentive for players to join the team, nor by the Australian government.
To appreciate how much Albanese has invested, both financially and emotionally, into a project he pressed for personally, you only have to ask Queensland Rugby League chairman Bruce Hatcher.
Hatcher received a call from the prime minister, which at first he thought was a prank, in late 2022.
At the time, the Mackay Cutters had decided to forfeit their match against the PNG Hunters in Port Moresby in the second-tier Queensland Cup over health and safety fears. It was meant to be the Hunters’ first game back on home soil in more than two years after they were asked to base themselves out of Australia during the pandemic.

It was a significant moment for the rugby league-obsessed nation, whose leaders were less than impressed with the Cutters’ unwillingness to travel there.
According to a source familiar with the contents of the conversation between Albanese and Hatcher, the prime minister urged the state league chief to ensure the Mackay players boarded the flight to PNG, offering any services they needed to feel secure. The next day they were on a plane to Port Moresby.
Ensuring player safety in PNG is among myriad challenges facing the ambitious venture, as is the task of attracting talent, even with tax exemptions.
As it stands, games can’t be played in Port Moresby at night because the city’s public transport doesn’t operate at the hours required to transport people to and from the 15,000-capacity national stadium.
Tkatchenko, PNG’s Australian-born top diplomat, said the significance of the nation having a NRL team would be remarkable.
“Especially when [Papua New Guineans] will be able to see a home team, a Papua New Guinean team, play NRL teams, not only in Australia, but also here in Papua New Guinea,” he said.
“It will give a huge injection and boost to NRL. We have a population of around 12 million people and they’re all, as you know, NRL-mad.
“It will also boost up our junior rugby league. There are so many thousands of young men and women out there who would be dying to be an NRL star, or knowing that there is a pathway going forward to being in the NRL.”

The more than $750 million being invested by the respective governments will, however, go a long way towards mitigating concerns about an increasingly unstable broadcast market as the NRL prepares to kick off talks for a new television deal early next year.
“In 10 years, the game could triple its revenue,” V’landys said. “No one else has the opportunity to go to a market with ready-made fans. You don’t have to convert them – you have more than 10 million ready-made fans.
“This is the greatest thing that will ever happen to the NRL. In all my years as a sports administrator, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a greater opportunity for a sport like this"

 

[Wb1234]

Pvl has played the png bid to perfection with that 750 million from the feds and png govt

 

[BunniesMan]

Absurd. Bringing a third world country into a 1st world sporting league has never been done before and with good reason. No star player is going to want to live in PNG. They will have to make a mockery of the salary cap to attract anyone at all. No exaggeration their cap will be 2x.

Some things sound good in theory but if you have any common sense at all you can see it doesn't work in reality.

 

[Chins get the wins]

Absurd. Bringing a third world country into a 1st world sporting league has never been done before and with good reason. No star player is going to want to live in PNG. They will have to make a mockery of the salary cap to attract anyone at all. No exaggeration their cap will be 2x.

Some things sound good in theory but if you have any common sense at all you can see it doesn't work in reality.

Cheers Golden Rod!

 

[i0Nic]

I lean more on the side that this move will be transformative for rugby league in these key ways:

1. Use existing momentum for League in the pacific to grow the game's popularity not just in PNG but in Fiji and more places.
2. Increase the player pool which will further provide opportunity to create further expansion teams
3. Strengthen the importance of rugby league in the pacific
4. Grow TV dollars from more teams and more eyeballs
5. Grow grassroots across the board with an immediate cash injection thanks to the government
6. Expand the general popularity of NRL and rugby league with excitement about more teams in new regions (including Perth, NZ2 etc)

All this will grow rugby league popularity and participation, legitimately being able to threaten as not only the most popular sport in the country but across the pacific.

 

[Matt_CBY]

The uneducated posters on bigfooty are in meltdown, but the educated ones can see the reasons behind it

lol have you got some examples?