My thoughts: If West Brisbane gets a team it needs to play out of a different stadium. Suncorp won't do, fans who can make it to Suncorp are the ones who show up. There's a large portion of Ipswich-Logan League fans who don't travel to Suncorp. I don't like the idea of shared stadiums.
For NSW i think you're spot on, although 5 Sydney teams is better than 4, all being mergers and all keeping their traditional sides in the lower grades. Illawarra as a stand alone club is a good idea, maybe the area can take a break from League for a while and come back as a new entity (aka the Gold Coast Chargers/Titans situation)
Tasmania, Adelaide, Christchurch, Darwin & PNG is a stretch too far. Although all these places should host NRL season matches to "test the water". Dragons should have taken their games on the road this year whilst Kograh is being re-developed.
Thanks for your feedback, Chapsta.
I honestly do believe that a West Brisbane side needs to play out of Suncorp. There will be no option, if the QLD Government choose not to fork out another $200+ million for another stadium. Also, Ipswich is only 30km away from Suncorp (A lot of Knights supporters travel a lot more than that to get to matches in Newcastle). Plus, there's already a World Class 52,500 seater at Suncorp. A lot of revenue can be generated there. If Gold Coast took both of their home matches vs Brisbane and West Brisbane to Suncorp, they could obtain crowds of approx 50,000 there. If you had
Brisbane vs North Queensland, Brisbane vs Gold Coast, Brisbane vs West Brisbane, Gold Coast vs Brisbane, Gold Coast vs West Brisbane, West Brisbane vs Gold Coast and West Brisbane vs Brisbane
all at Suncorp, that's a heck of a lot of money that could be generated from the combined aggregate of those matches.
I do believe, for the meantime, that teams should temporarily take matches to Tasmania, Adelaide, Christchurch, Darwin and PNG.
Adelaide, Christchurch and Darwin are musts to take NRL games to in the next 5 years. Wests Tigers use to take home matches vs Warriors to Christchurch, with the highest attendance at Lancaster Park being 18,421. So, it shows there is potential there in the South Island (which is dominated by Rugby Union).
Adelaide: Well, they have also shown potential for obtaining large crowds (and the population has increased quite a fair bit since league was last played there). Nearly 29,000 ppl turned out to Adelaide Oval for the first ever first-grade match played there, and the Adelaide Rams averaged over 15,000 ppl/home match in their first season (a lot more than more than 50% of other clubs). I believe at the time they folded, they had 7,000 club members. So again, a lot of potential there in an AFL dominated city.
Darwin: This, I would say, is the most underrated and unknown of areas. Has a lot of potential. Northern Territory produces a lot of League and AFL players, and I feel, like the Gold Coast, this is an area we've gotta wrap up before the AFL gets there. Marrara Stadium is a possible venue in Darwin to play matches. First ever NSWRL match played there in 1991 got nearly 14,000 ppl there.
