North's were heading there but the stadium was delayed for some reason.
Maybe weather.
Former North Sydney chief executive Bob Saunders said the Bears saw the move to Gosford as a great opportunity to secure their future, but wet weather and construction delays left them without a regular home ground and led to the club's demise after they failed to meet the NRL criteria when the competition was cut to 14 teams, because of their debts of $4 million.
Splitting their home games between four venues, the Bears attracted crowds as low as 3382 at Suncorp Stadium, 4705 at Parramatta Stadium, 5043 at North Sydney Oval and 8032 at the then 110,000-capacity Olympic Stadium, now known as ANZ Stadium.
"It was difficult to get our fans to appreciate all of the different venues that we had to use," Saunders said. "The then North Sydney sponsors stayed on board but getting new sponsors was very difficult when you were in that nomadic situation where you are going from one ground to another ground.
"That didn't help getting new sponsors and getting new season ticket holders, which is probably more important in today's climate than they were then. Memberships 20 years ago was something that everyone dreamed of, but these days that is very important to clubs."
However, former North Sydney president David Hill, who left the board before the club decided to move to Gosford, said the Bears were victims of poor management and politics arising from the Super League war with News Corporation.
"There wasn't any need for North Sydney to go into administration, they were not insolvent," said Hill, who later headed the Save The Bears movement, which attempted to stop the ill-fated merger with Manly to form the Northern Eagles.
"The reason they were not insolvent is because at the time the North Sydney Football Club, which declared itself insolvent, had six of the nine board members of the leagues club, which was awash with money."
The Bears went bust waiting for a new stadium to be built and Roosters officials fear the same thing may happen.
www.smh.com.au
So basically if the stadium was ready on-time for start of 1999 my assumption is the Bears would have survived and parked themselves permanently as a single entity on the Coast.
What would have happened with Manly well who the hell knows but its a damn shame they weren't expelled for good.
