Brisbane 3 needs to be done right, even though it's in the heartland.
I really hope the NRL don't see the success of Redcliffe and assume they can half-arse the next QLD club. If they do it'll underperform and never reach potential.
Fans love tradition and history of their clubs. The NRL cannot create a new franchise or joint-venture or try to shoe-horn in a Sydney club. It won't work in QLD.
If we're moving to a national academy system then I think it's a great opportunity to save some BRL history and promote Easts or Ipswich directly into the NRL. No changes to names, colours or mascots. Those are the key things to keep, it's the club's identity and it's what resonates with fans.
If it was up to me we'd promote Easts/Brisbane Tigers, they're the richest club not in the NRL and are one of the most famous BRL clubs. It'd also mean we'd have representation of the BRL across all eras: A foundation club (Tigers), a 'new' post-war club (Redcliffe), the post-Origin superclub in the Broncos and the two modern franchises in NQ and the GC.
To do this we'd need to undo one of the great travesties in our game and allow Wests Tigers to finally de-merge.
We'd have Wests Magpies taking back their name and playing in their famous B&W Magpies strip. The JV is Magpies in all but name anyway. This way they can take total control of their own future without any of the infighting. It'd resurrect a 'dead' club from the ashes of that horrible merger. Wests would have direction and an actual identity again.
The Balmain fans can jump onboard a professionally run club called the Tigers who actually wear the famous orange & black jersey, that is still worn everywhere by fans except on the field where it belongs. While the Balmain club is basically gone these days at least this way fans can still see the Tigers play half a dozen games in Sydney every year. When in Sydney the Brisbane Tigers can base themselves out of Leichhardt and fans can watch the captain's run.
By my reckoning we'd be resurrecting three traditional clubs each with century old histories and rivalries; instead hiding two of them behind an ugly/broken merger with no identity, no soul and no future, and a third left to wither and die as the sport consolidates at the top level.
It would be a sea-change moment for RL in Australia and show the the last scars of the SL War have finally been healed.
