Honestly I don't get why people argue about this anymore, everybody is just arguing over red herrings or fear mongering at this point.
It seems to me that everybody on the old Sydney fan side is scared of their clubs being killed off, but nobody with any credibility on the other side is actually suggesting that any clubs be killed off as it'd be completely unnecessary to achieve their goals, and it'd be an unnecessary waste.
Then once that red herring goes past everybody on the old Sydney fan side fear mongers about rationalisation saying that it'll create wastelands for the sport, "look at NS", etc, which to do so you'd have to ignore all the other factors that lead to NS turning out how it did all of which aren't issues anymore, and if rationalisation is handled properly (not the half arsed rushed mess that was the end of SL) all evidence suggests the contrary, just look anywhere in pretty much any sport, South Melbourne and Fitzroy are still AFL "heartlands", St. Louis still loves it's American Football, etc, etc, etc, even in our sport there're examples of successful rationalisation and regulation (Newtown, Glebe, Annandale, Uni, hundreds more if you look in England).
So really the whole thing is a non-argument and has been since the late 70s, the weight of evidence all leads one way, the real issue is people failing to or being unwilling to accept the evidence and people in positions of power being unwilling to cede that power, not whether or not rationalisation works or if rationalisation would be beneficial to the NRL, those arguments are already settled to any rational and/or sincere person...
It's also ironic that pretty much every person that is anti-rationalisation's clubs either wouldn't exist at all without prior rationalisation of the competition or wouldn't exist in the form that they currently do without rationalisation.
