teams will succomb to natural attrition. the cost of running an NRL football club will continue to increase, and although the competition is expecting a decent windfall from the next media rights agreement, football clubs will still be required to 'fund the gap'. Leagues club grants will get smaller in relation to its proportion of funding to the cost of football club operations, and the battle for major sponsorship $$$ has always been tough in a congested market here in Sydney. Clubs will need to continue to push season ticket drives (hence the security of receiving a large chunk of gate takings in advance, rather than living week-to-week on the back of the team's on-field performance) and focus on other major revenue sources the club can control, such as merchandising, website (or is this outsourced to Telstra??) etc.
those who fall behind will either need a 'white knight' to save them, relocate, merge, or drop back to NSW Cup.
the unfortunate thing is that a club in Sydney will not be spared. In contrast, clubs such as the Storm and Broncos will continue (in the forseeable future) to be kept afloat by News Ltd, although they stated on many occassions that they will want to reduce their investment in the comp to one team.
the 16-team national comp structure needs to be maintained. and some comments such increasing the representation in Sydney would be a backward step IMO.
Personally i believe 18 is tha perfect number and 20 isnt too bad.
There are too many superstars out there going to England and others that die in the womb because they never got a chance to shine.
9 games will maintain 2 friday night, the monday games and sat night and sunday structurwes and allow a saturday arvo game to arrive.
In the late 90s the gameplay was considered tha best it had ever been.
I believe tha reason for this is because the comp was stretched to 20 teams then contracted overnight to 14.
Obviously that means 6 teams worth of lesser players got cut, but what i HAVENT heard about was the amount of stars that was created the previous 2 or 3 years because everyone got an opportunity to taste first grade juice and more stars were created.
I'll try and analogy it.
If you get tha top 10 rappers in australia to ryhme off then pick the best 3 you will likely get the best 3 out of that ten.
Bu if you get 100 rappers to rhyme off and freestyle against each other. The top ten PLUS another 90 wannabees, it is VERY LIKELY that tha top 3 rappers chosen on the day wont be the same as the top 3 from the ten. you will get maybe 2 that are the same but the 3rd would be a surprise. He would have deserved it, hes a superstar, but he wouldnt have had tha chance to shine initially and still be a wannabee if the top ten scenario happened.
That is the difference between condensing from 16 to 14 or keeping the teams level as opposed to reducing from 22 to 14.
Feel me?
