Trouble at Tigertown

[magpie_man]

The future isn't in Campbelltown, the place is a dump. Marquee players, blue chip sponsors and cashed-up corporates don't want to be attending their home game fixtures at some semi-rural, high school paddock surrounded by ferals. Marquee players lift your club outta 9th; sponsors & corporates help you to afford/retain them.
Sure, the club should be doing way more in nurturing junior development in the region as well as being far more active in the community, but it doesn't mean they have to base themselves there holus-bolus.
Canada Bay is a good fit; close enough to the yuppies from the Inner-West and the big end of town whilst not being too far away from the junior nurseries in the South-West (and North-West).

 

[big hit!]

The future isn't in Campbelltown, the place is a dump. Marquee players, blue chip sponsors and cashed-up corporates don't want to be attending their home game fixtures at some semi-rural, high school paddock surrounded by ferals. Marquee players lift your club outta 9th; sponsors & corporates help you to afford/retain them.
Sure, the club should be doing way more in nurturing junior development in the region as well as being far more active in the community, but it doesn't mean they have to base themselves there holus-bolus.
Canada Bay is a good fit; close enough to the yuppies from the Inner-West and the big end of town whilst not being too far away from the junior nurseries in the South-West (and North-West).

I live in Marrickville and consider Penrith a shit hole, but they seem to be doing alright putting together a competitive football team - with a decent proportion of their players sourced from the district, and the central west.

Wests could do the same in South-Western Sydney from the Liverpool LGA, the Macarthur region, the Southern Highlands and beyond.

The inner west is where Wests Ashfield is. That's really all it is. They're paying a little bit of lip service to South-western Sydney, but their top brass are all based further east. Wests Magpies originally upped stumps from Ashfield and then Lidcombe as they couldn't compete with the incursion of Canterbury in both areas. Balmain realised that they had to have greater appeal than just the Leichhardt, Canada Bay and Ryde LGA's in the 90s because their heartland had changed - hence the Sydney Tigers at Parramatta. But now as a JV, they're nesting back in the region that basically killed the two clubs when they were stand alone entities.

If they want to be an Inner West club, then do it, and go the whole hog - although I don't agree with it. At the moment, it's a bit of here and bit of there strategy in the Inner West, Parramatta and Campbelltown. They are the NRL's nowhere man.