We can't deny it - there is a problem in Sydney

[Special K]

You need these sydney clubs in the competition because they are the teams which people identify with. They are the clubs which people grew to love the game from. You take that away from people and I doubt you will get a positive reaction. Sydney fans (dragons, wests, balmain, souths, norths, manly) paid the price and to do it to more clubs would be shocking business sense.

Cronulla has a $100 million development about to start. Why cut the sharks for a gosford team? Other teams are putting things into place to insure they are safe. Why would they take $8 to go up the F3?

I live on the central coast - everyone is tied up to teams now and a team here would be good but not at the cost of a sydney team. It takes me a hour and a half to see my sharks play at home and there are a bunch of games within a hour of me. People further north of me can see games in Newcastle and there are always games at North Power it seems.

Whats the point of cutting a team with history and a existing fan base, sponsorship for a team up the road with less fans and less money? How is putting a team on gosford going to grow the game? There are plenty of opportunites to play league here and plenty of NRL teams paying attention to us. Look at how many coast players are in different toyota, nsw cup and nrl teams.

It is "mind boggling" the lack of respect people want to show sydney clubs. Yes if the NRL was to start today you would do things better but the fact is these clubs represent where our game came from.

 

[Mary]

Relocation is the most viable option to address the "too many teams in Sydney" issue IMO.

Would it be such a drastic move for a team currently playing in Sydney to relocate to the Central Coast? Take Souths for instance, they don't play in their local area anyway, would it be such a drastic move to move 45 minutes up the F3? Maybe a slight name change to the "Central Coast Rabbitohs"? How many Souths fans actually live in the South Sydney area anyway?

The Souths identity wouldn't die. They would still be the Rabbitohs. They would still play in the red and green. They would keep their history (they would just start writing a new chapter).

Doesn't have to be Souths. Any Sydney club would do.

All that's needed is the NRL to increase the incentives for teams to relocate.

 

[Perth Red]

Well said special K and despite being an expansionist I would love to see a 20 team comp with all the exisitng Sydney clubs drawing 20,000+ in decent stadia and our salary cap up around $7mill.

 

[LeagueXIII]

Telling people to get to games. Did you see the crowd at Newcastle yesterday? If Sydney teams could get crowds like that we wouldn't have this problem

Like the 22,000 that watched the Roosters Sea Eagles game or the 21,000 that watched Souths and the Tigers the week before?

 

[Teddyboy]

I was watching the footy show on thursday and turvey mortimer said something which caught my attention. He said "we can't deny that there isn't a problem in Sydney" or something along those lines.

Anyway, this got me thinking, cause I have being denying for a while that there is a problem for the past few months and now I have realised that there is. We can't keep Rugby League as a surburban game that gets piss poor crowds.

We need all Sydney clubs to have certain criteria that they have to fulfill otherwise they can f**k off and die/re-locate/merge/go to NSW Cup.

/end rant.

I couldn't not agree more.
Well done.