The Great Dane
First Grade
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The Perth Reds offered to pay the costs of the travel as part of their bid proposal which was announced a couple of years before joining the NRL.
I can't remember the exact time line, but they decided to join SL a couple of months into the 95 season.
Did they completely get their sums wrong that they were broke after a few months from paying the travel costs?
I just don't get this travel excuse that is always wheeled out to explain away the Reds joining SL and then going broke.
Edit- According to Wikipedia they signed with SL April 20 1995
Amongst other things they vastly overestimated what they'ed make at the gate, they vastly underestimated how much hosting a game day costs, they vastly underestimated how much stadium rent would cost, going by their track record with estimations they probably vastly underestimated how much it would cost to pay for all the travel and accommodation cost of all the other teams as well.
However without having to pay those travel costs they would have had more time to turn things around before they faced the headsmans' axe.
These days it's easy to forget, but you have to remember that pre SL clubs were multiple 100s of thousand $ businesses not multimillion $ businesses, and the costs of travel back then were also a lot higher (especially from Sydney and Brisbane to Perth, god knows how much it cost to get two teams and staff from Auckland to Perth and back back then).
So that investment of money into travel and accommodation, and we're talking business class and high class hotels, gyms and training facilities to boot, was a big investment of money. These days it wouldn't hit a club that hard, but back then it would have been basically a 5th-quarter of the Reds yearly budget gone before they had even started.
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