And the idea of building another stadium? Just lunacy. You have the one of the best rectangular stadiums in the world sitting idle every second weekend. It would be madness not to utilise it.
There is of course more than one way to skin that cat. A short term plan would be just to throw another team at Suncorp to get a game there every week. A long term strategy would be to look at the ground as more a regional hub for blockbuster games like the MCG or SCG was in the old match of day era.
In the regional hub plan you work towards having complete regional coverage with teams ringing the SE Queensland region, north (Sunshine Coast), south (Gold Coast) and west (Ipswich, Lockyer Valley, Toowoomba) in addition to a team at the centre (the Broncos). Each team has its own home ground and distinct area to support it while serving to leave no openings for rival codes to gain a foothold without having to take us on head-on from day one.
Each of the perimeter teams plays nine home games at their smaller local grounds and then takes their blockbuster derby games to the regional hub so that supporters from both local teams can get to the game. So when Gold Coast play Sunshine Coast twice each year, those games get played at Suncorp. Same when the Sunshine Coast play the Western team. If you throw in games against the Cowboys as the third derby match for each team then you don't end up having to hand the Broncos any extra home ground advantages.
By planning for the long term instead of just throwing another team at Suncorp, you provide local access to teams in each part of the entire region nine times each season and you ensure that the additional nine games at Suncorp are all high drawing local derbys. In fact you go from a situation where you have just the 12 Broncos home games with only two of those being Queensland derbys to having 18 games (a game at Suncorp three out of every four weeks) and potentially 13 of those being Queensland derbys.
The aim here isn't to just use to Suncorp every week for the sake of using it but rather to make use of it to the best advantage of Rugby League across the entire SE Queensland region. in my opinion that is best achieved by working towards ensuring we have distributed coverage of teams across the entire area and maximising the number of true blockbuster derby matches available to take to Suncorp.
Leigh
