That's simply not true.
Apart from the Broncos and the Storm News threw all the other clubs out to fend for themselves after they decided to merge the SL with the ARL to create the NRL.
The Warriors, Panthers and the Sharks came within a bees dick of being cut and would have been if it wasn't for the head start that they got financially from joining SL or in the Warriors case a rich benefactor starting a new club, buying the Warriors name, apply to join the NRL, and throwing money at them at the last second.
I'd also like to point out that the Reds, Rams and Mariners all had an S on their jerseys, none of them got looked after.
It is false because the Dragons and the Steelers being merged had nothing to do with making space for the Storm, that space had already been made with the sacrifice of the Rams, Mariners, and to a lesser extent the Reds as well.
The merger of the Dragons and the Steelers was an exercise in allowing the Dragons to swallow the Steelers whole so that they could meet the criteria and justify their existence in the new competition, the only people wronged in that merger were the Steelers because they were effectively murdered so the Dragons could continue and all in the name of tradition and history.
And maybe you would understand my point of view better if your club had been killed outright instead of being allowed to enter into a convoluted and frankly stupid arrangement that is a merger, and particularly the Dragons-Steelers merger.
Sure it's disappointing for you that your club in the case of the Dragons they had to murder another club and pretend to give a f##k about the club that you murdered so that you could survive, but at least you still have a club running around even if it is a distorted mess of a merger, the same cannot be said by the Chargers, Crushers, Rams, or Reds fans can it!
So when you really get down to it if you had to choose between merger and death (which I agree was a stupid choice, but it was effectively what was offered at the time) which would you prefer? Because I'm sure there're a few people around in Perth, Brisbane, and Adelaide that'd be happy to take the Dragons spot in the competition from them if you'd prefer to change your mind.
I don't disagree with that the 'peace deals' were stupidly implemented and rushed, I've already talked about how I would have done it differently.
Where we disagree is your suggestion that Sydney clubs were some how hard done by when every concession possible was made to make sure that as many of them as possible survived at the expense of clubs outside of Sydney.
What exactly gives the Dragons a divine right to be in the NRL/ARL/NSWRL but doesn't give other clubs such as the Crushers that divine right?
Is it the fact that they were allowed into the competition first? Because if that were true then shouldn't Glebes' or Annandales' spots in the competition be even more sacrosanct then the Dragons?
I think that we can both agree that Glebe and Annandale being dropped so that the sport could be given the opportunity to grow in St. George and Canterbury was a good thing?
But now that we need a few more club to be dropped so that the sport can be allowed to grow in other places (a need we've had since at least the 80's I might add), and logically those clubs should come from Sydney, nobody wants to stand up and be counted anymore.
Apart from in the cases of the Rabbitohs, Crushers, and arguably Manly, Wests, Balmain, and a few of the other older Sydney clubs, that's not really true, but I don't really want to get into that right now.
I know the reason why the Mariners were put in Newcastle, it's because when News set out to take over RL in this country Newcastle was recognised as a key market that they had to takeover, and despite their best efforts to attract the Knights over to SL whom were offered some of the best deals of any team to join SL by the time that things fell through, they couldn't convince them to jump ship, so in a desperate attempt to maintain a presence in Newcastle and hopefully take over the market eventually they created the Mariners.
When SL was started the Mariners were never intended to be introduced and the Rams were intended to be an expansion club that joined along with the Storm in 98 or 99, it was always intended that in a perfect world the Knights and Bears would join SL, obviously that didn't happen, however if it had then I reckon we'd be talking about SL right now and not the NRL.
There're rumours that News was so certain of the Knights joining that they had jerseys and other gear made for them to use and that that gear was given to the Rams to use when they were fast tracked to enter SL in 97, don't know if that's true though.
It doesn't have to be Sydney-centric though! With a few relatively small changes that could be changed and potentially that could be changed without anybody having to be merged, relocated, or having to close their doors.
And frankly who is being greedy, the people that want to spread the game to as many people as possible or the people that want to keep it all to themselves in Sydney!
We can't continuously expand the competition forever, changes are going to have to be made to the structure and make up of the competition every now and again unless we want it to grow to big and collapse in on it's self, and at the moment the most sensible option for the NRL is to reduce the number of clubs in Sydney.
Who says that we have end the history of the Tigers?
I'm certainly not saying that, frankly I don't have all the information necessary to make a decision on which clubs should be dropped and which shouldn't, and even if I was the one making the decision I'd make sure that none of them were killed off, merged, or relocated, simply dropped into the second tier.
