are you trying to tell me a team like the sharks, who has a catchment area of around 200,000 people, could potentially rival the broncos in terms of support, who have a whole city of more then 2,000,000 and has had over 10 years to the state by themselves?
How long has Cronulla existed, again? More than 20 years? In the self-proclaimed world-wide capitol of League, no less?
In 1988 if the nswrl introduced the East Brisbane Gorillas, the West Brisbane Cougars and the North Brisbane Numats along with the Broncos....do you think the broncos would eb as strong as they are today?
Maybe, maybe not. Assuming everything in your alternate history as far as the Broncos goes reamains the same, they probably wouldn't be too far off.
That, however, is irrelevant. Sydney still has an 80-year advantage over Brisbane as an NRL/NSWRL team.
1) Sydney can get the same amount of NRL games in 2 weeks that Brisbane gets in 2 months. If you want to include the Gold Coast as well, the whole of southern Queensland gets 24 NRL matches a year, not counting semis. Sydney has 8 teams, and it's quite common for fans to go to home and away matches unlike Gold Coast and Brisbane fans who can only see their teams' home games unless the Broncos and Titans are playing eachother. This means the average fan in southern Queensland has more money readily available to spend on Origin/ Test match tickets than a Sydneysider, who might not know until game day whether they can afford to go.
2) Suncorp is a great stadium. There isn't a bad seat in the place. Also the fact it's only 1 train station from the city. In Sydney, the SFS is a train and a bus trip away for many people. In Brisbane, many people go to the NRL night games/ rep matches as part of a night out. In Sydney though- what's there to do in Homebush on a Friday or Saturday night?
I disagree.
For a long time, the Sydney-centric approach to the game resulted in rep matches being taken away from Brisbane. Recently we were given an opportunity to see them again, and the city responded.
As far as Origin goes, it's a Queensland thing. Honestly, if Suncorp had twice as many seats it would still be selling out.
Available money as an argument doesn't really seem like a sensible explanation to me; most people allocate a certain budget for entertainment each week/fortnight/etc and if it's not being spent on footy, it'll be spent on DVDs, books, magazines, computer games, or whatever else.
Ease of transport does help if you want to get a family to Suncorp, but since Origin and Test matches probably aren't dominated by dad-and-two-kids attendees, I'd find it hard to pin it on that, either.
