Ant said:
The crushers finally gave brisbane a 2nd team, so not everyone had to support the broncos. The early cross town rival stuff was great. SL blew the crushers out of the water for 2 reasons. 1 the over inflated player market, the crushers budget was thrown out the window. 2, most qlders sided with SL, seeing the ARL as a NSW dominated org, the crushers were seen as theirs.
Qlder's are hicks, there is no changing that.
Now the reds, it was a market that had so many chances. League had been well supported when it took games to perth. A population of over 1 million, and so many expats from england and south africa, people longing for something that had the word rugby in the name.
Mate, f*ck the England, NZ and SA sh*te.... go to North Beach or South Perth RL clubs, 1/3 of perth has roots from guys who moved from NSW or Qld in the early 70's, these are the people who had affinity for RL, the guys who gave 10,000+ corwds in the early 90's and averaged 20,000 for Reds games before April 1, 1995 and SL gave them all the sh*ts.
They may have had supoprt for their "old" teams if they were from NSW, but their kids supported the Reds en masse.... however the dreams of all these kids were taken away in 1997 when the reds folded.
The reds averaged 13000 crowds in their first season. The reds u/17 team won the SL title, with only 1 non WA player in their team. Perhaps unlike other markets (Adelaide and Melbourne), Perth represents a new major recruiting area.
Not anymore it doesn't.... the u'17's who won the title in 1997, are now 26 years old slobs with no fitness, and no one has run with the banner since.... there is an absolute vacuum of talent in RL, that was once very visible pre 1995.
So my view it was tradgedy that we left Perth and it is an area with so much potential. So we should go there.
Mate the greatest tragedy is that RL in 1994 was more popular that RU is in Perth right now, it had 1000's of juniors, over 70 schools playing it... a Western Reds team _STILL_ playing NRL, 11 years after being introduced in 1995 would have a majority of WA born players and maybe being close to making SOO a 3-way series... however it is dead now.. back to ground zero.
It took 50 years from soldiers immigrating here after WWII to 1995 to get it where it was... and it is essentially 1945 again in Perth as far as RL development goes. Right now there is no potential.
I love Perth, and if Perth got an NRL team, there is no way I'd ever return to Sydney.. RL at that level is the only thing missing...but Perth is _SO_ far from being ready for an NRL side it isn't funny.
I think those suggesting the storm should move have rocks in their heads and are extremely narrow minded. Have you learnt nothing from the AFL experience. It took 15 years for the swans and bears/lions to gain a foothold in their markets. Those teams gradually won over the media outlets who now spruik them heavily despite the fact that clearly league is 4 times as popular. The storm have been around for 9 years, thats all. They face a much more hostile media in melbourne. But if we are talking about league remaining strong we must be in Victoria australia's 2nd largest pop state. Nearly 5 million people surely that is a growth area, especially with much work being done at grass roots level, especially schoolboys.
We have to stay with Melbounre now that we've made our bed there, at the sacrifice of Perth.. it would be treating the Perth experiment in vain to give up in Melbourne too.
But that said, if we could go back to 1995 and avoid the SL war... I'd pick Perth over Melbourne in a heartbeat... Melbourne is such a sporting cultural backwater.. it's just sad... but we've laid a lot on the line there, and we'd better make the best of it.
