The NRL and 15 non-NZ clubs take all the talent out of NZ. So I don't think it would be particularly unreasonable to give something back here and there.
You make it sound as if the NRL clubs swoop in and buy all the best rugby players in NZ after the local clubs have put all the work into them to make them NRL ready , and that's just not the case.
Apart from the cream of the crop that the Warriors pick up 90% of that talent would either be playing Super Rugby or second tier RU if it wasn't for the Australian clubs investing their Australian dollars into developing those players from teenagers.
I'd go so far as to say that the Kiwis would not be competitive with the Roos and England if it wasn't for Australian clubs developing most of their talent.
In other words we're doing them a service by developing that talent that they can't afford to develop themselves.
Basically, while the NRL drains NZ and the Pacific of all professional quality playing talent
Again if not to Australia where else is that talent going to go?
The Warriors can only take on so many, and the Pacific RL's and NZRL aren't in any position to develop much talent, and even if they were in a position to develop all that talent where would it go at the end of the line!?
Apart from the Warriors and the Hunters (who are mainly part time aren't they?) there're no professional RL teams in the South Pacific, so if the Aussie clubs didn't take them where would they go, straight to Japanese and French RU that's where.
So if the NRL clubs don't take them they are lost RL, so again we are doing them a service by making it possible for so many of their countrymen to make a living through RL, cause if we didn't do that then RL would be all but dead in all the South Pacific and NZ apart from maybe PNG.
AND uses its sheer weight to block out almost all opportunity for meaningful internationals
BS, nothing is stopping the Kiwis, Tongans, Fijians, whoever, from putting on a match or tournament if they so wish, I mean it'd be bloody stupid to schedule it during the NRL season because they simply cannot compete with that kind of money (yet), but if they wanted they could be trying to get a series up right now, but they aren't.
I fail to see how that is the NRLs' fault, apart from maybe the NRLs' success making it un-economically sound for many of the Pacific players to risk their careers playing an international doesn't pay enough to cover their costs ATM, but that's simply a matter of prestige and time, if the Pacific leagues played the games and made them viable money making products eventually they'd get past that.
the NRL can and should be expected to support and grow the region.
No ones saying that they shouldn't support the region, but the NRL cannot be expected to completely run and fund it either (nor can the NRL really afford to do it without it being at the expense of Australia ATM, which is the NRLs' actual jurisdiction), they have to at least try to stand on their own two feet.
The 'ample opportunities' you've referenced without a single example simply do not exist.
So there're no opportunities for sponsorship in NZ, no government grants for sporting organisations in NZ, no business opportunities, nobody willing to privately invest in the NZRL, bull shit , absolute bull shit.
I mean a f##king Canadian who was only introduced to the sport about a decade ago managed to first find the funding to reintroduce the sport into Canada and then find the funding to start a professional club in an English competition, but the Kiwis who have been playing the game for a hundred years can't find the money to hold a handful of events every couple of years or so!
It's not that there aren't any opportunities it's that nobody in NZ has been willing to put in the hard work to try and find them, they just expect the Aussies to come over a throw money at their problems until they go away, well why f##king should we do any more then we already do, I mean we literally sustain the professional aspects of the sport over there, and if we didn't RL would be unrecognisable in NZ.
And hell it's not like there aren't any groups in NZ willing to invest in RL, if there wasn't the Nines for example wouldn't exist.
And how exactly would the NRL lose the majority of the financial reward by playing the game in NZ?
Nobody said they would lose the majority of the financial reward by playing the game in NZ, however they would lose a fair chunk of potential revenue cause there's more money to be made in Australia then there is in NZ ATM.
