NRL Fans Survey: Where should the next expansion team be located?
August 18, 2015 12:00AM
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Matt Parcell is an NRL quality player who’s turned out for the Ipswich Jets this year. Picture: Mark Cranitch Source: News Corp Australia
WHAT do you love about rugby league? Where is the game letting itself down?
Here is your chance to give your opinion on what you think of the current state of the game.
We want to hear your thoughts on all the big talking points in the NRL.
To coincide with the launch the 2015 NRL fans survey now, we quizzed our experts on a series of the big questions — today we ask: where should the next expansion team be located?
Check out what Paul Malone and Chris Garry have to say — and take the 2015 NRL fans survey now!
WHY IPSWICH MAKES THE MOST SENSE
The NRL must expand for the next broadcast rights deal with Ipswich the only logical place to create the 17th team.
A game every weekend at Suncorp Stadium almost makes too much financial sense for the NRL to understand.
An Ipswich team would attract crowds of around 25,000 most weeks, twice the amount of Sydney clubs like Cronulla.
The Broncos crowds may drop from low 30s to high 20s but again that is more than double most Sydney clubs.
What is to lose? I tell you what, the thousands of new families who are moving west of Brisbane every year. The Ipswich region is the new western Sydney and a code needs to monopolise it.
Anyone who watched the Intrust Super Cup knows there’s 10 players there who are NRL ready.
Add three NRL rep stars, five of the best rookies, three Super League players and five NRL mid-tier players and a quality team is created.
The NRL can also introduce just one club at a time. A bye week never killed anyone.
— Chris Garry
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NRL boss Dave Smith takes in an Ipswich Jets game in at Cherbourg. Source: News Corp Australia
COMMUNITY-BASED MODEL KEY TO SUCCESS
There’s no arguing where the next expansion should come from, but the organisation which puts a second team from Suncorp Stadium into the premiership isn’t clear to me.
I don’t believe there should be _ or will be _ an 17th or 18th team in the NRL for at least five years.
The standard of the football in the games which the lower-placed team often play confirms that. Did you happen to see the round 20 stinker between Penrith and Canberra?
To borrow a line from Molly Meldrum, the members of the ARL Commission should each do themselves a favour and watch it from go to woe (lots of woe) when the expansion issue ever gets to a vote.
I’ve heard all the arguments about why the western corridor deserves a team, which would play out of Suncorp for at least five years.
Whether the band taking in Beenleigh, on to Ipswich and then Toowoomba can produce enough corporate backing is something for the ARLC to decide.
Rugby league is as its most engaging when clubs are community-based, so the argument from the Brisbane Bombers that a privately-owned bid is best would need to win over a good number of the vast demographic in the city who so dislike the Broncos to avoid becoming Crushers version 2.0.
I really like the aspect of the Brothers bid that their team would play eight home matches at Suncorp and four at regional cities, but as we reported earlier this month bid team chairman Justin Barlow said publicly that he believes expansion is most likely to happen next in the second-tier Queensland and NSW Cups.
The most likely way for a second Brisbane team in the short team is for an existing club to be relocated because of financial hardship. But those clubs, primarily Wests Tigers and Gold Coast, posses the convincing and just argument that as they were members of the 16-team competition which helped attract the $925 million free-to-air television _ and perhaps $1.6 million for all media rights _ they are eligible for enough cash to allow them to survive as they are.
— Paul Malone
Source:
news.com.au/sport/nrl
