QRL announces Townsville Blackhawks entry

[DIEHARD]

QRL announces Townsville's entry



The Intrust Super Cup’s significant growth will continue next season with the Queensland Rugby League today announcing the inclusion of the Townsville Blackhawks in the 2015 competition.

Expansion into Townsville comes on the back of the success of the Papua New Guinea Hunters, who left an indelible mark on the Intrust Super Cup in their debut season.

Queensland Rugby League Chairman Peter Betros officially informed more than 300 guests of the Blackhawks’ entry at tonight’s annual QRL Gala Dinner at Brisbane City Hall.

The marquee competition’s 14th team are set to play their home games out of Jack Manski Oval in Townsville. The new club will have the backing of the North Queensland Cowboys, who will importantly maintain their affiliation with the Northern Pride and Mackay Cutters.

Townsville’s participation will reignite one of North Queensland’s great rivalries with discussions already underway about the possible return of the Foley Shield.

Gavin Lyons, Chairman of the successful bid team’s steering committee, said such a concept had the potential to generate further interest in the game.

The Blackhawks will now focus on laying the foundations of their club, with a number of imminent announcements, including sponsorship and staff appointments, on their radar.

“This is a great opportunity for the kids coming through,” Lyons said.

“We’ve been pushing this for a couple of years now and the rugby league players in town are excited about the opportunities it will present.”

Jamie O’Connor, QRL General Manager of Major Competitions, echoed those sentiments.

“We’ve identified for some time the need to have an Intrust Super Cup club in Townsville,” O’Connor said.

“It is the largest region outside of South East Queensland and is a market that we want a significant foothold in.

“As it stands, a gap in the player pathway exists in Townsville for players over the age of 20.

“The Blackhawks provide a great opportunity for these players to continue their development through Intrust Super Cup and hopefully onto NRL and the XXXX Queensland Maroons.”

Townsville’s entry comes after the NRL approved recent applications for increased funding, the final condition of the fledgling club’s participation.

“Potential for expansion in second tier footy was recognised in the NRL’s Elite Pathways review and Townsville was already an area identified by us,” O’Connor said.

“This is another step towards a genuine statewide competition and we look forward to their entry in 2015.

“There is now some work to be done with the existing clubs in regards to scheduling for the new season.”

http://www.qrl.com.au/

[TITAN PETE]

Great news for the Cowboys & RL

[Toads]

Good to see another RL void has been filled in Queensland. Slowly getting back to how it is meant to be.

[DIEHARD]

It's fantastic to see the Queensland Cup grow. PNG have been an exciting addition and the Blackhawks will be a worthy addition.

[DIEHARD]

Props to the Blackhawks, who finally win the name game

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Article Lead - wide6118216010fdkl1410403263310.jpg-620x349.jpg

Finally, someone gets it. Well played Townsville Blackhawks, who have somehow, against all odds, come up with a name for a team that isn't completely horrible, generic, forgettable, inane, bizarre, meaningless or a lethal cocktail of all six combined evils.

This is no mean feat, because the recent past in Australian sport has shown us that assigning a name to a new sporting franchise ranks somewhere between curing cancer and finding a Melbourne Cup winner at the Rockhampton yearling sales in terms of degrees of difficulty.

Which is all the more reason that the Blackhawks deserve to take off in a big way. They will play in rugby league's Intrust Super Cup from 2015 and it doesn't even matter if they are completely rubbish, because they have managed to land themselves a really cool name.

Credit for the Blackhawks label goes to local Townsville firie Matt Cocker, who probably has a few decent nicknames of his own. It ticks almost all of my highly subjective boxes. Let's take a little wander down the list.

First and foremost, it has a parochial, local link, given that Townsville has been a base for Australian Blackhawk helicopters for years. To the layman, that sounds like common sense. But this is why you clowns don't run football clubs. Don't you know anything?

The thought process behind most of the names of recently spawned teams has been to make the name as least parochial as possible. That way, you can't alienate any subsection of potential members, fans, or sponsors, capturing them alllll under one great, beige banner of mind-numbing nothingness.
.
This is why the the rugby league team on the Gold Coast is called the Titans, instead of something like the Iron Men, a nod to the lifesavers and athletes that are synonymous with the coast's famous beaches.

But the use of 'men' means NO women would become fans. Not a single one. And what if you don't like going for a swim or a paddle? Survey says: Hate rugby league forever. What a disaster that would have been.

What you get instead of a one-size-fits-all name with precisely zero meaning to the exact people you want to become your most ardent fans. You could literally pick up the entire Titans operation, drop them in a completely different city and nobody would bat an eyelid.

The same goes for the AFL's Giants, or even the Suns, although there is a lot of sun on the Gold Coast, which must count for something. Melbourne Rising, Wellington Phoenix, West Coast Fever... take your pick. Off-the-rack names, devoid of quirk or identity, please only marketing consultants whose main game is to offend nobody, rather than inspire everybody.

Plus, rugby league is obsessed Blackhawks. You only have to watch every, single grand final since Blackhawks were invented to understand how much the code loves the thumping sound of one of the dark, intimidating beasts descending into Homebush to deliver the premiership trophy, or Brad Fittler, or both.

Why not? They're big and noisy and we'd all love one in the garage. And I always think about that great opening scene from Transformers, where excellent bad dude Blackout cruises in and lays waste to a US army base in the middle of the desert (chopper nerds will note that Blackout was in fact a Sikorsky MH-53 Pave Low but you get the idea).

Then there's the logo, or potential logo. At the moment, preliminary Blackhawks branding looks a bit more like they are selling a power saw instead of military-grade aviation hardware but there's room to move on that front. And they've got all year to have a tinker before they let their rotors loose in the NRL feeder competition.

Townsville Blackhawks, long may you soar. Get Eric Bana as a number one ticket holder.

Read more: http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/quee...#ixzz3CyxZxEgg

[DIEHARD]

Hopefully they get anew logo. But I love the mascot.

[Titanic]

Logo on the jersey looks really good, just the one on the article headline looks like free wifi on a hotel booking site and roasting the Titans name is just excellent but Iron Men? Gold Coast Thongs would have been great ... appeals to all people in different ways.