Rusty
Bencher
Mark, firstly this all assumes that the RL pie is diminishing, frankly I don't think this is true at all. The TV revenue is going up and in the future a commission will ensure that less and less money is siphoned out of the game.
Secondly the days of worrying about having too many Sydney teams has past, not to say that one wont leave or wind up, due to their own mismanagement, but the game has become so dependent on TV revenue that it really doesn't matter if the teams are only a few suburbs apart.
I would rather see more teams, either in a two level format or in an expanded competition with each team only playing each other team once per year. The game has the present capacity for 8 more top level teams at present I feel. These teams should be strategically placed to either expand RL into the other states (Perth, Adelade), Internationally (PNG, second NZ team, Fiji) or secure RL heartlands (Central QLD, Central Coast, Northern NSW, West Brisbane). The secret is balancing the expansion of teams we will need to support against teams that will almost certainly make money, ie. PNG and West Brisbane.
Other then expanding the NRL we need to look at ways for the game to raise revenue, like SOO has become a center piece of the games revenue stream.
My suggestion is to make SOO a stand alone event, played on a Saturday night. On the same weekend we would have the following events :
Indigenous Cup.
This would be a three week event including the Aboriginal Allstars, a Maroi Allstars and a Polonysian Allstars team. Each team would play each other once, one game on each of the SOO weekends on the Friday night. Each team would have one home game.
City v Country.
Forget having the CvC as a selection thing, which it blatently is not anyway, use it as a tool to take RL to country areas, play games on the sunday afternoons of the SOO weekends. We should introduce a QLD CvC comp as well.
Toyota Cup
Play a toyota cup SOO, Indigenous Cup, NSW CvC and QLD CvC.
Combined this would give us 8 TV games on a rep weekend, a hell of a lot of advertising potential, and an opportunity to have a carnival type atmosphere about the whole weekend, it would mean more rep opportunities and a chance for top Toyota Cup players to show off.
Secondly the days of worrying about having too many Sydney teams has past, not to say that one wont leave or wind up, due to their own mismanagement, but the game has become so dependent on TV revenue that it really doesn't matter if the teams are only a few suburbs apart.
I would rather see more teams, either in a two level format or in an expanded competition with each team only playing each other team once per year. The game has the present capacity for 8 more top level teams at present I feel. These teams should be strategically placed to either expand RL into the other states (Perth, Adelade), Internationally (PNG, second NZ team, Fiji) or secure RL heartlands (Central QLD, Central Coast, Northern NSW, West Brisbane). The secret is balancing the expansion of teams we will need to support against teams that will almost certainly make money, ie. PNG and West Brisbane.
Other then expanding the NRL we need to look at ways for the game to raise revenue, like SOO has become a center piece of the games revenue stream.
My suggestion is to make SOO a stand alone event, played on a Saturday night. On the same weekend we would have the following events :
Indigenous Cup.
This would be a three week event including the Aboriginal Allstars, a Maroi Allstars and a Polonysian Allstars team. Each team would play each other once, one game on each of the SOO weekends on the Friday night. Each team would have one home game.
City v Country.
Forget having the CvC as a selection thing, which it blatently is not anyway, use it as a tool to take RL to country areas, play games on the sunday afternoons of the SOO weekends. We should introduce a QLD CvC comp as well.
Toyota Cup
Play a toyota cup SOO, Indigenous Cup, NSW CvC and QLD CvC.
Combined this would give us 8 TV games on a rep weekend, a hell of a lot of advertising potential, and an opportunity to have a carnival type atmosphere about the whole weekend, it would mean more rep opportunities and a chance for top Toyota Cup players to show off.