Just bring in two teams, Brisbane and Perth.
This crap about small crowds at the nines proves nothing, it's a touch footy tournament with a few NRL stars that has always attracted small crowds. Pretty sure the NRL and Origin games go close to selling out in Perth.
The NRL should have kept Perth and Adelaide along with the Crushers.
The twenty team comp back in the mid-'90s was probably too many teams but it would be perfect today, instead of the $8,000,000 offered to merge back then could have been used to move teams.
Encouraging teams to move to Melbourne and Hobart instead of merging or being kicked out we would have had a true national comp.
Thanks, Rupert, you really f***ed the game over a dummy spit over TV rights.
At the end of 1998 and just before the beginning of the 1999 season, pardon the pun but the Adelaide Rams really became the sacrificial lamb to keep Melbourne in the competition (officially the reason was that St George and Illawarra had merged and they wanted to avoid a bye. Believe that and I'll tell you the NSW Government have authorised me to sell the Harbour Bridge). Ever since South Melbourne had landed at the SCG and became the Sydney Swans in 1982, the league had been wanting to put a team in Melbourne
(why do you think places like Perth and Adelaide only got club games from the late 80s and early 90s while Melbourne got tests and Origins). And as the Rams were a made for Super League team, the powers that be in Sydney didn't really want them so they got the chop. The Rams had actually had a very public season launch in Adelaide in 1999, then they got told that their owners (News) were pulling the funding. Snoz O'Connor had only a few weeks before been named as the Rams CEO.
Geez that paragraph is full of puns isn't it? lol
Although Melbourne were owned by News Ltd. and were filled with Super League aligned players, it must be remembered that they weren't technically a Super League team. They first came into the competition in 1998 when the ARL and SL merged to become the NRL.
As for Perth ... Somehow the Western Reds had managed to accumulate a $10m debt in their short existence so they actually had their licence revoked.
The Crushers ... I still say they were a victim of circumstance. Even against the might of the Bronco's media and marketing machine in Brisbane, I think they could have survived if their entry into the league hadn't coincided with the start of the Super League war. Instead of being able to be heavily involved in helping them get established, the ARL was instead locked into a battle for the game itself and the Crushers more or less were left to try and fend for themselves which ultimately proved to be too hard a task.
As for the other made for Super League team, the Hunter Mariners ... Newcastle was never big enough for two teams and they weren't about to usurp the Knights. Especially after they won the ARL premiership in 1997.
). One head will want to go to the Bronco games and the alternate Friday the other head will want to watch the Brisbane Fodders (ie cannon fodder)
