Agh the old let the strong survive argument! Great idea. Let the strong survive. In the last decade or so Cronulla, Manly , Newcastle , Penrith , Gold Coast ,West Tigers , Souths, Cowboys have all come close to extinction and Norths , Wests and Illawarra have folded or become weaker hybrids.. Even wealthy clubs like Parra and Canterbury with hopeless administrators have only been saved by unhappy rich leagues clubs paying their bills.Souths went broke because Souths juniors had enough .Fact is without the NRL grant most would be broke tomorrow. You might have missed it but most games struggle to get 10 or 12 thousand through the gates and that’s with tribalism which your idea destroys.
Six or eight team comp where everyone plays each other four times or we create new entities with no loyal support out of nothing to make a comp which no one cares about.. Im sure the broadcasters would love it. 2 billion dollar games becomes a 500 mill dollar game with hundreds of thousands of tribal supporters abandoning it. True genius.
So easy to say ... fact is it don’t work and it’s rubbish and everyone knows it.
Stick to coaching in your lounge room.
The ARL and now NRL have had plenty of time to make the current small city tribal support system work and all that they have achieved is stagnation at best for the most part with big one city teams and double headers propping up the crowd averages.
Where did i say anything negative about the "NRL Grant", the clubs generated that money by providing the "product" to sell and should receive it back.
The NRL have structured and focused the promotion of the game to flourish on Free to air tv and Pay TV at the expense of bringing people to the game,(night games and poor time slots) not even promoting the benefits and atmosphere of being at the ground, or fostering this kind of support as well as the AFL decades ago.(now playing catch up)
The ARL administrators were lazy and stuck in the pokie machine funded model to the detriment of the game. Manly basically went broke with such a system propping up the best team in the comp at the wrong time during the Superleague War.
With the fastest and percentage wise largest uptake of Pay TV at the time reducing crowd numbers and bringing less fans into the leagues club it was a recipe for disaster. Manly in the 90's was run very poorly to say the least and deserved everything they got. Remember Manly went broke even with a cap (not all years had a cap i recall in the 90's i think though) so it is not some magical savior.
Not against tribalism and it can work but there are far too many weak ass administrators in the NRL and at clubs (probably half wouldn't make it in the real business world and third rate wannabes) to make it work.
League can ride a slow death at best stagnating or let a free for all system flourish to speed up a national game. Don't be blinded in the dooms day thinking that a free for all will automatically lead to a heap of clubs folding, it might even drag "some" clubs up.(i'm actually optimistic Manly can flourish in such a system, i wouldn't of been in the 90's though)
All a cap does is make all teams feel identical, lacking a different identity and culture to flourish, just a different coloured shirt filling up a time slot.
Manly are on the right path now being one of the first to not rely on a Leagues Club and privatise, through struggles and almost folding it forced change towards a more healthy direction.
The NRL need to change focus, stop being one track minded in focusing on tv revenue as the be all and end all. Slowly reduce the constraints of a cap to speed up either a different business model or speed up poorly run teams to fold by the strongest will survive mentality. In the background during this period direct money in promoting/help subsidize expansion team options to have a foundation ready to quickly step in when some clubs fold.
