Some people in rugby league need a big fat reality check – a slap across the face and a bucket of cold water over the head. Let’s clear this up right now: the concept of conferences in the NRL is utter lunacy.
On Tuesday night, The Sydney Morning Herald’s Michael Chammas broke the story that the NRL was considering splitting the premiership in half in a play that would apparently “revolutionise the professional game.”
Word going around is there’s a few Sydney clubs behind the move that would see all teams in the Harbour City compete in their own conference while the other would be filled with everyone else.
From the outside looking in, reading between the lines, it looks like another power play from Sydney’s rugby league elite.
The ARLC and chairman Peter V’landys continue to look in all the wrong places.
But it sure does keep the NRL at the top of the news cycle, aye?
Wayne Bennett loves it.
So does Phil Gould.
Well good for them.
Imagine the new Brisbane or New Zealand or Perth franchise coming in and telling their budding fans that they’ll never get to see their team play against Parramatta, St George Illawarra or South Sydney?
It all seems to be about “maximising” the next TV deal.
At what cost is the fabric of the game with these people alienating the fans and carving up the sport with a blunt machete?
“One of the ideas to increase broadcast revenue is a radical proposal to follow the American sport conference systems, a move designed to increase rivalries and interest in the sport,” Chammas wrote.
“[Andrew] Abdo is the figurehead of a pitch that would see the competition expand from 16 to 18 teams in the coming years, which could allow the NRL to set up two conferences. It has been floated as an opportunity to “create three grand finals a year”.
Three grand finals?
Yeah… right. Fans aren’t going to go for that.
To win the NRL, you need to play everyone, and beat everyone.
Wayne Bennett’s mentors Jack Gibson and Ron Massey loved American sport – especially the NFL.
“America does it in the Super Bowl,” Bennett told the Herald.
There’s a fair difference in the amount of teams playing in the NFL, sponsorship money and the population of the United States compared to little old Australia.
And how do you create “more rivalry” in Sydney if they keep playing each other over and over again?
Let’s pull up some crowd numbers.
In 1986, old foes Canterbury and the Eels played each other twice in the regular season. These were the super clubs of the ’80’s and on the road to facing each in the grand final at the SCG. In round ten at Parramatta, they pulled in 25,579 fans. A few months later they clashed at Belmore and 17,350 showed up.
Fast forward to 2005 with the Eels on the way to the minor premiership and the Bulldogs the defending premiers.
Round 8: 24,957.
Round 23: 20,289.
Sydney rugby league crowds are what they are.
And let’s not start with the travel involved for the other conference let alone the fact that the Sydney clubs would never have to leave their own backyard.
Let’s bring back Annandale and Cumberland.
Make players turn out for the districts they live in too while we’re at it.
AFL, soccer and even rugby union fans across the country are laughing at us.
It appears the NRL are happy to pillage the work done by those before them – people like John Quayle and Ken Arthurson – men with imagination and the vision to grow the game outside its own little sandpit. All for a quick buck.
Where’s the corporate dollar coming from for the likes of Newcastle or Canberra who’d be banished to the other conference and stuck with “blockbusters” against North Queensland and the Gold Coast?
Recruitment?
Where do you think the best players will make the most money?
How many Friday night time slots would the Storm and company get on free-to-air against the weekly Sydney derbies?
Ironically, for all the huff and puff about growing Sydney rivalries, we’d never see an all-Sydney “Super Bowl” in the last game of the season.
How funny that the body that ignores Western Australia, international footy and wilts to the threats of rival codes at junior level, wants to grow the sport in the city they already own.
A few weeks ago we were all arguing about the next expansion club and who it should be.
Yet nobody has stopped to think that one more club doesn’t give us another game for TV.
Very rugby league.
We’re not very good at the finer details.
“We know that the fans of Sydney-based teams love watching their team compete and their TV viewership is significantly higher. They are happy to watch whomever their team is playing. The same rule applies for Queensland,” Colin Smith from Global Media and Sports – a company ‘at the forefront of optimising structure and maximising media rights value’ – told The Australian Financial Review.
“The challenge of a two-conference system … is Queenslanders are less likely to watch the conference of the Sydney-based teams. The overall audience will drop. Similarly, Sydneysiders will watch much less of the other division. So, instead of growing TV audiences, it could reduce TV audiences.”
Game over.
On Wednesday afternoon, The Daily Telegraph posted to their social media accounts about what the conference system could do for clubs in Sydney leading on Twitter with, ‘The NRL conference plan would reinvigorate rugby league in Sydney creating more derbies and a championship more valuable than the premiership’.
One conference is already more important than the other.
Beetson Raudonikis Medal – Round 7
And has anyone stopped to think that many fans in places like Queensland and New Zealand actually support Sydney teams and it is the Sydney clubs that play an important part in promoting the game across Australia and other parts of the world?
But no… let’s keep the Roosters and the Panthers for trips to Brookvale and Leichhardt.
After everything we went through in the 1990’s and the split in the game that almost killed us…
To even consider this is madness.
It’s mania.
Peter Beattie called it a “huge shake-up”.
The game doesn’t need a shake-up!
For those of you lucky enough to be paid hundreds of thousands of dollars each year and make decisions on OUR BEHALF. Stick in your lane. Put your pants back on and concentrate on fixing the problems we already have. Don’t create more.
You don’t own the game… you’re simply the current minders.
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