General 2 wellington NRL bids

[Tragic]

Can't see Wellington being any less attractive than Auckland to Aussie, cheaper housing, easier to get around, better stadium. Just don't show them around when there is a southerly.

 

[Khaboom]

Many young pre-1st graders are willing to move in other sports. If there was a plan to watch and recruit at an early enougn age we could get some very good Aussies. Some would inevitably go back home but some would probably end up liking things and staying. But you have to have a sound development plan not just a good team of scouts. Are we that club??

 

[Pozza]

Many young pre-1st graders are willing to move in other sports. If there was a plan to watch and recruit at an early enougn age we could get some very good Aussies. Some would inevitably go back home but some would probably end up liking things and staying. But you have to have a sound development plan not just a good team of scouts. Are we that club??

At the moment yeah nah

 

[bruce]

One couldn't be blamed for asking is Auckland ready for an NRL team. Continued lack of success might
suggest otherwise. ‍

When it joined the Winfield Cup Auckland rugby league was very strong.

 

[drunk_monk]

If you think Auckland has a hard time attracting players from Australia to come play for the Warriors, wait till you see what happens if/when Wellington comes into play. They will have to throw up big cash for old, average NRL players on long term deals....

Its important that any new NZ city wanting an NRL licence in the future has its shit together when it comes to development and pathways for the younger generation. Just because you build, doesnt mean they will come. Hate to say it, but IMO NZ is not ready for a second NRL side and wont be for a while.

You're probably right but as someone in welly who loves the city, I'll keep dreaming

I know western suburbs has a strong grassroots league, how well that translates to something like NRL team support, who knows.

Best chance for it and the Nix survival would be if they built a smaller stadium for the club's. A 12-15k stadium would help both financially and for game day experience for fans.

But it would need to be brought on by an investor willing to lose money to have a team here.

Chances are slim but I'll keep dreaming as going to Auckland every year is expensive.

 

[Pozza]

When it joined the Winfield Cup Auckland rugby league was very strong.

Correct even before that it was strong. So WTF has happened since ?. Would it be fair to say its been going down the drain with the exception
a couple of GF appearances

 

[drunk_monk]

Correct even before that it was strong. So WTF has happened since ?. Would it be fair to say its been going down the drain with the exception
a couple of GF appearances

Has it or has league and it's athletes come a long way 20 years and the Warriors not as far as other teams?

 

[Pozza]

Has it or has league and it's athletes come a long way 20 years and the Warriors not as far as other teams?

Probably a combination of that and just average talent with the exception of a few good players who seem to get dragged down to the mediocrity of
the rest

 

[mt.wellington]

When it joined the Winfield Cup Auckland rugby league was very strong.

NZ rugby league was strong. The domestic comp was competitive. Also have to remember it was the golden age of Australian league and the game was flush with cash. The popularity of the sport in NZ was at an all time high with the televising of the Winfield Cup. The bid presented by Peter McLeod blew John Quayle away, particularly the amount of financial backing the club had from sponsors and presold memberships. It was a no brainer to allow a NZ team into the comp.

Funnily enough John Quayle only apprehension was that the Auckland team would just become a NZ Kiwis V2.0. I say funny cause it looks like thats the recruiting mindset right now...

 

[bruce]

NZ rugby league was strong. The domestic comp was competitive. Also have to remember it was the golden age of Australian league and the game was flush with cash. The popularity of the sport in NZ was at an all time high with the televising of the Winfield Cup. The bid presented by Peter McLeod blew John Quayle away, particularly the amount of financial backing the club had from sponsors and presold memberships. It was a no brainer to allow a NZ team into the comp.

Funnily enough John Quayle only apprehension was that the Auckland team would just become a NZ Kiwis V2.0. I say funny cause it looks like thats the recruiting mindset right now...

Quayle and his mates were definitely worried about NZ Kiwis V2. That is why they sent in Robson as the time bomb to sort that out.
Good point about the recruiting mindset, except that Adam Blair should have been signed from Whangarei by the Warriors, not Melbourne. That would have saved heaps of money.

 

[bruce]

Probably a combination of that and just average talent with the exception of a few good players who seem to get dragged down to the mediocrity of
the rest

That is it in a nutshell. They call it culture, but you cannot fly like an eagle when you mix with turkeys. A player, maybe like Ryan Hoffman used to a really professional environment comes here and finds no matter what he does turkeys are turkeys, he either joins them or becomes frustrated and unhappy. Either way he isn't what he was.

 

[Defence]

You're probably right but as someone in welly who loves the city, I'll keep dreaming
.

Coming from someone who has never lived in either city but has spent a bit of time in both- I'd much prefer to live in Wellington than Auckland tbh.

 

[kiwi's 13-6]

When i originally posted this thread after reading about 2 potential NRL team bids from Wellington i had just returned from living in Australia 5 years & South Korea for 1 year i had a lot more optimism then... I didn't fully realize NZ had really changed for the worse while i was away! 90 day work trials, work situations were people are totally silent out of fear of losing job, unaffordable houses prices & rental market, health system underfunded, wages raises haven't kept up with expenses. food prices that are insane for products we produce in abundance like meat and milk! Local media that favors one political agenda delivered by Mike Hoskings/Paul Henry/Duncan Garner across radio, print, web, TV! The increase in Homelessness & begging was instantly noticeable after 6 years away.... All this has had an impact on the sport at local level as people work harder & more for less & struggle with rent and food Sports participation & volunteers suffer as a result, local league receives little corporate funding, pokie & lotto funding gets spent dis-proportionally on sport in wealthy areas! NZ Warriors have also been very poor since 2011 which has done a lot of damage to the code. The Kiwi's have been the shining light for the game in that time wining 4 nations even an Anzac test... but now with kidwell in charge of Kiwi's last 2 years havnt been good... just not good times for the game at on any level at the moment...

Anyway rugby league has lost a lot of support as far as i can tell in Wellington region with people either not as interested or now support union. The reality is before any other potential NZ NRL sides, NZ & Wellington needs a local semi pro comp to help rebuild the game & for something for local people to have pride in and aspire to. IF Wellington had a semi pro side in a NZ national comp you could have some level of semi professional game in the city to attract and retain players currently there is nothing but amateur local comp that gets weaker every year! The easiest way to set up a semi pro NZ comp would be to enter provincial rep sides Wellington, Canterbury, Waikato... maybe even Southland! in Auckland's Fox Memorial Club comp going up against the top cashed up Auckland club sides....

 

[Lord Gnome of Howick MBE]

Our old mate in the Herald on expansion;

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/league/news/article.cfm?c_id=79&objectid=11926290

NRL: Hunters, Wolfpack show why expansion is needed
25 Sep, 2017 2:38pm

Craig Hall of Toronto Wolfpack lifts the Championship 1 Promotion Trophy. Photo / Getty Images

By: Dale Budge

Dale.Budge@nzherald.co.nz @playtheballnz

I think the game could easily accommodate moving at least two clubs out of Sydney by handing their NRL licenses to expansion bids. The game needs to get to Perth and desperately needs a second Brisbane club. It should have happened by now. People will look at the previous attempt to put a club in Western Australia but that came at a time when the competition expanded four times all in one go and in the middle of the Super League war. It was highly unlikely any club would have succeeded in that situation. With Super Rugby leaving the area and an appetite for rugby league existing as well as the bonus time-difference factor to help television schedules, Perth is a no-brainer.

Brisbane also needs another team. The Broncos are the most popular club and the most financially sound operation in the NRL because they are a one-club town in a very strong rugby league market. The city could easily cater for one more club right now. The AFL has done a great job of creating natural rivalries in their expansion markets - this could be the start of that for the NRL.

You could also make a case to suggest moving a Sydney club up the road to Gosford is long overdue as well. There is a fan base up there crying out for an NRL team and surely the crowd, junior nursey pathways and sponsorship opportunities would be better there than in the crowded Sydney scene.

The game might not be ready to add teams but it certainly could spread the existing clubs better. If they did an A-League and started the comp all over again surely there wouldn't need to be so many teams in Sydney. At present the Roosters, Rabbitohs, Dragons, Sharks, Eels, Bulldogs, Tigers, Panthers and Sea Eagles play out of Sydney. It makes sense to hand three of those licenses to Perth, Brisbane and Central Coast bid teams right now. Who drops out - who knows? Everyone would have an opinion and the NRL should weigh up the pros and cons. People will complain about the lack of history with expansion teams over the strength of the old Sydney clubs but this Sunday we are about to watch the Storm and the Cowboys, two teams that didn't exist a little over two decades ago, go head-to-head for the title.

The other thing the NRL seriously needs to do is to map a way forward for prospective bids to enter the fray in the years ahead. They need to plan on expanding to 18 teams when the next TV deal is due or sometime shortly after and could set out criteria on what bids would need to make the cut.

While the NRL has done none of this the AFL and A-League have continued to add teams and start to eat into rugby league heartland. The NRL needs to take the fight back.

 

[jonesy101]

A Perth Club? You can guarantee the Warriors would be forced to play an away game there every season, probably round 26.

I have reservations every time I hear suggestions for starting up a second team in Brisbane. You'd always get a 52,000 sellout at Suncorp every time the Brisbane teams met, but success is far from guaranteed - look at the Titans who are just down the road. If using the AFL comparison of Greater Western Sydney Giants, that hasn't been a runaway success - they are really struggling to draw crowds and support this year.

I think the biggest challenge for the Sydney based NRL clubs is that so many games are moved to the monstrosity at Homebush which is miles from anywhere and has zero atmosphere unless you get a minimum 40,000 to the game, which is not going to happen unless they start introducing more double and triple headers of local derby's. On the flip side of that its guaranteed corporate income for the clubs as opposed to using the decaying suburban grounds so I understand why they do it. Looking at all of those empty seats is a horrible look though and is doing nothing to sell the game to fans and feed that rivalry.

 

[gREVUS]

A Perth Club? You can guarantee the Warriors would be forced to play an away game there every season, probably round 26.

I have reservations every time I hear suggestions for starting up a second team in Brisbane. You'd always get a 52,000 sellout at Suncorp every time the Brisbane teams met, but success is far from guaranteed - look at the Titans who are just down the road. If using the AFL comparison of Greater Western Sydney Giants, that hasn't been a runaway success - they are really struggling to draw crowds and support this year.

I think the biggest challenge for the Sydney based NRL clubs is that so many games are moved to the monstrosity at Homebush which is miles from anywhere and has zero atmosphere unless you get a minimum 40,000 to the game, which is not going to happen unless they start introducing more double and triple headers of local derby's. On the flip side of that its guaranteed corporate income for the clubs as opposed to using the decaying suburban grounds so I understand why they do it. Looking at all of those empty seats is a horrible look though and is doing nothing to sell the game to fans and feed that rivalry.

i think they should have turned homebush into a 25/30k seater. Really how many massive seating locations do they need in Sydney? Your right looking at empty seats sucks. But so does being at the games. Part of what makes AFL strong is the packing out of stadiums that they get when two home teams play. But there are games between the fringe dwellers and those look worse than the NRL games. Most of those games involve an away team.

So the reality is that to fill a stadium you need a team of winners on the pitch. it really doesnt matter where you put those teams, if they arent winning at home, numbers will never be great.

 

[jonesy101]

i think they should have turned homebush into a 25/30k seater. Really how many massive seating locations do they need in Sydney? Your right looking at empty seats sucks. But so does being at the games. Part of what makes AFL strong is the packing out of stadiums that they get when two home teams play. But there are games between the fringe dwellers and those look worse than the NRL games. Most of those games involve an away team.

So the reality is that to fill a stadium you need a team of winners on the pitch. it really doesnt matter where you put those teams, if they arent winning at home, numbers will never be great.

True. And that is exactly why the Broncos get such great crowds - they have consistently good seasons. It would be a risk to do anything that could weaken their brand.