Go to your bathroom. Light a candle. Turn off the light. Say "Shiggins" 5 times to the mirror.......It's been several hours, but still no Shiggins. What gives?
Ok, lets say put them up at Narrabeen Sports academy. Grounds to train + catered accommodation
Say squad of 35 , lets assume 10 already Sydney based and don't need accommodating.
I am guessing $200/day would feed and board a player on a long term arrangement. = 35K /week for 8 weeks = $280K
Plus some airfares and match payments , say at 1k / match. Probably looking around $500K
A small fraction of the cost of any other franchise. Less than the cost of 1 high profile player.
I'll be watching the NRL tonight and over the weekend purely to expand my current sports viewing options beyond horse racing. Only FTA though, I certainly wouldn't pay for the shit. How many others in the same boat? It's only a short term fix till Super AU starts, there is a real opportunity here for Rugby if they can get the sales mix right.
Yup..exactly, ties in nicely with the NRC! Randwick/Sydney Uni too.
IT's a great comp, but the regions need re-jigging to try and harness some club rugby hated. Manly might hate Warringah, but if the rep team they feed to is up against Uni/Randwick' feeder team..how hard could it be to get people interested in that?
Really, any average marketing agency with a little bit of $$ to spend on making sure people actually know the game is on, could get a bit of rivalry going with those options.
It's the only thing the NRC is missing - club rivalries being carried up into the rep sides
A way of doing something similar would be to make the NRC all about representative Rugby. Being bring back North Sydney, Sydney and Western Sydney and align clubs within each region of the City. Similar for Brisbane with a North/South divide and Canberra with the Vikings vs the rest etc.
They tried that in Sydney in the first NRC. The Rays were north, Rams in the west, Stars in town and Country for the regions.
The clubs and club fans didn't embrace their new rep sides, sadly. Now there were many reasons why that happened, but I suspect another go at that format would yield a similar result.
North Sydney was about the only true representative side though. The Stars were Sydney Uni plus Balmain. Eastwood didn't join with Greater Sydney which had to be called because Souths had been lumped into it and Eastern Suburbs and Randwick aligned with Country. It was a mix and match from the start. Similar with Qld with Brisbane joined by Country playing out of the GC.
Did it need more time to build that though? I’m definitely not in the club rugby loop here in Brisbane (two years of colts for Souths about 15 years ago), but I think a north/south rivalry could be built with a bit of time and application. Souths/Sunnybank/Easts/Bond vs UQ/Norths/GPS/Brothers/Wests.
Yup..exactly, ties in nicely with the NRC! Randwick/Sydney Uni too.
IT's a great comp, but the regions need re-jigging to try and harness some club rugby hated. Manly might hate Warringah, but if the rep team they feed to is up against Uni/Randwick' feeder team..how hard could it be to get people interested in that?
Really, any average marketing agency with a little bit of $$ to spend on making sure people actually know the game is on, could get a bit of rivalry going with those options.
It's the only thing the NRC is missing - club rivalries being carried up into the rep sides
Maybe, but the Rays had at least four years (off the top of my head) and never got close to reaching the support levels you might think they would be able to achieve.
So it might be hypothetically possible to develop, but you'd need 7-10 years at least. And I'm not sure we can afford that.
They tried that in Sydney in the first NRC. The Rays were north, Rams in the west, Stars in town and Country for the regions.
The clubs and club fans didn't embrace their new rep sides, sadly. Now there were many reasons why that happened, but I suspect another go at that format would yield a similar result.
I'll be watching the NRL tonight and over the weekend purely to expand my current sports viewing options beyond horse racing. Only FTA though, I certainly wouldn't pay for the shit. How many others in the same boat? It's only a short term fix till Super AU starts, there is a real opportunity here for Rugby if they can get the sales mix right.
A way of doing something similar would be to make the NRC all about representative Rugby. Being bring back North Sydney, Sydney and Western Sydney and align clubs within each region of the City. Similar for Brisbane with a North/South divide and Canberra with the Vikings vs the rest etc.