Detractors will discourage, but expanding NRL to 18 teams is a no-brainer

Arguments against expanding the NRL come down, eventually – as many if not most things do – to money. There is an argument that existing clubs may not survive. There is another that there’s too little talent, and that the competition is already too lopsided. That it is all too new and what can it possibly mean? People can fret themselves to a standstill.

Not Peter V’landys. The great benign dictator and crash-through man of the age says there will be a 17th team in 2023, and has briefed media legions that said team will be in Brisbane and could be called the Firehawks or the Jets or Peter V’landys. Maybe not Peter V’landys, though it would be funny.

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Good luck to him and to rugby league. You cannot status quo your way to greatness, as a wise man may have said.

But let us go one better. Let us go boldly where no national rugby league has gone before – except perhaps those odd ones circa 1998 when there were 20 teams and when the Magpies played the Crushers and News Limited and Nine fought a code war to end them all. Let’s go to 18 teams.

Yes, the dilution-of-money-from-the-great-well argument stands. However new teams would mean more product upon which television can sell advertising space, which would mean the NRL can charge more money for the NRL based on the fact there is more NRL. Is this not how capitalism works?

Sydney clubs do not want another Sydney club because of self-interest. They feel they receive little enough as it is from the NRL and believe more teams would dilute their share of the TV millions. But by how much? About 10%? And the salary cap allotment can always increase.

It would dilute talent? It would certainly disperse talent, which is what the salary cap is for. It would also introduce new talent. Two new clubs means another 60 spots for players. Some clubs feel there is a limited player base as it is, especially from their little Sydney catchments. But rugby league players come from many places and the same places: New South Wales, Queensland, New Zealand, Polynesia, Micronesia and England.

Melbourne Storm’s reserve-grade team – as the second Brisbane team’s would be – is in Brisbane. Canberra Raiders are equal parts Monaro hinterland and Hull Kingston Rovers. The Roosters have Victor Radley from Bronte, James Tedesco from Menangle and Jared Waerea-Hargreaves from the mud geysers of Rotorua. Penrith are doing well with their homegrown youngsters because they have lots of cash to develop and keep them. Nathan Cleary is from Collaroy.

People say the standard of footy would fall. I don’t buy it. The standard is what it is. There will be standout payers and there will be ordinary ones. Good players will beat bad ones. As for lopsided games, that is down to the new rules. There is less wrestling, more play. And if you have better players, you are more likely to win.

So let’s say our man V’landys does a V’landys issues the edict for 18 teams. Where would you put them? For mine, the old and still good adage applies: fish where the fish are. Menangle, Bronte, the fine country of Tonga. But also Brisbane, Sydney and the Central Coast.

Forget Adelaide, forget Perth. They are not going to suddenly develop a mad lust for rugby league because State or Origin came to town and the expats like rugby union. For one, the expats like rugby union. It is another game with another culture. League folks can be a tad myopic given their sincere belief in the primacy of “the greatest game of all” over all the games played on Earth.

Also, locals in those states rather like another game: Australian rules. One cannot invent a sports-watching culture. Would you follow kabaddi if India’s Pro Kabaddi League brought a team to Sydney? Probably you would, at least once. But a season ticket?

If it was just about numbers of people in a place there would be another team in the massive metropolis of Melbourne which has one spectacularly successful, all-winning dynasty that has, in 23 years, produced three local players.

There’s a team in Melbourne because of the “national” part of the NRL. But really, if Melbourne people – all five million of them – really gave a stuff about rugby league, en masse, then the Storm would be the Broncos of the south. They are not, rather merely a toe-hold in the “sporting capital of the world”.

Fish where fish are. Brisbane? No-brainer. And Sydney. Which can only mean one thing: bring back the Bears.

As reported by Adrian Proszenko in The Sun-Herald, “independent research shows the club still has 220,000 avid followers”. As reported in The Northern Beaches Sports Tribune, there are 600,000 people from Kirribilli to Hornsby and Roseville Bridge to north-west Ryde who do not have a rugby league team. Throw in the Central Coast, play home games at North Sydney Oval and Gosford, and you have got the league’s new Rabbitohs. Another foundation club, another Pride Of The League, a feel-good story for the new Roaring Twenties.

What is the worst that could happen?