By GEOFF STEVENSON
THE Western Force have now joined the South Queensland Crushers, North Queensland Fury, Central Coast Rays and Gold Coast as a stock pub trivia question in the year 2030.
What will happen with the WA public’s relationship with the rugby union is anyone’s guess. But if you consider the Western Reds’ exit prior to the newly formed National Rugby League as an example, it’ll take a long time and a lot of hard work to recover.
Next month it will be exactly 20 years since the Western Reds were cut from national competition. Huge debt and an agreed need to rationalise the competition led to the decision being made. Basically they were shafted. Soon after the code threw all their expansion eggs (and significant funds) into the Melbourne market. Remind you of anything rugby union fans?
From then on rugby league in WA was largely ignored by the national body and the NRL. Local competitions with a handful of teams kept the game alive. Yet the code in WA was on virtual life support with the funds and profile of a local AFL competition in central west NSW (sorry AFL fans).
Some passionate locals, working for nothing, and a growing population of ex-pat ‘east coasters’ have led to the WA Rugby League’s proud claim of having a presence in the WA sporting landscape. Twelve years ago the governing body in WA were confident enough to have the playing stocks to join the lower division Jim Beam Cup and in 2010 the WA Reds joined the SG Ball competition. By 2012 WA were again pushing for an NRL team, a struggle that continues to this day. Did I mention it’ll take a long time.
It has taken patience and for a few years the sole focus was on growing grassroots participation.
While the WARL are still flirting with a very reluctant ARL Commission, they are helping define the model for future expansion. Most NRL teams have arrived at the conclusion that 12 home games a year is too much for many of their fans. There is great diversity in our entertainment palate, there are cheaper options, a family can sit in its lounge room for a Super Saturday and consider it quality time, weather (good and bad) is an enduring factor.
Clubs are more open than ever to taking ‘home’ games to alternate venues be it regional NSW/QLD, Adelaide or Darwin. It was Perth who helped pioneer this practice (with very little help from the ARL or NRL) by underwriting NRL clubs to initially take trials and then premiership games over to Perth. Now South Sydney and Manly have an arrangement to take a premiership game a year to nib Stadium. Hosting premiership games ensures the fixtures carry the requisite intensity and the result is decent crowd figures.
WA fans now have an outlet to support the national competition, Souths and Manly would hope they become long-term fans of their teams (Souths have a 10-year contract with WARL that is expected to be extended). It is increasing fans’ rugby league literacy (coming soon to a school syllabus near you!). While anyone can watch any sport on TV these days, being at a game is the best way to GET the appeal. And the more games a fan attends, the more they understand how to be a fan, when to cheer and when to bag the ref.
And consider this: during the Wests second Dark Age, the efforts of the WARL enabled Curtin Rona, Bryson and Bronx Goodwin, Cory Paterson, Daniel Holdsworth, Matt Petersen and Waqa Blake to develop through their junior systems and emerge as NRL players.
As this list gets longer (and it appears that it will) the NRL will surely be more interested in bringing back a Perth team. But what can the WARL do now DESPITE the governing body’s apparent lack of interest?
Try and get more NRL games on a regular basis. Five games a year would equate to one game a month and could become a sound base for a new Perth club eventually hosting 12 games a year. Keep working on their juniors, a growing list of developed juniors will surely embarrass the NRL when comparisons are made to the success of Melbourne’s junior system. Keep the game ‘front of mind’ by chasing big events, Perth will be the home base for the England team in the upcoming World Cup, will play a warm up match again a local development team and Perth will host two Group matches. In 2019 Perth is due to host a State of Origin game (what a great opportunity to officially launch a new Perth NRL team…) (continued below)
And if the WARL can prise some funds from the governing body (and please someone at the Rugby League Commission find them a mil or two) then they must call every member of the Western Force Commercial Services, Fan Engagement and Media and Communications and offer them some work. These people will have the connections, phone numbers and golf handicaps to some of the people willing to fund and report on sporting teams in the west.
Ideally the NRL could bite the bullet and announce the WA Pirates entry in the NRL comp in 2020 but that as likely as a professional team starting up in..say..Canada…
But fans of rugby league urge the WARL to hang in there, as it seem inevitable that the NRL will right a wrong 20 years in the making.
