It's excellent that they are pushing on with this again. There's pros and cons of each city individually, . The Waikato has a good rectangular stadium in Hamilton (Wellington and Canterbury are cricket grounds), and a decent junior nursery. However, the Waikato is only a couple of hours from Auckland (130km south).

According to Kiwi poster Te Kaha on the LeagueUnlimited thread rlNZ - The Forgotten Frontier?rl, from post 63, his views were the following (I asked whether North Harbour or the Waikato would be an alternative to Wellington/Christchuch:

Te Kaha believed that North Harbour, and Auckland as a whole, is too apathetic towards sport for a second NRL franchise to survive. The Waikato was a possibility, it's easily accessible for the outlying districts, but in order for League to grow in NZ, it has to be either Wellington or Christchurch. A franchise will need the corporate support to survive, and it would need to do well straight away.

The issue of corporate support might rule out regions like the Waikato, Taranaki or Hawke's Bay. However, a major challenge for choosing Wellington is securing resource consent for staging matches at night. When the Cake Tin was built, neighbouring residents lobbied successfully for a provision that only a certain number of events be staged at night. The NZ All Blacks RU test team, Hurricanes Super Rugby franchise, Wellington Lions NPC province, and Wellington Phoenix soccer would have most slots sewn up.

OTOH a team based solely in Christchurch would find it very difficult to compete against the Crusaders and Canterbury Rugby, with all the success they've had. The Crusaders are arguably the Brisbane Broncos of Rugby.

One proposal has suggested the Southern Orcas share home games between Wellington and Christchurch. This could expand NRL to NZ's second and third most populous provincial regions. However, with the straight line distance between the two cities being 305km, and part of that being the 20km Cook Strait (of water). Drive or train is 5 hours, ferry is 3 hours, so 8 hours total. Flying is 45 minutes.

The clubs would effectively need to selling 6 game membership/ticket packages (or fractions of) in each region. Australian clubs sell 3 game mini membership packages, but for a new team, it could be a challenge.

for once we agree!

its the first its been mentioned

the southern orcas was the best idea, split games b/ween wellington and christchurch.

lols