Souths were a basket case, on their last legs, in fact even when let back in their crowds were absymal (where the 80k on game day in 2002?) and their finances even worse. If Crowe hadn't emerged it is questionable if they would even still be in the NRL today.

Illawara were the same, great jnrs but no corporate support. the Sydney mergers have worked very well and they should continue to look to rationalise into the future, suburban clubs are not going to be able to keep up in decades to come.

The NSWRL (oops) ARL was not without blame in the whole sorry affair. The RFL managed to keep control, the AFL and ARU have managed to keep control of ther games despite News funds. The NSWRL had already sold its sole to Packer and therefore had no way to manipulate the two bidding parties to achieve the best outcomes for the game.

A sad time that cost many fans, including me, their teams. As said the resillience of fans and the character of the game is all that keeps the foolish administrators that run the game from destroying it.

souths - crowds 16,000 - 18,000
profits - 1 million plus

football revenues - 20 million

members - 16,000

yeah it was the right decision not to include them in the nrl, they had no future

illawarra have bruce gordon, a billionaire who couldve backed them, hes put in 10 million into the saints jv, and the ground is being redone

news lltd was never interested in control, it was a bye product of 2 competitions.

news ltd had minimal interest in union or afl, they were after the big prize = the arl

Super League War? I'm not sure if it applies up hear but..

Without Superleague, Saints certainly wouldn't be building their new stadium.

I would have watched my team play top flight Rugby League.

I doubt I'll ever get the chance again.

Thanks for these two bullet points

Neither actually addressed the points I made in my post but never mind

Tell me more about this past future conditional tense you seem to have unilaterally introduced to the English language … :-0

Uuuurrrgh!!! What you meant to ask was
"What if the SL War hadn't happened".

Can you change the thread title, as it makes me cringe?

What would've happened is that at some point, some other media organisation may well have seen the potential of the game and sought to invest in the product in similar ways. So the game might have followed a broadly similar path.

Or else if no other organisation had become interested, rugby league would have stayed an insular, minnow sporting code, with no money available to attract top athletes and major investors, and would not have died a death but might well be at sort of Championship level or worse, permanently, a sad shadow of its heyday.

pleased to help

what do you expect with no team, no TV coverage and no media coverage, and being AFL heartland? The same could have been said for RU 5 years ago, now it is going well on the back of a S15 team.

Come back in 2013 and you'll see a difference!

ps I went to Manly last year and walked through the town and didn't see one single poster, merchandise, people wearing Eagles gear etc etc

yes i understand but just thought australia being rugby mad i would of seen more rl coverage etc, obviously on the wrong side of australia though for this!

are perth applying for a franchise place in 2013 then?? will this happen...

what happened with the last team, were they in the nrl... what were the crowds

alot of ex pats will go support perth if they get in the nrl again i would imagine, hope they get in.

i saw the afl stadium in fremantle...where would perth rl play

Yes we are and we are favourites at the moment. Likely to be us and either Gosford (North of Sydney) or Ipswich (Brisbane).
Check our out our facebook page for bid detials and comments

new stand

sounds good, thanks for the details, ill join the facebook page

hopefully then i can go see some rugby league next time im in perth

come back in 2013!

It did a lot of good for British RL from what I understand but in Australia it basically has put the game into a holding pattern for the last ~15 years. The Broncos were averaging 43K+ in '93. By '97 when the SL War was in full swing and we had dual comp the average had fallen to 19K... We're only back to 35K now in 2010.

It was around this time that the crowds for the AFL teams in Bris/Syd grew significantly. Sydney's AFL team went from 9'000 in '94 to 35'000 in '97.