Expansion: Yes. Relocation: No. (2017)

This week Phil Rothfield, who is laughably billed by the Daily Telegraph as ‘League’s most feared critic’, decided to sling some mud at the Wests Tigers by suggesting they should be canned to make way for an expansion side.

The Tigers (along with Parramatta and Penrith) are competing with the AFL’s Greater Western Sydney Giants for control and dominance of the Western Sydney corridor. Last year Rothfield was singing the praises of the Giants amidst the salary cap scandal surrounding Parramatta. He wrote the piece completely focusing on the scandals around the Eels and completely ignoring any negatives about GWS.

This alone leads one to consider if Rothfield has a hidden, pro-AFL agenda. He’s entitled to that stance if he likes. This piece has no intention of rubbishing the AFL.

There have been calls from the same small group of commentators for years suggesting there’s too many Sydney clubs. The only thing that changes is which team – and it’s generally whichever side is performing poorly at the time. The loudest and most recent were directed at Rothfiled’s beloved Cronulla Sharks during their string of scandals. Now, Wests Tigers are in the firing line.

But fans should not be concerned. These are merely tactics from the media to create future stories to essentially keep themselves employed. Rothfield’s opinion now has several follow-up pieces on the Daily Telegraph website; one where he produces the results of his poll about which team should get booted and another, a retort to the suggestion by the Tiger’ boss Justin Pascoe, who said, “We are not going anywhere” – which could be a reference to their 2017 campaign as well.

All that aside, it’s time to address this constant talk of relocation and call the concept for what it is: utter stupidity.

Sporting teams are unique. Their players will come from all corners of the globe, but their fans are largely situated in the same place. Furthermore, it doesn't matter where fans relocate to, they'll always support the same team.

Relocating a team alienates the vast majority of their fans, who can no longer attend their games because they no longer play in the area they once represented (ie - near the residence of a majority of fans). Those fans will be angry and disillusioned and are very likely to stop following the game with the same passion. That’s a cornered market of customers who have all been lost.

Then there’s the issue of where they are relocated to. If a location without a team is keen to be involved in the competition, it will be to support their own local side. Trying to get these people to support a team that doesn’t represent them is doomed to fail.

Even if they do accept the team and follow it, you have achieved very little. You haven’t necessarily increased the population of league followers, because the new followers just replace the lost ones.

The AFL understands this. They have nine Melbourne-based teams in a similarly populated city, across a smaller geographical area than the Sydney clubs in the NRL, yet there has not been the continued calls to cull those sides or suggestions there’s too many.

South Melbourne relocated to Sydney in 1982, around the same time the NSWRL axed Newtown (and, briefly, Western Suburbs), while Fitzroy merged with Brisbane in 1996, a couple of years before a the three new NRL merged entities in Sydney and the two-year expulsion of Souths.

The AFL realises the obvious point, that expansion without culling teams actually increases your supporter base.

This is a mindset the NRL must adopt. There is nothing wrong with expanding the competition to 18 teams – but they have to do it without killing or relocating any existing sides. Furthermore, the NRL should be looking to new markets for expansion, not existing ones. It would be entirely hypocritical if they were to cull a Sydney side because there are too many teams in the existing Sydney market, only to introduce a new team in another existing market.

Sydney can cope with nine teams. It had 12 Sydney sides in 1967, cut down to 11 in 1984, and wasn’t reduced again until after the Super League war. Given the population growth in Sydney in the last 50 years, nine teams is comfortably sustainable. Like Melbourne, Sydney also has a Rugby Union team in Super Rugby, 2 A League teams and a team from the rival code playing in the heart of the city.

****This article appeared on Commentary Box Sports website on  June 28, 2017****

Drugs In Sport (2013)

Just recently the Australian Crime Commission (ACC), in conjunction with an investigation by Australian Sports Anti-Doping Agency (ASADA) found widespread details of performance enhancing and match fixing in AFL and NRL in particular but didn't rule out it's involvement in Cricket, A-League, Rugby Union and any other professional sport in Australia.

The investigations began upon claims of suspicious treatments by Sports scientists at Essendon. The same people had also previously worked with several NRL clubs, most notably Manly.

The first code CEO to speak out was Andrew Demetriou (AFL) and he spoke at length about his shock upon hearing the news.

Sentiments that were echoed by CEO's of the every other professional sporting body implicated by the investigations.

These sentiments were actually what shocked me the most. Australia has a proud history of being fair, passionate and competitive sportspeople, however cheating and allegations of such have been around for quite a while as well.

Just off the top of my head we had reports of drug use by Wendell Sailor when he was with Rugby Union, Craig Field, Kevin McGuinness, Robbie O'Davis, Adam MacDougall, Andrew Johns, Wayne Richards and Danny Wicks all guilty of using drugs from the NRL (some performance enhancing), Ben Cousins' many battles with drugs in the AFL as well as the speculations surrounding match fixing, including Shane Warne and Mark Waugh in the mid 90's while they were playing cricket for Australia, AFL Umpires and Ryan Tandy from the NR in more recent times..

And these are just off the top of my head.

How any code can be shocked or surprised says to me that all codes have become complacent in their policing of drug use and match fixing, or were in the know but didn't want the endless scrutinity and bad press that comes from revealing such transgressions, so they stayed quiet.

AFL's abysmal three strikes policy on drugs is hardly helping the cause either. Any professional athlete in any code in this country should be banned for life if found guilty of using any illegal drugs, performance enhancing or not. These people are role models, whether they want to be or not, and so they must act like them.

NRL's reluctance in the past to act consistently and swiftly has done nothing to improve the situation in their code either.

Cricket is still suffering immensely from match fixing and with the excessive contracts players get in the IPL (Indian Twenty 20 cricket competition), it's only going to get worse and harder to pinpoint.

It's time the codes stopped acting like the naive, unknowing organisations they are and start taking a hard line approach.

The NRL and AFL are in serious battles to retain credibility, given how last year Andrew Johns was named an immortal despite revealing he had taken recreational drugs throughout his career, while Jobe Watson from Essendon was awarded the best and fairest player of the year award in the AFL - The Brownlow Medal, just last year.

My greatest fear is that officials from both NRL and AFL knew of breaches by players but refused to say anything. This would be the biggest problem to stem from these scandals, moreso than of any wrongdoing by players/clubs.