No To 16 Teams: NRL Will Reject Expansion By PETER FRILINGOS THE DAILY TELEGRAPH - 11/3/2004
Central Coast
push...John Singleton yesterday.
The Telstra Premiership is unlikely to adopt a 16th team for
the 2006 season despite spirited bids for a new NRL licence by the
Central Coast, Gold Coast and Wellington, New Zealand.
A proposal from the John Singleton-backed Central Coast consortium was
publicly unveiled yesterday with the media and advertising millionaire
promising to personally underwrite the venture.
Gold Coast's proposal has also been launched and Wellington's is
expected in the near future. But before any bid can be considered by
the NRL, its partnership committee must signal a 16th team is on the
agenda.
The committee, which comprises representative from the ARL and News
Limited, publisher of The Daily Telegraph, is not due to meet until
late next month.
It's understood the majority view says the NRL is not ready to
accommodate another team, mainly on financial grounds.
Both the ARL and News believe available funds should be spent on the
grass roots of the game, not on expansion. The 1997 agreement between
the ARL and News Limited called for 14 teams by the year 2000.
That led to mergers between St George and Illawarra, Wests and Balmain
and eventually North Sydney and Manly, while other clubs were invited
to comply with a set of criteria before being granted NRL licences.
Only South Sydney declined to be part of that process and were later
omitted from the premiership for two years before winning a court
battle and earning reinstatement in 2002.
Since then the NRL partnership has resisted advances to expand the
premiership and it has no plans for a change of heart in the
foreseeable future.
The issue probably won't be revisited any earlier than before the end
of the 2006 season.
Singleton and his bid chairman Russell Tate put forward a compelling
pitch in Sydney yesterday.
While he didn't go into minute financial detail, Singleton again said
he would back the Central Coast bid with his own money.
Considering that it takes around $10 million to run an NRL club per
season, that would mean him shelling out anything short of that amount
in any one of the seven years of the licence.
Although he stopped short of saying rugby league would lose him and the
Central Coast if their bid was denied, Singleton raised the spectre of
rugby union taking over one of league's heartlands.
"It won't be the end of our life if there is no rugby league on the
Central Coast but there are other codes who realise the potential of
playing at Gosford," Singleton said.
North Sydney Leagues Club owns 20 per cent of Gosford's Express
Advocate Stadium which means Singleton's consortium is legally bound to
call any future NRL team based there the Central Coast Bears.
That obligation would preclude any other Sydney-based NRL club looking
to relocate to the Central Coast.
Statistics produced by the Singleton bid had the Central Coast ahead of
the Gold Coast on a number of fronts.
That prompted a reply from the Gold Coast's bid chief Paul Broughton
who said there would be no fight between the rival bidders.
NRL chief executive David Gallop said it was encouraging to have new
areas champing on the bit to be included in the premiership.
"But we have to realise that additional teams are expensive exercises
which have the potential to divert funds from grass-roots programs,"
Gallop said.
"Therefore the first decision that needs to be made is whether that is
the right use of the game's revenue for the game's future. That is
something we need to look at in the first half of 2004."
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