Originally Posted by
AndyS
What I mean though, is even if they decided they wanted it, I can't really see any value in it for WA. Would a Cott or Perth really want to try going professional? Would the attempt really be in the interests of rugby in WA? That for mine is other people's delusions, with no real upside here. We need a professional state team, ideally closely linked to the state amateur competition, but if that doesn't fit into the rest of Australia's structure there is at least GRR. And the playing field seems to be clearing for that to be almost anything.
As an aside however, the whole 'build it first, then we'll expand' is a crock. We've seen just how well that has worked with SR! The reality is that once something is built, it establishes the level. Adding another can then only come at their expense, because you will never have just casually accumulated another whole teams worth of players at that level all hanging around at lower level with nothing to do. It is a massive catch-up exercise, inevitably costing massive amounts of money and patience, neither of which are in much supply in Australian rugby. Even the Brumbies only exist because they were introduced at the start of professionalism when all the teams grew into it together. If they had started with just the two teams, with the original Brumbies players either finding a way into those squads or spending another five years as amateurs rather than professionals, do you really think they would have added the third team? I don't...they would have looked at the demographics and the standard of the players at that later time and said neither were good enough for professional SR. And they would have been right, so it would have been no team (or they would have gone for Melbourne instead).
Frankly, that is my concern if they did decide to commit to the NRC. Even at that level, if they professionalised without Adelaide, SA will likely never be part of professional rugby. But that is a problem for another time; at the moment even WA is hanging by a thread.