They're going to need a team in our area anyway. If we were relocated because they want a reduction in Sydney teams would their reasoning be that St George would take over?
The area where there's too many teams is the west.
Look, I'm not expect here but some of the naive criterior for a team in an area would be:
- The area needs to be the kind of area where people actually have children, and the demographic is such that they have a good chance of liking League. This is for a strong junior system but also to get attachment to these kids as they grow up, a long term investment.
- The area needs to be able to attract corporate dollars for sponsorship and boxes etc.
- The area ideally needs to have an established fanbase of people that will turn up to games.
- All of the 'quality' measures above have to be factored against the population of the area.
The Sutherland Shire does very well to reasonably well in most of those areas. The population side is probably the weakest. There's around 230,000 people. The central coast has 320,000 people. I don't think that's enough of an increase to justify a team.
The Gold Coast has 600,000 so an expansion team would want to be in an area as least as ripe as the Gold Coast, given the Titans aren't exactly fully established.
