To exhume the corpses of Super Leagueโs Western Reds and Adelaide Rams for a moment, what we see are a couple of pieces of tinsel to help sell television rights in the 1990s. If games were shown in Perth and Adelaide, the N in the NRL could mean something. The expansionary optimism helped win a few bucks from broadcasters before the Reds and Rams collapsed under the weight of their own fabrication.
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Likewise, the periodic American excursions. Who can forget the 1987 State of Origin match in Los Angeles? Or, to put it another way, who can remember it? The present-day Las Vegas junket is reaching its predictable vanishing point, with even VโLandys admitting that his hopes to penetrate the American sports gambling market may โtake a lot longer than we thought it wouldโ.
That is, the one per cent of that market he originally aimed for was a number plucked out of thin air. NRL Las Vegas turns out to be a promotional exercise for rugby league on the eastern seaboard of Australia. Where rugby league lives. Where it thrives. Where it has been a blindingly successful football code for a century. Where it shows no sign of weakening. Where, maybe, just maybe, its future lies. What a revolutionary idea.
The PNG venture, powered by government subsidy, is at least an attempt to deepen rugby leagueโs existing roots rather than build new ones. Its considerable obstacles are going to be logistical more than emotional. The Perth project will face the same difficulties as the those that killed the Western Reds: cost, distance, and the competitive strength of Australian Rules and rugby union in the west. The primary difficulty for both will be sustaining patience through years of struggle. As Parramatta have shown in the Lomax drama, Sydney clubs will not willingly sacrifice their own interests for the โgreater goodโ of expansion. Why? Oh yeah, they bloody well want to win.
In the push and pull between expansionary dreams and holding faith with the beating heart of a game, one rugby league fact is repeatedly overlooked. โGrow or dieโ is a generator of economic activity, a slide in a sales pitch, a make-work program for energetic administrations โ but in the final wash-up, itโs just an illusion. It might be a useful illusion, but the failure to grow is not an actual existential threat.
Rugby league does so well on the eastern seaboard of Australia because itโs a great spectacle with deep tribal local roots. Its successful expansions have been into existing rugby league territory in Queensland (including Melbourne), the suburbs of Auckland, the ACT and New South Wales. Its ambitions to go broad may satisfy certain egos and help sell media rights, but it has succeeded, and succeeded again, when it has gone deep. As the Moose used to say, put down the glasses. Enjoy whatโs right in front of us.
Leave global politics to the denizens of chairmenโs clubs and first-class travel. Occupying a niche market in a tiny faraway corner of the globe is nothing to be ashamed of, and at this pivotal moment in history and technology and the bursting bubble of growth capitalism, niche is nice; experience shows that itโs the best thing rugby league has going for it.
