Ryan54
You puzzle me ... you said putting a team in a RL heartland with a population of 189 K ... is better than putting a team in a known Football Heartland with roughly one million people within a similar travelling distance to the 189 K in a RL heart land... I just cannot understand your logic ...
If I look at both the NRL & AFL they also have most of their clubs in Sydney for RL 9 of 16 and in Melbourne 10 of 18 for AFL... The AFL only has teams in major capital cities ... in RL only Newcastle Knights ... Maybe the gold Coast as well for both codes ... regional areas need huge percentages of the population . The AFL won't put a side in Tassie and yet AFL in Tassie is akin to rugby in NZ...
The in search of blue oceans site has a break down of numbers players etc... its a business and its a numbers game...
Auckland is IMO an obvious choice if AFC would allow [I doubt they would] ...
Maybe you are aware of flaws in the work done by sporting admin types and the analysis they do ...
The plan is simple have a 12 team competition ... 33 rounds 6 matches per round + FFA Cup, plus ACL ie 250 + games ... they want most teams with crowds ... essentially they want the new teams to be 10 K + from day one ... and they want them to be playing to an area that will effect TV ratings ... representing one million folk just maybe can get more eyes on the TV screen than 189 K ..
I do wonder aloud how you see a Townsville team getting better crowds and more TV rating than a team in SWS ... never mind the extra media a SWS team would get ...
The twelve team is the real hard one ... because most parts of Australia,,, Football has a very low conversion rate from player / coach / parent to going to games and watching on TV ... most of Australia is egg ball heartland and where ever the other side goes it will be difficult for them...