Surely the serious thing to do would be to bring the Snakes back at the same time as introducing another expansion team (Canberra? Woollongong? Gold Coast?) to create a 14 team two-home-and-away-rounds comp
And no finals.
The finals bring badly needed dosh to a cash strapped league. They are never going away.
Canberra have had 2-3 years now to get the $20M+ entrance fee together, and still seem no closer. Their women's team needed a ACT Govt bail out.
Haven't heard any local Gong or Gold Coast groups pushing themselves as alternatives. Need the TV rights deal to improve big time, so the annual club disbursements can get back up closer to where they were before. Macarthur are try to take legal action against the APL, due to financial promises not being met, ie the annual disbursements dropping away to basically nothing.
If WU returns the ALM maybe stuck at 13 teams for awhile, even if the APL want further expansion.
A South Island (popn catchment 1.25M, over 2x bigger than Canberra) team based out of shiny Te Kaha, maybe the best bet to be the 14th team. Having new OFC League club is a start.
Dunedin only adds 133k and that would probably only be for a match or two per season. So say 700k max, with 20% being from a second city. Would love to see it, but based it's not really a clearly better option aside than some of the Aussie cities