NRL The NRL pre-season

[Aucklander]

The Storms current membership number is 18046 too btw making mincemeat of some heartland numbers.

 

[Bomberboyokay]

**** me. Imagine if the NRL poured 20 million + dollars a year into Melbourne like the AFL currently do in to NSW and QLD.

The Swans have built a fantastic following over many, many years, while the Storm survive on not much more than their own self promotion. They're without a doubt an amazingly successful side who have a great coach who gets the best out of some average players. Sometimes their tactics are very questionable and it's that which turns people from outside Victoria against them more than anything.

Cam bringing the Premierships up again only re-fuels the anger from last time.

Imagine if the Swans brazenly cheated to get the 2005 and 2012 premierships, the AFL stripped them away, and all these years later a week before a new season starts the bloody captain acts like he and the club are victims. Would this develop goodwill with the NSW public? Or make them think the club and its players are entitled assholes?

 

[Bomberboyokay]

Victorians, wrongly IMO, believe the Storm got dealt with harshly due to NSW bias.

You're conflating Storm supporters with Victorians. Die hards hated the NRL for it but most people were shocked in 2010 and not at all sympathetic to the club.

But that's got nothing to do with why people in Melbourne don't support the Storm like they do the Swans in Sydney.

It's partly why they're not bigger.

Maybe because Australian Rules football is a better spectator sport, and Melbourne is already saturated with sports teams that hundreds of hundreds of thousands of members.

The Storm were here well before the A-League, Rebels, and BBL came along.

 

[damochandler]

Just waiting for Waldron to give his year excuse laden feedback on this matter

 

[Aucklander]

Imagine if the Swans brazenly cheated to get the 2005 and 2012 premierships, the AFL stripped them away, and all these years later a week before a new season starts the bloody captain acts like he and the club are victims. Would this develop goodwill with the NSW public? Or make them think the club and its players are entitled assholes?

No idea. I don't think that's the reason behind the whole popularity thing either.

I actually think the Storm are pretty popular here. They've got a great membership base, an absolutely satisfactory crowd average when compared with a like v like situation and their ratings are fine given last year was the first one where they've actually had a few games on the tele.

Where the game continues to fail them is, at the grassroots level and the level of funding currently being spent in NSW and QLD to fund AFL development there. As I said, imagine if the NRL were to fund the game here to the same extent. I Personally think it would do wonders, but I fear that would also come with some horrid reactions in NSW and QLD.