This week, there were noises made to move the NRL grand final to venues other than in Sydney where it has been since the New South Wales NRL became the National competition.
Overnight, the New South Wales State based teams were instantly promoted to become "national" teams and a consortium banded together to parachute first the Broncos, Storm Titans and Cowboys and Warriors into the National competition. None of these team existed before they made their way into the competition.
When the National NRL was formed, the Queensland Cup became something of an overnight irrelevance where it was once a major social event in Queensland's calender.
With #NRLrelegation, lacklusture teams would have one eye on being dumped from the highest game back to the various State Cups.
To my way of thinking, being in the bottom six would be almost guaranteed relegation with the wooden spooners a guaranteed dumping. The winner of the State Cup would then be promoted to the National competition.
Of the bottom six, I would relegate the wooden spooners as well as one state team which would mean (as the ladder stands at the moment) the Bulldogs and Raiders would be dumped and two NSW Cup teams would be promoted to take their place.
Auckland would go home (and probably dissolve given it was a manufactured team).
Likewise the Titans would probably fold and like the Auckland side, their players would then want to be parachuted into the National teams - which would mean there would have to be a provision preventing players who have been relegated from then moving sideways into other teams. Relegation means the team AND it's players are relegated for twelve months. Ironically, the Dolphins (an actual state based team) are waiting in the wings and could replace the dumped Titans.
The Bulldogs would return to playing in New South Wales (as would Canberra I would imagine being an island in a sea of blue).
Were relegation to occur, you couldn't have an identical named team playing at state and national levels otherwise you then have the headache of do the dumped national players get absorbed into the state based team? Do the state based players then get dumped through no fault of their own?
If you look at the history of the South Sydney Rabbitohs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Sydney_Rabbitohs They had a forty-three year gap between Premiership wins from 1971 and 2014 - how many years would they have been relegated I wonder? And would Russell Crow have funded seeding the team with star players that enabled them to win in 2014 had they been relegated I wonder?
) - In the end I'm happy to pick up the small win.
