Paul Kent: Expansion is NRL’s first strike back against AFL’s secret war to bring down rugby league

With hopes of expansion, the ARL Commission is taking its biggest step yet towards combating a covert war that has been waged without response for far too long, PAUL KENT writes.

From high above the damage was obvious.

Twenty years or so after AFL boss Andrew Demetriou called a meeting of the most powerful people in his game and declared they had one, secret, objective — to take over rugby league — the evidence was in.

It did not look good for rugby league.

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Former AFL boss Andrew Demetriou inspired an AFL takeover of rugby league heartland.

Recently ARL Commission chairman Peter V’landys was flying over Queensland soil in a helicopter and, for every rugby league field he saw, there were three more AFL grounds.

In the state that not even a decade ago the NRL was calling rugby league’s heartland, rugby league is being dominated.

This is always an unpopular conversation among rugby league people but, for too long, the game has chosen to deal with it by ignoring it.

The reasons are many but, chief among them, was the game was incapable of managing its own affairs even competently enough to admit it had a way to address the AFL problem.

V’landys was made aware some years back of this subversive war the AFL launched on the NRL.

It was a war the AFL denied ever existed and one where they worked every way possible so as not to awaken the NRL hierarchy from its dopey slumber, which must be said they achieved magnificently, and while rugby league slept, the AFL launched Demetriou’s war.

They planned to steal the football grounds and the hearts and minds of the mums. Territory and emotion.

Demetriou was brilliant.

Former GWS Giants figurehead Kevin Sheedy. Picture: Mark Kolbe/Getty Images

While the AFL was promising to peacefully expand into rugby league heartlands, their generals were already pouring over maps.

Kevin Sheedy was employed as the GWS Giants’ first head coach to give AFL the soft sell in Sydney. He would be the code’s greatest salesman more than providing any specific practical nous.

Current Sydney Swans chief executive Tom Harley worked for the Giants and late in the inaugural season got interviewed on local ABC radio where he continued to push the propaganda.

“In NSW (people say) there’s a code war but our philosophy is about getting young boys and girls to play sport and, if they choose to play Aussie rules, that’s great for us — I’m obviously very parochial,” Harley said.

“It’s not a ‘war’, we’re just here to provide kids with an opportunity.”

That Harley was able to say this without breaking into giggles shows what a wonderful club boss he is. Keep an eye on this guy.

In the same interview, Harley also acknowledged the strategy behind Sheedy’s appointment in clear terms.

“Kevin Sheedy said he just wants to be everyone’s second favourite team (to an NRL club) and that’s the softly, softly approach we have taken,” he said.

Firehawks officials arrive to present their bid to be Brisbane's next expansion team.

And the NRL did nothing.

And so, on Monday, the ARL Commission took its biggest step yet towards combating what has been more than a decade of passive aggression from the AFL.

In V’landys, the NRL has a man not afraid to call a war a war. Or to aim his weapons.

On Monday, the Commission heard the first pitches from the three expansion teams — the Redcliffe Dolphins, Brisbane Jets and Brisbane Firehawks — hoping to become the 17th franchise in the NRL.

The current clubs have acted predictably and protested that a new expansion team will take their funding in future years.

With no extra game to sell, they claim it is a drain the game cannot sustain.

There is nothing unusual about this.

When John Quayle set about expanding the domestic Sydney competition in the early 1980s, his motivation was to stop the game going broke. New markets, he hoped, would provide extra revenue.

Redcliffe Dolphins chief Terry Reader is confident in his

Almost immediately he encountered opposition from the clubs, each privately manoeuvring to send each other broke while claiming solidarity.

They figured their businesses would make much more money if there was less clubs to share it among and that same thinking is being seen today.

The wisdom of Quayle’s belief that to grow the game was to expand the game — the first in 1982 and then again in 1995 — were the catalysts for tremendous growth in the game’s fortunes.

His weapon back then was geography. The game targeted population growth.

Today the Commission plans to expand where the money is, which is television.

There is a belief within the NRL that a 17th team will generate income even though it would not provide an extra game to sell.

The future of free-to-air television is changing, significantly enough to question its future worth.

Subscription television like Foxtel, Netflix, Stan and Amazon Prime are growing rapidly.

John Quayle played a big part in rugby league expansion back in the 1980s.

Yet the imbalance in the NRL is that Melbourne Storm sell far more subscriptions than the Brisbane Broncos. It seems an unusual quirk.

The simple answer seems to be that the Broncos are live on free-to-air so regularly Brisbane rugby league fans do not need to subscribe to watch their team play.

In Melbourne, the Storm get on free to air about the same time each night that the 1-800 ads start rolling in. Young single men seems to be the audience pitch in Victoria.

The belief goes a second team in Brisbane would generate enough subscriptions to increase its broadcast value and justify its expense to the rest of the competition, and so the first step in the NRL’s fightback is creating more subscribers.

Then it must begin the hard slog of winning back lost ground, aware the hardest ground to win is ground already lost.

Originally published as Paul Kent: Expansion is NRL’s first strike back against AFL’s secret war to bring down rugby league