Easts Tigers’ NRL bid full steam ahead despite coronavirus pandemic

While the NRL is fighting to keep their season alive, one Queensland rugby league club is ramping up their preparations to make a bid to be the 17th team in the competition.

New Easts Tigers coach Craig Hodges

WHILE the NRL is fighting to keep their season alive, one Queensland rugby league club’s bid to be the 17th team in the competition is full steam ahead.

The Courier Mail last month revealed Intrust Super Cup club Easts Tigers were working on a bid to blow the Brisbane Bombers out of the water and set up an explosive River Rivalry with the Broncos.

And Easts CEO Brian Torpy said their bid was full steam ahead despite the current coronavirus pandemic forcing the temporary closure of one of their major assets in the Easts Leagues Club and the cancellation of the ISC season.

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“We still have a good balance sheet, as does the leagues club and money in the back so this hasn’t really impacted on our ability to put a bid together at all,” he said.

“We’re still lucky that all of our staff are still here so if anything this time where there’s no football probably allows us to put more effort into putting a bid together.

“We haven’t heard back from the NRL in recent weeks, I’ve contacted them multiple times but obviously they have bigger issues to deal with at the moment.

“Once we find out from them what we need to put together, we can start progressing even further.”

Brian Torpy is the CEO of the Easts Tigers rugby league. Picture Peter Cronin

This isn’t the first time Easts have put a bid together to enter the game’s top tier, having tried to combine with Gold Coast and Balmain years ago to become the Easts Coast Tigers.

However, that dream was squashed when Balmain amalgamated with the Western Magpies.

Then in 2011, the Tigers once again registered their interest in the race to win an NRL licence and that didn’t come to fruition either.

Torpy said being in the NRL had been a goal of the club’s for years and believed Easts had the perfect set up for a new club with their base at Langlands Park and playing at Suncorp Stadium.

”It’s a fairly inexpensive big, which is great for a new team coming into the NRL,” he said.

“We have great facilities here at Total Workwear Stadium, our ground is one of the best going around and we would just have to upgrade things like the gym facilities and change rooms, which we have the financial means to do.

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“We have already spoken to local politicians in the area, who are really keen to help us out with our bid. We already have a great relationship with the Brisbane City Council given we lease the land here, so all indications are that the governments would be very supportive.”

Easts as well as the Sunshine Coast Falcons are affiliate clubs of the Melbourne Storm and receive an allocated amount of players from the powerhouse NRL club each year.

And Torpy also revealed he had the blessing of Storm CEO David Donaghy in putting this bid together.

“I spoke to David about our interest in bidding for a spot in the NRL before the initial story came out,” he said.

“We have a really great relationship with the Storm and he completely understands our interest in doing this.”

Easts Tigers coach Craig Hodges.

The Tigers experienced some change over the past six months after former Gold Coast Titans interim NRL coach and longtime assistant Craig Hodges replaced Scott Sipple as head coach of the ISC side.

And while Torpy said the club had great people involved in all areas, no thoughts have yet been put into who might coach the team, if their bid was successful.

“Until you know what year you might be coming in, you have no clue who’s on offer, who’s off contract and all that type of thing,” he said.

Easts have a rich history in Queensland rugby league, having won eight premierships, their last being in 1991 and have produced some greats of the game including former Queensland hooker John Lang and ex-Broncos star Darren Smith.

Torpy said progressing to the NRL would be a huge moment in the club’s 97-year history but would also be massive for Brisbane’s east as a whole.