Round 14 - Raiders vs Broncos

Kooly87 · Jun 17, 2021

Organix said:
That's fascinating. So essentially being so entrenched in that region and established as a Rugby League club essentially gave them carte blanche to cheat?

This actually explains a lot, to be honest. It sounds like one of Scotty's "Mates" programs. In fact, it almost implies some sort of political connections/string pulling. Probably why it's so important to our PM to rub shoulders there.

So, I concede my point as to the why of the GF win, but swap it out for something that I need to flesh out a little further. Still dodgy as ****. No wonder there was a general sweeping of stuff away by Peter Dutton (Sports Minister at the time).

Does anyone know if there was some pressure coming from the other direction, i.e. from Cronulla/connections towards the NRL?

I think you're probably overstating the pull the club has. They're reasonably cashed up now by Sydney club standards, but they're still far from a big business or even particularly cashed up as sporting clubs go.

It's just much harder for the NRL to move a club on when they have a healthy balance sheet and money in the bank. 10 years ago that was absolutely not the case, but a development deal comes through and those problems go away. I guess you might be able to draw a long bow about political support to get development pushed through, which absolutely does happen in NSW, but that's hardly unique to Cronulla. If a developer wants to make things happen around Sydney they almost always can. Cronulla just happened to be the one that owned the land this time around.

The 'non cap cheating' in the only year they were successful is highly suspect, but if the NRL were in on it then it almost certainly doesn't fit in with the way the NRL has viewed the Sharks for most of their recent existence where they would undoubtedly have preferred for the club to be forced to move or fold. I see very little reason why they would want them to succeed now.

Organix · Jun 17, 2021

Kooly87 said:
I think you're probably overstating the pull the club has. They're reasonably cashed up now by Sydney club standards, but they're still far from a big business or even particularly cashed up as sporting clubs go.

It's just much harder for the NRL to move a club on when they have a healthy balance sheet and money in the bank. 10 years ago that was absolutely not the case, but a development deal comes through and those problems go away. I guess you might be able to draw a long bow about political support to get development pushed through, which absolutely does happen in NSW, but that's hardly unique to Cronulla. If a developer wants to make things happen around Sydney they almost always can. Cronulla just happened to be the one that owned the land this time around.

The 'non cap cheating' in the only year they were successful is highly suspect, but if the NRL were in on it then it almost certainly doesn't fit in with the way the NRL has viewed the Sharks for most of their recent existence where they would undoubtedly have preferred for the club to be forced to move or fold. I see very little reason why they would want them to succeed now.