David Gallop reveals plans for NRL expansion

In a week when rugby league has been in the headlines for the wrong reasons, in the wake of the Adam Blair and Glen Stewart fight in last Friday's Manly v Melbourne Storm clash, National Rugby League Chief Executive David Gallop has outlined his plans for rugby league to become the world's No.1 sporting competition.

Speaking at an Australian Institute of Company Directors lunch yesterday, Gallop said the success of North America's NFL a benchmark for NRL to aspire to.

Gallop told the audience "a few years ago, I was thinking about the game and thinking 'what does rugby league want to be?'.

"We want to be the best that we can be - the best sporting competition in the world."

Gallop pointed to the game's recent successes, stating "rugby league's crowds have increased by 45% since 1998, significantly our TV ratings are on the increase in 2011, particularly around Monday Night Football, which has 17% growth in 2011, and our participation rates are up 29% since 2003."

Like the NFL, the NRL has had to deal with player behaviour issues, although, even in the wake of the Blair/Stewart stoush, Gallop drew comfort that the NRL's problems were not on the same scale as the US sport, highlighting that "aA few years ago they suspended a player when he shot himself in the leg in a nightclub. At least the gun issue hasn't arisen in our sport."

NRL players have been in the courts in the last year, although star NRL players Benji Marshall and Brett Stewart have escaped confictions in high profile cases.

The four-match ban imposed by the NRL on Brett Stewart last year has been the cause of much resentment towards Gallop and he explained why other players, such as Marshall, had not received similar stiff penalties.

Gallop explained "Brett Stewart was a player who was handed a position of responsibility in our game, to be the face of our advertising campaign.

"We took the view that he let us down by being asked to leave a hotel for being intoxicated at the club's season launch. We penalised the club $100,000 for not properly handling alcohol at that function.

"We just saw Benji Marshall go through a court issue. This was a case where everything was in dispute and we didn't act - because we knew that all the facts were up for dispute and we thought we would leave it to the court system."

Gallop also spoke about the threat of AFL in western Sydney (calling for the rugby league community to be more confident as player numbers in the region outrank the rival code by 23,000 to 3,000), the dangers posed by sports betting, television rights, expansion and the struggle to get an independent commission in place.

With the game's new independent commission having recently held its first meeting, and expected to be operational as of November, Gallop added "in the past rugby league has had a fragmented administrative structure - too many brands, too many logos, too many bodies.

"This is an opportunity for us to set a strategic direction for the whole game.

"We will move then into (a) phase where we have a wonderful opportunity to do a huge TV deal that will set up the game's future financially.

"We will have a look at expansion. I have said over the past couple of months I would have thought that by 2015 the game will be moving from 16 teams to 18 teams."

Gallup was asked why he would want to emulate the NFL when the sport had just endured a drawn out wage dispute with players, concluding "I think they have set a salary cap of US$128 million (AUS$120.5 million) per club for next season. It looks like a pretty successful sporting business to me."

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