Giant strides: Greater Western Sydney continue to make an impact on the AFL. Photo: Getty Images/AFL Media
No Australian sporting team ever was more of a flash in the pan than Launceston Casino City. It first appeared in the National Basketball League in 1980, won the championship in 1981, but managed only five wins the following season and was never seen again. It was as if a professional basketball team had been challenged to go double-or-nothing and lost.
Such an ephemeral existence is not unusual in the mercurial story of basketball in Australia, nor in the history of the expansion missions of major sports in this country. Depending on how you count entities that have merged and/or changed names, up to 35 basketball teams existed once, but not any more.
It is not just basketball. All four football codes have rolled the dice and won and lost as they have tried to muscle in on one another's territory. Prima facie, it reads as a checkered history and makes for a mish-mash of a landscape. But look closely, and there is a moral for those who would wish for the GWS Giants to fold like a pack of cards. They won't. But Gold Coast might. Last Saturday night in Geelong, they looked as though they were packing it in already.
It was the early '80s when footy and league began jostling. The AFL (as it became) was on safe ground with new clubs in Perth and Adelaide and, eventually and at great cost, succeeded in rooting South Melbourne in Sydney. But it utterly botched its move further north, leaving the Brisbane Bears stranded on the Gold Coast with a grab bag of a playing list. It wasn't until they moved to Brisbane and were folded into Fitzroy that the good times started to roll.
More than 20 years later, the AFL again drove in a stake on the Gold Coast and another in western Sydney, this time lavishly funded and with generous access to talent. Lesson learnt.
Rugby league moved prudently at first, planting teams within seeing distance in Canberra in 1982 and Brisbane half a dozen years later, and both were quickly successful. Ten years later, Melbourne Storm opened for business and immediately established themselves as a powerhouse. Now it is clear that Storm is not a threat to the hegemony here, but a stylish must-have accessory for the self-styled sports capital.
But league's ventures into Adelaide and Perth both were fleeting, and a succession of clubs on the Gold Coast putt-puttered along at less than one win every four games before disappearing altogether in 1998. League is now back on the Gold Coast in the form of the Titans, but making minimal impact.
Super rugby, as an international competition, had neither scope nor imperative to spread its wings in Australia. When the chance came, it went first to Perth in 2006 and not to Melbourne until 2011, and only this season have the Rebels begun to assert themselves. It should have been sooner.
Soccer's A-League, when looking to grow in 2010, tried Townsville and the Gold Coast, but both came quickly to grief, infamously in the case of Clive Palmer's Gold Coast. They were replaced by extra teams in Sydney and Melbourne. Both have worked, in different ways. Western Sydney Wanderers were instantly successful, and remain so. Melbourne Heart/City have underperformed and have a modest following, but are guaranteed by Manchester City, the sort of underwriting a provincial club would struggle to attract.
Basketball? It's been here, there (including Singapore), everywhere and, for a year, nowhere. It has scarcely tried the Gold Coast; it has had enough enough other places and ways to lose teams.
So, what can be inferred? This: that there is no point to an expansion club unless it is successful. "Because" is not reason enough for one to exist. Fans won't stoically ride out the bad times the way they will at an organically grown club. The AFL learnt this lesson, eventually.
Also this, that non-native markets are hard and expensive work, but if in big cities are probably worth persevering with. Storm's consistent excellence has gained it a niche in Melbourne's heart, and in a city of 4 million, a niche is a big enough place. The Swans have their niche in the east of Sydney, and the Giants can have theirs in the west if they become the formidable force that looks to be their destiny. Already we have seen how fragile they were, and now how potentially strong.
The AFL, believing the Giants to be in the right place, will be unstinting in its support. Other clubs can protest this indulgence all they like, and do, but it will make no difference.
Finally this, that the Gold Coast is the Bermuda Triangle of Australian sport. It has a fast-growing population, but by and large they are indifferent to spectator sport. Evidently, people go to the Gold Coast to do their own thing, not watch others do theirs. Leigh Matthews warned from the start that Gold Coast would be a tougher nut for the AFL to crack than western Sydney. The Suns are doing it hard, an ominous status on the Gold Coast.
As much love and largesse as the Giants have had, the Suns will need even more.
