A Subtle Turf War

Looking at the new A league franchise the western Sydney wanderers it had me thinking . Western Sydney is a very big area. It stretches out from Parramatta, to Penrith, down to Bankstown, and even Campbelltown is regarded as a part of Western Sydney.  Football (soccer) and AFL have targeted sydneys west  rugby leagues heartland in a battle against the NRL. Well it hasn’t been officially declared a battle yet as all codes have said theres no reason to ditch your supported side to follow another team & code, all can co-exist together. They may well do but can corporate support stretch that far ? only time will tell. And technically they can co exist at a spectator level , this is more a battle to influence kids at grassroots level not for established supporters. If you see the colour schemes for all the footy codes in the west its clearly the AFL & Football Australia have strategically tried to win the hearts of  NRL fans by selecting colours for their teams that mimic those in the NRL. The GWS club have an orange,white & charcoal colour scheme clearly trying to win over & target wests tigers fans & the newly formed Sydney wanderers have a black/white & red colour scheme trying to influence Penrith (who are predominately black) and possibly old north Sydney & wests magpie fans.

With the GWS club training base at blacktown and their home ground at skoda stadium at homebush its not far from camp concorde the wests tigers base. The Sydney wanderers are in talks with the Parramatta stadium trust to set up base their, another strategic move to infiltrate behind enemy lines. We can see both with GWS and the Sydney wanderers they have established an identity and based themselves strategically to NRL clubs ,many shots have been fired from all sides no one’s been killed yet, but it’s anticipated that soon somebody will be. Im sure the media will let us know as they are the main culprits of hyping this “turf war” between the footy codes.