NRL Affiliation
Easts Tigers were the last team in the Queensland Cup to follow the trend of becoming affiliated with a team from the National Rugby League. At the end of the 2006 NRL season the New South Wales club South Sydney Rabbitohs announced an alliance with the Tigers as a feeder club for the NRL side.
At the end of the 2007 season it was announced that the Rabbitohs and Easts would no longer be affiliated due to various conflicting issues, the Tigers instead looked closer to home and struck an affiliate deal with the Brisbane Broncos. The Broncos have no reserve team for 2008 with former feeder teams the Toowoomba Clydesdales and Aspley Broncos not entering teams into the 2008 Queensland Cup. For Brisbane, it's another avenue to bring players back from injury and cover the representative drain and in return it gives the Tigers a pathway for some of their players to crack the NRL.
At the end of the 2010 NRL season the Victorian club Melbourne Storm announced an alliance with the Tigers as a feeder club for their NRL side. The partnership with Brisbane Easts Tigers allowed the Melbourne Storm to tap into the Tigers' current recruitment and development systems in Queensland, as well as providing a club for young Queenslanders recruited by the Melbourne Storm to play at and develop without having to relocate to Melbourne.
Read more about this topic: Eastern Suburbs Tigers
Famous quotes containing the word affiliation:
“Women will not advance except by joining together in cooperative action.... Unlike other groups, women do not need to set affiliation and strength in opposition one against the other. We can readily integrate the two, search for more and better ways to use affiliation to enhance strength—and strength to enhance affiliation.”
—Jean Baker Miller (20th century)