Gold Coast is officially the sixth-biggest city in Australia but having plenty of people doesn’t guarantee sporting success. In fact, the area’s reputation for being a sporting graveyard just seems to be growing by the year.
In Queensland it might be sunny one day and perfect the next but Gold Coast is still the perfect storm when it comes to sporting failures.
According to the ABS there’s over half a million people living in the Gold Coast-Tweed Heads region. But when half of those people are tourists, transient workers, retirees, people from interstate and schoolies then it’s hardly the recipe to generate support behind a community team or even a specific code.
Adding to that there’s limited parking at CBUS Stadium and dodgy public transport out to the grounds, while there’s also plenty of other things to do like head to the beach or theme parks or check out Bernard Tomic being a toolie.
The Gold Coast must have one serious marketing department. For years they’ve convinced sporting organisations that the area is the way to go for sporting events. The latest people they’ve conned are the blokes who organise the Commonwealth Games.
But in reality, that idea appears a myth. The number of sporting teams that have died in the region is evidence of that. And, while the Titans and Suns are still up and going, neither of them generate massive crowds.
Here’s of some of the teams that have kicked the bucket on the glitter strip.
Rugby League
The recent troubles involving the Gold Coast Titans and now departed coach John Cartwright appear almost a drop in the ocean compared to the dramas over the years with a Rugby League team on the coast. The whole shebang started in 1998 with the introduction of the Gold Coast-Tweed Giants.
The Giants came in at the same time as the Brisbane Broncos and Newcastle Knights but due to a contractual arrangement saying the Broncos were the only team allowed to be based in south-east Queensland, the Giants had to play over the NSW border in Tweed Heads. From there, the Giants would have several incarnations over the years, becoming the Seagulls, the Gladiators and finally the Chargers before the entire club was disbanded in 1998.
But despite signing players of the quality of Wally Lewis at times, this Gold Coast side struggled big time on the field, regularly finishing from 14th to 16th on the ladder. They did make the finals in 1997 but that was just one year.
Football
Football Federation Australia sold everyone a serious lemon when it expanded the A-League for 2009-2010 by bringing in Gold Coast United and North Queensland Fury. Owned by billionaire Clive Palmer and coached by the charismatic and funny Miron Bleiberg, GCU arranged a competitive squad for their first two seasons, including big names Jason Culina, Michael Thwaite and Shane Smeltz.
The club made the finals in the first two years despite poor crowds, but Palmer quickly lost patience after that as he allowed players to leave and he implemented a youth policy that saw them propping up the league. Palmer became increasingly erratic as 2011-12 went on, promoting a teenager to captain and subsequently sacking Bleiberg after he objected. The billionaire also had his players wear shirts covered in bizarre slogans before having his licence suspended by FFA. That led to him attempting to set up a rival football association that never quite took off. Fortunately for everyone, when GCU was disbanded, Palmer could then turn his attention to politics!
Basketball
Australian basketball has been a basket case for years so that hasn’t helped Gold Coast’s cause. The first stab at the NBL was the Gold Coast Cougars in 1990. That team was rebranded the Gold Coast Rollers after one season but folded in 1996 due to financial issues. That led to 10 years without basketball in the area before the Gold Coast Blaze entered the comp in 2006.
The Blaze actually had a decent team and did well to survive the restructure of the comp that occurred midway through the last decade. But they still couldn’t last and folded in 2011.
Baseball
To be fair, Gold Coast’s Australian Baseball League side is probably the area’s major sporting success.
The Gold Coast Clippers were a foundation side in the ABL in 1989-90 but after one season they earned a major sponsorship from Japanese real estate company Daikyo. Now named the Daikyo Dolphins and re-located to Palm Meadows, the Gold Coast team won the league in 1991-92 before Daikyo ended their sponsorship the following year. The team became known as the Gold Coast Cougars and ended up winning the title in 1993-94. The Cougars finished up when the original ABL did its dash in 1999 and the new competition doesn’t feature a Gold Coast side. But the team still produced seven MLB players.
Motorsport
While the Gold Coast 600 V8 race is still going strong the same can’t be said for the Indy 300. We probably can’t blame the Coast too much for this one as the cancellation of the event coincided with the US Champ Car series merging with the IRL IndyCar series, which is substantially more focussed on domestic US races.
AFL
Although the Brisbane Bears survived, there’s no way in hell they would have had they remained on the Gold Coast. When the team was first developed, the Bears were based out of Carrara but the development of the team was particularly shoddy.
The club’s lack of success reached a low point in 1992 as they were smashed from pillar to post. The 1992 campaign, the last at Carrara, saw the club record lowest home crowd figure of 3059 people for a match against Footscray. That figure is the lowest AFL crowd of the modern era, with all the other low figures before that being estimates from the 1920s, 30s and 40s. In 1992 the Bears ‘achieved’ six of their bottom 20 crowd figures before things started looking up when they moved to the Gabba in 1993.
Technically the Bears didn’t kick the bucket – they merged with Fitzroy in 1996 and became the powerhouse that was the Brisbane Lions from 2001-2003 – but the Bears effectively killed AFL on the Gold Coast for almost 20 years.