Supporting a team is hard. The emotional toll alone surely takes years from your life. The time and money spent is not worth contemplating and it can generate difficult conversations about why a preliminary final is more important than say, the birth of your child. Quick tip, this is not an argument you’ll win even with truth on your side.

All this effort, however, is easily worth it when you get to experience the ultimate success of a premiership. At least that’s what I tell myself. As a Melbourne Football Club supporter I must accept this on blind faith.

There is nothing else on Earth, in which I would invest so much passion, time and money with such a lousy return. Not a premiership since 1964, well before my time.

Is Melbourne the worst team to barrack for in Australia? This question surely needs a vaguely scientific investigation.

To start we must consider a team’s win-loss record and premierships won. Yet we must also consider dashed hopes and dreams.

I’ve decided to disregard teams that are no longer in existence. This counts out a lot of the old NBL.

I’ve also stuck to the major codes: NRL, AFL, Super 15, A-League and the NBL. I wanted to include Netball, Baseball and ice hockey but I have to sleep and play video games (not in order of importance) so I decided to narrow.

The various national teams have also been excluded as I am focusing on clubs.

Lastly, in a decision I imagine will be debated down through the ages by the tens of people who read this, I have not included cricket.

I love cricket but it’s not a club-based sport in the way the other codes are on a national level (bracing for the influx of angry emails from both Sydney Thunder fans).

NRL

Photo: paddynapper

Cronulla Sharks

Being in the hunt since 1967 and having nothing to show for it is tough. The Sharks have been to three grand finals including the one and only ten-team Super League decider but have come away with nothing.

In recent years, to truly underline their on field impotence, they strung together their worst losing streak in club history (2006), publicly announced plans to move to the Central Coast, only to be stopped by the NRL (good move for building loyal fans, like breaking up with someone only to be told by your Mum that you have to stay with them) and had Four Corners run an expose on the psychological damage caused to a young women after she engaged with group sex with several players. This included high profile former player Matthew Johns and resulted in the resignation of a director.

But wait, there’s more: in 2009, then CEO, Tony Zappia was forced to resign for allegedly hitting a female employee accidentally while shadow boxing.

South Sydney Rabbitohs

They’ve won 20 premierships and have a proud history, which is second to none in rugby league. The last Premiership however was in 1971and they are now owned by Russell Crowe.

During Oprah’s recent visit to Australia she sported their merchandise, which is fitting as the team plays like a guest having an emotional breakdown on her couch.

Their more than 20,000 members deserve a lot more for their hard earned.

AFL

Photo: Flying Cloud

Melbourne Demons

1964 was a long time ago and they haven’t had a true star since Robbie Flower.

Their two grand final appearances have not actually been appearances, as the team did not actually show up. Losing to Hawthorn in 1988 by 96 points and then Essendon in 2000 by 60 points didn’t exactly leave you with a sense that they deserved to be there.

The recent four-year ‘rebuilding’ phase has resulted in their star recruit from two drafts before, choosing an expansion team in Western Sydney (and a lot of money and a job for Dad) rather than stay and play for a club he saw as not really serious about success.

Last season culminated in the second worst defeat in AFL/VFL history losing to Geelong by 186 points. Now they’re rebuilding again.

Fremantle Dockers

While not a serious contender for the title, only being around since 1995 (the record hasn’t been great) The most excitement they’ve generated for their supporters has been for the recent poll on what the theme song should be, which received 87,140 votes and was run with such an over-engineered process it exceeded any rigor put into any African election in living memory (you heard what I said, Ghana).

The Dockers have 42,762 members so my question is who are all the other people voting in this? It’s probably those rare few who have been at a game Fremantle has won and actually heard the song.

The club has now recruited Ross Lyon as their Coach which will ensure they can expect to hear their slightly tweaked theme song after mind numbingly boring wins, just not in the Grand Final.

Richmond Football Club

The Tigers have not won a Premiership since 1980 but that’s not why they’re on this list.

For Richmond, it’s the fans themselves who have led the club here. Never, in the history of time, has a single group of people built such high expectations year on year despite so little evidence.

The club has been terribly run for a long time and has had infinite heart breaking moments. Being a Richmond supporter however means the part of your brain that adjusts expectations has doesn’t work, making it all seem that much worse.

The Terry Wallace era seemed to have cured them of this but sure enough Damian Hardwick has restored just enough hope while not delivering any actual real on field success to have Tigers fans as hopeful as ever.

Western Bulldogs

I wanted to have an even balance between the various codes but the AFL just seems to have more clubs that have gone long stretches without a premiership than other codes.

The Bulldogs are a case in point. Despite recent on field success over the last few years, the club has not one a premiership since 1954 and that is their only one.

1954 was the year polio vaccinations began. Rock and Roll started in 1954. The English composer Benjamin Britten’s chamber opera version of The Turn of the Screw debuted in 1954 (that last point probably isn’t as impactful as I thought).

NBL

An Australian Basketball fan’s relationship with the NBL is like a Star Wars fan watching George Lucas tinkering with the original trilogy before moving on to create the first three episodes: nothing but sheer dismay.

The management of basketball in Australia seems like a group of people were watching soccer’s mismanagement over the years and thought ‘surely we can top that.’ You know what? You almost can.

It’s very hard to pick a single team so let so remember; we are just looking at current teams and we remember with sadness all the great and not so great past teams.

Townsville Crocodiles

The Crocodiles find themselves here because their fans deserve better. Unlike a lot of the NBL their fans show up. They are a financially secure NBL franchise, which is a bit like a reliable Italian car. Yet for all that support and stability, on the field the Crocs have not delivered since their first NBL season in 1993.

When you see marketing concepts rather than teams such as the South Melbourne Dragons win titles then disappear from the league, you have to feel for the good people of Townsville.

What really gets me though, is the fact the Crocodiles were forced to change their name from the Suns ahead of the 1998/99 season due to the NBA team Phoenix Suns owning the trademark and threatening to demand royalties if the name was used.

I can only imagine how threatened the Phoenix Suns felt by a team based in Townsville Australia having the same name. Why risk upsetting fans of the sport who in all likelihood might end up supporting the Phoenix Suns as a result of the same name?

If you think the NBA have gotten any smarter they haven’t. When the recently formed Gold Coast Blaze was named, they chose the name Blaze despite fans voting for the name the Heat. The NBA expressed concerns due to the Miami Heat already using that name.

Thank god. I can just hear a conversation between two kids in Miami if it had been allowed to happen:

“Hey I just got the new Heat Jersey.”

“Cool, I love the Gold Coast Heat. Can you believe there’s also a team called the Heat right here in Miami?”

A-League

Photo: OliYoung

I originally had Gold Coast United in this article but like the A-League I had to take them out. What they lacked in longevity they made up in hostility from ownership towards their own fans. For their fans, we at The Flack sends our sympathies.

Adelaide United

Overall success and being the only A-League team to have any sustained success in Asia should make following this team relatively easy but all the highs have just made the lows that much lower.

In their 2006/7 Grand Final appearance they faced the Melbourne Victory in a crushing 6-0 defeat and with their Captain sent off. For the travelling Adelaide fans, having to watch the Melbourne Victory fans celebrate from halftime like it is Mardi Gras is more than any fan should have to bear.

While the 2008/09 Grand Final loss, again to Melbourne Victory, was a better effort, it’s set a pattern of Adelaide getting close but not close enough.

They are however perplexingly good at winning in Asia.

Super 15

Photo: paddynapper

NSW Waratahs

Imagine there was only one Melbourne based team in the AFL and that team had never won a Premiership. The team also has 130 years of history behind them.

This is what it’s like for Waratahs’ fans. In the home of Australian Rugby Union, the Waratahs are a constant source of disappointment. What puts them on this list is comparing them to the other Australian franchises.

The Queensland Reds’ recent Super 15 title is the worst possible outcome because in the past Waratah supporters could always console themselves with not being the Reds.

The Brumbies however are like your younger brother consistently beating you in all facets of life. Imagine he is earning more money, has a hot girlfriend and is generally liked by people.

All Waratah fans remember the season that made it very hard to care at all about this team. 2002 was a good year for the Waratahs with 8 wins in 11 games and finishing second in the then Super 12. However, they then ran into the end of the season like an Englishman tackling Jonah Lomu.

In the last game of the season they lost 96-19 (and the score flattered them) in probably the most insipid performance in Super Rugby history given the relative positions of the teams on the table. It is still a Super Rugby record. They then followed this up with a 51-10 loss to the Brumbies (hey little brother) the next week in their first semi-final appearance ever.

Comfortingly for the fans, the Waratahs still have the same hidebound, byzantine, old boy network managing their future efforts.

The worst team in Australia to support

So looking at the list, who is the worst?

It’s hard to go past the Waratahs because their fans are just born with a sense of entitlement and the lack of on field success must make them question their whole existence. “If NSW isn’t the best team in the world, maybe my whole belief system upon which my sense of self comes from is a falsehood?” (It is.)

Richmond, Melbourne and South Sydney are all clubs with great traditions and can at least point to past glories. They’re doing their best to remove past success from our collective memory but there is still work to be done.

Adelaide, Fremantle and Townsville are out because of their relatively shorter histories. They are all however on the right track and are building proud traditions of ineptitude.

The final contenders standing are the Cronulla Sharks and the Western Bulldogs.

Two teams who will disappoint their fans in ways you could not invent. The loyalty of these teams’ fans is both inspiring and completely confounding. They deserve better.

The winner though is the Cronulla Sharks. Never having won a premiership counts and they have been at it for the whole modern era. Off field, they seem like they are run by the Bleuth family, with none of the humour.

Damn, another thing the Demons haven’t won.