Search results

Btw: the other myth floating around is that 'grassroots, schools and clubland rugby' will all be just fine if pro rugby collapses in Aust. Have a look at the gross $s that RA and the local RUs funnel down to these levels from pro incomes. It's multi-millions. Then, separate point, we have...

The code's presence has already shrunk severely, we are a 'niche' sport today (eg, contrast AFL and NRL viewership on Foxtel with Super Rugby's). The playing calibre decline of the Wallabies and our Super teams has IMO been a very big part of why. None of this will change without answers being...

Fundamentally, I think you're right and this will definitely require private equity to fund it all. But, as a am boringly saying over, only if there is an RA strategy within an overall comp redesign strategy to financially and operationally ensure a very credible, immediate plan is in place to...

Yes! And i just amazes me the degree to which many posters here are still mock-designing new Aust prop comp structures with lots of imagined Aust teams when the really key issue is: .........the actual playing quality (and, to a material degree, player quality) of our 4 Super teams has been...

Foxtel viewership Highlanders v Chiefs: 42,000

For sure. He understands that game and its rules. IMO, he'd likely be well-equipped to negotiate with PE but, as @Barbarian said yesterday, we hold very few cards given our parlous 2021 cash flow outlook.

Ummm, until recent days, RA and its prior CEO had no change strategy in key areas of Aust rugby's status quo. Just to indulge the history-watchers: there was/is zero evidence that Raelene Castle had any meaningful strategy, intention or desire to fix Aust rugby's biggest single problem...

Great observation and precisely where private equity and its innate, non-negotiable, commercial ruthlessness may be the code-saving catalyst. Like the hard master the spoilt child always needed and never had.

Frankly, what we badly need is a V'landys love child, preferably tomorrow. The type that instead of emitting lofty goals and feel-good homilies actually gets right into the fucking mire and fixes shit up whilst taking no prisoners and making hard-nosed outcomes the final referee, not more...

100%. in the last decade (and more) there is little that the ARU/RA has done better than emit grandiose hot air. One gets the impression they were serious. This esteemed body has never allowed its capacity to declaim the most impressive, lofty, 'inspiring' goals to decline, the great...

Sounds like something Cameron Clyne proposed and forgot about Suncorp.

Do I recall it right, 2010, v All Blacks, kicked the winning conversion......?

That's exactly the calculus they'd now make, and much more ruthlessly than in the past (ie, 2015 and prior). They have exited the hubris and extravagance phase, and entered the survival one. Plus Barb: Foxtel's cost base just begins with the raw rights' costs paid to RA. Then they have...

IMO they lost support over (say) 2008 - 2013 and then 2015 - 2019 as they didn't perform to (reasonable) fan expectations consistently enough. (Btw, pretty much ditto for the Reds.) Yes, home games' nos are an issue but like it or not the core rugby public wants winning and then, next best...

I know I have said this before OC, and I always like your thoughtful work here, but any new 2021 pro rugby comp concept simply must set forth in its plan for sustainable viability: - how will _all_ the nominated teams be properly funded from January 1, 2021 (including competent-enough...

Barb, a few points: 1. With the right radical redesign of Super Rugby for 2021, and McL's good relationship with News Corp, I would expect Foxtel to come back in, but at _much_ lower $ levels pa than prior, and, almost certainly, any such $s tied to some package of outcome KPIs allowing them...

Great to see a new Chair of Rugby Australia open to and encouraging radical new thinking re the pro code and its financing, long, long overdue. Interesting too that he emphasises in this context a ‘trans Tasman’ competition, he’s right to...

And therein lies the essential tactical and strategic problem/challenge: (a) When Aust rugby has tried to 'manufacture' new and essentially synthetic pro teams outside the oldest core of the top pro QRU, NSWRU, ACTRU teams, our financial and playing success with such teams has been poor to say...

'More complex' in that way though, in this case, may mean 'far higher chance of success'.

Maybe, but I think you will find that evening temps in BNE in February are often still low 30s/very high 20s and with v high humidity (high temp + high humidity the killer). Sure the core rusted-ons (how many are there now?) will likely go to Tests in those kinds of temps/conditions, but I...