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They're not origin teams or state rep teams and haven't been for ages. The Waratahs and Reds are essentially professional clubs or franchises with NSW and QLD in the name. Like the Colorado Rockies and Utah Jazz in America. And yeah that's been the goal for a while now, but periods where...

The more I think about it the more I am supportive of a state of origin. We should build on existing rivalries, and the rivalry between NSW and QLD is huge. The league state of origin is consistently the biggest sporting event in both states every year, and while a rugby version won't be as big...

So Stephen Moore was on the Rugby Ruckus podcast and his solution (and I'm guessing the 10 captain's) is to make the Wallabies number 1 in the world most of the time (2 or 3 is unacceptable), and to go back to 3 pro teams and have a greater focus on club rugby beneath that. Morgan Turinui is...

I don't think this is the best option but if I had to bet on it I'd guess that RA will go back to 3 pro teams, merging the Rebels and the Brumbies, and there'll be an 8 team Trans Tasman competition in 2021. If RA's financial situation is as dire as reported, and the next broadcast deal is...

I think this would work best if we're only going to have 3 or 4 professional teams in some kind of revised Super Rugby competition and this was a semi-pro national club competition that ran through the entire season (including the test season). I'd actually go with 12 teams so the double round...

I think the number of tiers is okay if the rep season is shorter. E.g. 16 ish weeks for a domestic comp with a couple of State of Origin games. 7 weeks is too long. In that case you may as well just have an 8 or 9 team Trans Tasman competition with a double round robin. If we do have state of...

This is why it's always frustrated me when people have argued that we don't have enough good players to have 5 teams (or potentially more). Instead of being in a competition with a bunch of foreign teams we could have 8 teams here with a reasonable % of players from overseas. If cohesion...

These are all fair points, though I think soccer in France (and perhaps even more so in England, which has a similar model) is equivalent to NRL and AFL combined. France has 30 professional rugby clubs, could Australia really not have say 8 to give the game a little bit of extra reach and...

This is probably true if the primary goal is maximising the performance of the Wallabies, but that is only one potential goal for professional rugby in Australia. An alternative goal might be to spread the professional game as far and wide as possible and maximise the number of people in...

If you can manage a way to have 16 teams in the international tournament another option would be to make it a straight knockout with two tiers after the first round. So you essentially have a round of 16 followed by the Sevens inspired format of Cup Quarterfinals and Bowl Quarterfinals (or...

I'd be happy with domestic comps plus champions league, but would prefer them to be separate competitions rather than conferences and playoffs within a single competition (so more like a shortened version of the European style season) A single grand final for the Australian championship would...

I think this is unlikely just because the Wallabies generate so much revenue. As a worst case scenario we could surely still have at least two professional franchises playing in a Super Rugby competition. Also World Rugby's regulation 9 on player availability includes a Rugby Championship...

I think a Fijian team makes sense because they could still play most of their home games in Fiji, and the Drua have been great in the NRC. But I think any locally based teams should have a name based on their location. You could still have some kind of incentive or agreement to recruit a certain...

The other possibility is that in a competition with no kiwi teams a lot of them pick a local team to support, as that's the rugby they get to watch live in prime time. Plenty of people would follow both competitions. That said, I think a TT or Asia-Pacific competition is on balance the best...

I think the word 'club' can be more broadly defined than just amateur suburban clubs with multiple grades and juniors etc. The current super rugby sides are basically the rugby equivalent of the NRL and AFL clubs, so no reason they couldn't be the basis of a domestic club competition. For...

Promotion and relegation has some benefits, like making the bottom of the table as interesting as the top and providing a pathway for ambitious smaller clubs. But a lot of private investment would be required if the intention is for the national club competition to be the primary elite level of...

Apparently Laporte promised Fiji a match against France or the French Barbarians every year. Additionally, Fijian national teams, including the Under-20's, will camp with their French counterparts at the expense of French Rugby...

You could do something like a 12-15 round domestic comp (6-8 teams), followed by either a short champions league, or some kind of sub-test rep tournament. Like an origin series with NSW, QLD, South Island and North Island (or however you'd best split NZ into 2 or 3 rep teams).

Sure, but I don't really understand what they're getting by voting for Beaumont over Pichot. On the face of it Beaumont is far more the establishment candidate while Pichot was the guy really backing the smaller unions. And if the PI's are going to be involved in any top tier regular competition...

SANZAAR have supported the Nations Championship concept which would include Fiji and Japan in the Rugby Championship (and give Tonga and Samoa the possibility of entering via promotion/relegation). I'd just have thought that Japanese and PI rugby have much closer links to SANZAAR...