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For me the anger over this is still very high and I'm hoping the legal ramifications leave the ARU no choice but to backflip on their decision. To me it comes down to this: Australian rugby is going to shrink, and basically give up on a large region of this country - including thousands of...

I don't find it hard to believe that the ball in play time is higher in the NRC than Super Rugby, just that it increased 40% on the NRC in 2015, which was played under pretty much the same laws.

Wow, jumping from 35 to 50 minutes ball in play is insane! How did that happen? Seems a little unbelievable to be honest.

I posted in the NRC section yesterday about potentially turning the NRC into an all season competition held over 20+ weeks both during and after Super Rugby. Then you could keep the cut team in at least a reasonable competition and work on building the NRC into something decent. With only 4...

There's never been a professional rugby structure in Australia that suits this country, while all the competing codes use a model that does. They all have competitions built around tribalism, geographic reach and a high amount of local content where multiple Australian teams make the finals each...

Barbarian, why would leaving Super Rugby threaten the Bledisloe Cup? This is a crazy assumption, not only because it would hurt NZ as much as it'd hurt us, but because NZ should be happy for us to leave Super Rugby! It'd give the NZRU everything they want. No opposition to a Super Rugby model...

Oh c'mon, Australian basketball has a viable locally based television product. Including a game on FTA every weekend. If the ARU had started a professional national comp in 1996 with say 10 teams, before the AFL and NRL became the behemoths they are now, the sport would be a lot better off in...

If it doesn't work at all then we can be the ones crawling back. But I think such a competition would simply have to operate within its means, and therefore it couldn't really fall over. The question would simply be how popular it was and what level of player it could attract. That would...

Then let them play a South Africa/NZ only competition and see how long it lasts! Both NZ and SA have said they want fewer local derbies and to play each other. We're the odd one out here. The Australian economy is roughly 3 times bigger than New Zealand's and South Africa's combined! It is...

The problem is that they're working on the assumption that 5 teams is the problem, rather than the nature and design of the competition itself. Is it surprising that super rugby teams struggle financially when they're playing only 7 or 8 home games per season and 15% of their games in the...

Now we've had confirmation that there will only be 4 Australian Super Rugby teams from next year is it worth looking at running the NRC over a longer period of time from 2018? (i.e. both during and after the Super Rugby season). It would allow the best current club players to play a higher...

The big problem for Australian rugby is that structured the way it is the health of the sport here is extremely reliant on international success in increasingly competitive international competitions. Thus our successes, which periodically boost the sport here, will likely get even further...

So how long until we're down to 3 Super Rugby teams? The ARU were handing out this document at the press conference apparently. Pretty clear it's all about the Wallabies for the ARU, and if this is the justification for going back to 4 teams then the same reasoning gets you to 3.

Wouldn't work as it'd be 4 professional organisations against two basically amateur teams (Fiji and the cut Australian team). Maybe the NRC could become a full length semi-professional competition (and hopefully in future it would grow to be fully professional) running from March to September...

I'm very disappointed. Hope this bites the ARU in the arse.

I really don't think it's a problem keeping all 18 of the teams, the 3 new teams have all improved considerably this season. The Force have usually been reasonably competitive but they've been boring, at least this year they're playing a far more entertaining style. More can be done to improve...

Well it's undeniable that grassroots development in Perth is starting to pay off with several WA developed players now in the Force squad, and with Perth Spirit winning the NRC last year with predominantly locally developed players. Melbourne is a little further behind but showing some signs of...

The only way you are guaranteed to lose thousands of fans forever is to cut the team they support. There are ways to make teams more competitive, and when they are competitive the fans who've given up come back. They certainly won't come back if there's nothing for them to return to. I would...

I believe they regularly have more starting local players than the Brumbies. But why does this even matter? Who cares how many players are locally produced? How many players in the Manchester United match day squad are from Manchester? How many players from the Chicago Bulls are from Chicago...

It'd definitely be a higher standard than the NRC as every player would be fully professional and teams would be allowed to contract a higher number of international imports. So for example, the best players from the ITM Cup and Currie Cup on the fringes of Super Rugby, good Argentinian players...