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No one will care about a virtual shield. There's essentially one in international rugby and I can't even remember the name of it. Ireland currently hold it. If you can't hold it up and take a photo with it after winning it then it's nothing. I thought the idea was to create the equivalent of...

Not from what I've read on here. I don't really mind either way but would probably slightly favour giving it to the first winner of the competition. Minor premierships mean little in Australian sport. But then I thought of this playoff for the shield in round 1 idea and thought it could be...

So is this going to happen? I just thought, given no one can decide whether the inaugural shield winners should be the Rising or Brisbane City, why not have them play each other in round 1 of the 2015 season and the winner get the shield? Would obviously need the ARU to back the concept from...

The current season is 16 games. Pretty sure the 1 round reduction was driven by the NZRU for player welfare reasons. I doubt the ARU wanted a shorter season.

I thought this too until I saw someone point out how bad it would be for the Argentinian fan base. Matches played in NZ would be on in the middle of the night in Argentina. It'd be like putting one of the east coast Australian sides in a South African conference.

I think it's risky and is clearly a bridge format before further expansion (multiple teams in both Asia and Argentina/the Americas), but the potential long term reward is high. Fact of the matter is that SANZAR will not be able to compete with the money in Europe without significant further...

They play in the Pacific Nations Cup tournament in June along with Fiji, Tonga, Japan, USA and Canada. It's gone through many different formats and given the June international window is fairly short it's always sort of rushed together. The teams (other than Japan) don't have their professional...

Well I don't mean they should disband the SRU and think they should stay relatively autonomous, but perhaps if they came under the NZRU umbrella there'd be some improvement in governance and management. The NZRU could use Samoa to further develop coaches and support staff etc, and they'd give...

Samoa could be a really strong team if they had a better union and more opportunity from SANZAR in particular. It wasn't that long ago they kicked the Wallabies arse at Homebush. Maybe Samoan rugby should come under the stewardship of the NZRU or something.

Samoa were excellent a couple of years ago but seem to have gone off the boil a little. In 2012 they beat Wales at the Millenium stadium and got within 8 points of France. I don't think the current side is at that level. Losing to Italy was a surprise as they've regularly beaten them in the...

Thought Georgia were treated a bit harshly by the referee at the ruck at times (not a great look appointing an Irish referee, even if technically he works for the RFU). Ireland scored most of their tries when they were a man up. Would have been nice to see Georgia stay a bit closer and...

Georgia have a few of their best players out injured. At full strength I think they'd be capable of giving the team Ireland have picked a bit of a scare. They did beat Samoa last year.

In reality it's about 50% more than that, but even 10,000 people in a small stadium creates a pretty decent atmosphere. If the NRC ever averages 10k we'll be laughing! Even 5k would be great I think. But hey, I never said it was the most important factor for viewing numbers! The NRL is...

For me a crowd in the background and the noise from it through the speakers gives the game greater importance and impact. I used to hate Channel 7's coverage of rugby tests because they'd always mix the crowd noise too low. It annoyed me. For rugby I will watch anyway because it's my...

Maybe Fox are finally realising that the more people that get to see a little bit of super rugby, the more people that might then get fox to see the rest of it. I doubt many people that currently have Foxtel primarily for the rugby (and other sports) would get rid of it just because they...

Most of the Thursday night games clashed with the NRL. It's always going to clash with something. I mean Super Rugby always clashes with NRL and AFL and still rates okay. Just gotta get more of that fan base watching the NRC for it to be viable. And I think the atmosphere at the ground...

Guys didn't Fox pay $1.5 million for 2 seasons, not per season? If that's the case the figures seem more reasonable. Would be good to know what the ratings were for the Bledisloe Cup curtain raiser. Thursday night was good in theory but I don't think it worked too well. Maybe a 3 or 4pm kick...

I take your point but on a Thursday night I doubt there are many kids that would be there anyway. And the adults are the ones that pay money for tickets so they matter just as much if not more. Brookvale is only okay from the North Shore if you're driving. From most places it takes ages to...

North Sydney is a very small oval so still a good venue to watch rectangular sports. But I suppose the cricket pitch is an issue at the time of year. I just think they'd get twice as many people to a home game at North Sydney Oval for a week night fixture. And that's key for long term success...

I think they'd get better crowds at North Sydney Oval. Especially for night games on a Thursday or Friday.