Aussie Player Exodus

[hoggy]

[. It's not as simple as saying you have to 'build from the ground up.'[/quote]




Of course its not as simple.
20 yrs ago when rugby went professional in Australia it needed to do one thing.That was to build a base on top of its traditional support, private schools & expatriates.

But it didn't instead it invested straight away into Super rugby a competition that paid the wages of the Wallabies, but never gave it the one thing the ARU desperately needed domestic penetration. And it never will.
20 yrs later the same support base still exists, private schools & expatriates.

So the problems that exist now for the ARU will still be there in 20 yrs, and without that grassroots & domestic development, who will be left in 20 yrs to support the Wallabies.

Anyway this is the hat the ARU have put on, we've signed up for another 5-6 years of Super Duper rugby, so good luck to them. But IMHO Super rugby has always been the easy option, it has paid the Wallabies wages, but i will argue till the cows come that it has delivered little else.

 

[Quick Hands]

I have been a Rebels member since day one and support the team, however i do not support Super rugby a competition that has absolutely zero relevance to the market that it is trying to enter.

Having watched grassroots rugby in Victoria survive on sausage sizzles for 20 years. It is ironic now to watch a broke ARU propping the team up $3/4 million each year,

If you think that is a good way to expand.

The introduction of the Rebels (and the Force) are important to Australia for a few reasons. They provide more professional places for players, they provide more matches for TV (even pay TV) which leads to higher broadcast revenue and they should be a mechanism for expanding the game in those 2 states.

Grass roots rugby everywhere survives on sausage sizzles and similar fundraising efforts, but so does all grass roots sport in Australia. If you think that the professional arm of any sport in the country has removed the necessity for this then you are dreaming.

The higher the level of any sport the more opportunity for sponsorships etc, but still the volunteers are an integral part. Manly are a reasonably successful Shute Shield club, but we still rely on volunteers to set up the field in the morning, take it down at night, run the barbeque, run the water and all the other little things that go on. Every junior and grass roots sport that I've been involved in is exactly the same.

Bringing more money into the sport is not going to be a money making bonanza for the community game, it's going to allow more opportunity for professional players to stay in Australia, which to my mind is good for the game. If you disagree with that proposition, that's fine you're entitled to that view, but I fail to see how shrinking the professional game will somehow improve what happens at the grass roots.

So, yes I support the Rebels and the Force. I think that they will be ultimately successful. The Sydney Swans had zero relevance to the market that they were trying to enter in the 1980s. They were ridiculed by the Sydney press for years after their arrival, they were unwatched except by expat Vics, but they eventually succeeded. There's no reason why the Rebels can't do the same on a slightly smaller scale.

If you want to argue that rugby in Australia is poorly run, and has been for quite some time, you'll have no argument from me - but that's a separate debate.

 

[Quick Hands]

[. It's not as simple as saying you have to 'build from the ground up.'

20 yrs ago when rugby went professional in Australia it needed to do one thing.That was to build a base on top of its traditional support, private schools & expatriates.

[/quote]

Absolutely correct.

That's the fault of the way the ARU have run things, not the concept of super rugby.

 

[hoggy]

20 yrs ago when rugby went professional in Australia it needed to do one thing.That was to build a base on top of its traditional support, private schools & expatriates.

Absolutely correct.

That's the fault of the way the ARU have run things, not the concept of super rugby.[/quote]

But its the fault of the ARU, for not having the guts, foresight or whatever to realize that Super rugby will never give them that ability to grow the base.
The concept of Super rugby has long been bastardized.
They took the easy money. And are still doing it. What holds the code back here is the vested and self interest of the people that run the code.

At no time have they ever acted in the overall interests of growing the game.
The Melb Rebels will never achieve what the Swans have done. Not because rugby in Melbourne does not have the ability. Its because Melb will never buy into Super enough to allow that chance.

 

[Quick Hands]

Absolutely correct.

That's the fault of the way the ARU have run things, not the concept of super rugby.

But its the fault of the ARU, for not having the guts, foresight or whatever to realize that Super rugby will never give them that ability to grow the base.
The concept of Super rugby has long been bastardized.
They took the easy money. And are still doing it. What holds the code back here is the vested and self interest of the people that run the code.

At no time have they ever acted in the overall interests of growing the game.
The Melb Rebels will never achieve what the Swans have done. Not because rugby in Melbourne does not have the ability. Its because Melb will never buy into Super enough to allow that chance.[/quote]

But what you are highlighting are mainly ARU governance issues, incompetence and the poor way that some things have been implemented.

The concept is right, the excution is poor.

There's at least 2 threads running about ARU incompetence, and I'm one of their harshest critics.

 

[Wilson]

If you two are going to keep quoting each other back and forth could you at least remove the extra end quote tag that's crept in, it makes it a pain to read.

 

[TOCC]

the true measure of the Rebels success is whether participation in the code in the state is increasing, and also whether the number of viewers in the state is increasing as well...

Who knows, in 10years we may be looking at the Melbourne Rebels as a critical pillar of professional rugby union in this country, it may achieve critical mass in terms of economics and be a completely self sustaining professional rugby team which contributes significantly to the value of the broadcast deal.


In terms of Super Rugby, i agree the current model is broken.. The overall concept is a good idea but the implementation and structure is convoluted and bastardised.

 

[wamberal]

Remind us, chaps, what was the alternative to Super Rugby?

 

[Forcefield]

But it didn't instead it invested straight away into Super rugby a competition that paid the wages of the Wallabies, but never gave it the one thing the ARU desperately needed domestic penetration.

Back in '95 someone advised the ARU to do this. Unfortunately, they misunderstood what they were being told to do and went off and shagged some housewives.

I'll see myself out.

 

[hoggy]

Remind us, chaps, what was the alternative to Super Rugby?

Actually its called a domestic competition, It takes time and you build from the ground up, it is club based and you have 10 to 16 teams covering the markets available in Australia.
The AFL and the NRL have one which they built up over time, both have signed $billion TV deals, and soccer is building one if you haven't noticed.

Union has Super rugby, which is stuck on pay TV, only about 30% relevant to the local market, is a long last in the code wars, however does enable the Wallabies to remain domestically based. Unfortunately even with that the ARU are flat broke.

So really it depends which model you prefer.

 

[Runner]

Hoggy says in part

"And it never will.
20 yrs later the same support base still exists, private schools & expatriates."

I might think that reading a number of threads such as the decline thread that private school rugby has declined with perhaps only Auggies emerging in that sector in 20 years. Also the addition of extra costs to junior rugby may further erode this base.

I agree that the Super competition has been great but admin needs work.

Alos a revamp of who can play in the wallabies. Many of the best can't as they are in Japan and Europe.

 

[Braveheart81]

Actually its called a domestic competition, It takes time and you build from the ground up, it is club based and you have 10 to 16 teams covering the markets available in Australia.
The AFL and the NRL have one which they built up over time, both have signed $billion TV deals, and soccer is building one if you haven't noticed.

Union has Super rugby, which is stuck on pay TV, only about 30% relevant to the local market, is a long last in the code wars, however does enable the Wallabies to remain domestically based. Unfortunately even with that the ARU are flat broke.

So really it depends which model you prefer.

How many years do you think it would take to build up this 10 to 16 team domestic competition? Using the AFL and NRL examples could mean it is 50+ years to being financially sound and lucrative.

If the funding is coming from pay TV and the ARU wants to go in a different direction, where do you think the players end up?

If the players have the option of being well played professionals or helping build a strong competition that could be of greater benefit to players several generations away, I know what they'll choose.

 

[Inside Shoulder]

I think you also have to take a look at the reason the NRL and AFL are domestic comps: no one else plays the stupid games!

 

[Jagman]

The main problem with the Super Rugby concept is that it was dominated in its first 15 years by foreign champion teams. In this time only the Brumbies won and they had the smallest market of the super 12 teams. The 2011 victory for the Reds was enough to things around in Qld and time will tell if the Tahs 2014 title is too little too late.


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[wamberal]

The main problem with the Super Rugby concept is that it is rugby, a code which has become gradually less popular in this nation every year since the halcyon days around the turn of the millennium.

The sooner we all accept reality, from the top to the bottom, and from side to side, the more likely it is that we can survive.

We are a niche sport, beset by increasingly strong rival sports here, and increasingly rich alternative employers overseas.

We need to put aside tribal loyalties, petty self-serving agendas, because we are in a fight for survival. From the grass-roots up, all stations along the way.

If we start to understand that, we might start to work intelligently for each other, and for the game that they used to play on heaven.

 

[TOCC]

Remind us, chaps, what was the alternative to Super Rugby?

Kerry Packers World Rugby Championship


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[Quick Hands]

Actually its called a domestic competition, It takes time and you build from the ground up, it is club based and you have 10 to 16 teams covering the markets available in Australia.
The AFL and the NRL have one which they built up over time, both have signed $billion TV deals, and soccer is building one if you haven't noticed.

Union has Super rugby, which is stuck on pay TV, only about 30% relevant to the local market, is a long last in the code wars, however does enable the Wallabies to remain domestically based. Unfortunately even with that the ARU are flat broke.

So really it depends which model you prefer.

Well we can argue what should and what shouldn't have been done in 1995, but it's not really going to change where we are now. At the moment we are part of super rugby and it's in our interest for super rugby to be successful and profitable and for us to maximise the earning power of super rugby.


This doesn't mean we can't also have a domestic club competition at the next level down. Which is where the NRC fits in. It's not perfect and can be improved, but it's the mechanism for a national competition. Maybe you're right and this should have been done years ago (after the 2003 RWC for example), but it wasn't. The fact the the ARU spent the proceeds of that event without anything to show for it is a reflection of the people running the ARU, not the super rugby concept.

It doesn't need to be an either/or choice.

As an aside, if the ARU and the VRU aren't using the Rebels to improve community rugby in Victoria, then there's a problem. Most posters on these threads have been telling us how well the Dewar Shield is going lately, so your sentiments are a bit of a surprise.

 

[Braveheart81]

You also need to consider that at the point Super Rugby started, the Shute Shield and Premier Rugby clubs wielded far more power than they do now. Creating 3 Super Rugby franchises was a far easier proposition than make 10 professional clubs to play a national competition. If you figure that as initially 4 Sydney, 4 Brisbane and 2 Canberra sides (or something along those lines) you would have met unbelievable resistance from the clubs because it would have been a far more either/or proposition than Super Rugby.

It's easy to blame the ARU for neglecting the grassroots but club rugby, the heart of the grassroots was a massive obstacle getting in the way of creating a new professional competition that would have needed at least the top end of club rugby to split apart.

 

[HighPlainsDrifter]

Perhaps some of the Super 15 clubs would be better served to look at becoming sporting clubs not unlike Boca Juniors and Real Madrid ie. for example widen the Waratah's brand appeal in an effort to increase memberships and widen the demographic reach. As an example say the Waratahs merged basketball's Sydney Kings / Flames and Netball's Sydney Swifts and share infrastructure (lower costs) and maybe add other sports into the mix as well .
Such an arrangement could take various forms ... from outright ownership to a merger of interests , JV or an affiliate type arrangement not unlike a buyers group to help attract scale and market penetration yet maintaining autonomy for those sports. The Waratah's brand proposition would likely be enhanced for advertisers/sponsors and likely result in more interaction and cash towards the grassroots level . The ARU seems one step too removed from the coal face to be effective at a grass roots level , it may be time for the Super clubs to step up somewhat to help grow the game and their organisations further . If the ARU found that the platforms created could be piggybacked to lower its cost base so much the better . The idea might be "out there" , but it might jolt some to consider what a great product we have in Rugby but is underachieving its potential by a fair way at present in an increasingly fractured marketplace in Australia . I'm NOT being critical of the Super 15 clubs , I just think they may have to look outside the box to achieve the sustainable growth that the ARU seem incapable of helping to deliver all the way down to grass roots at the moment.

 

[Inside Shoulder]

You also need to consider that at the point Super Rugby started, the Shute Shield and Premier Rugby clubs wielded far more power than they do now. Creating 3 Super Rugby franchises was a far easier proposition than make 10 professional clubs to play a national competition. If you figure that as initially 4 Sydney, 4 Brisbane and 2 Canberra sides (or something along those lines) you would have met unbelievable resistance from the clubs because it would have been a far more either/or proposition than Super Rugby.

It's easy to blame the ARU for neglecting the grassroots but club rugby, the heart of the grassroots was a massive obstacle getting in the way of creating a new professional competition that would have needed at least the top end of club rugby to split apart.

I also think you'll find that at least some of the clubs denied the possibility of professional rugby and so were in no shape to get it going.
Even so:

1. S15/professional rugby has been a good thing for Australian rugby;
2. There was no other source of money that could possibly have bankrolled a move from amateur to professional in the 1995/96 offseason;
3. We got lucky with the super league war which meant that Rupert was not going to lose any winter turf in Oz to Packer who had the ARL.
4. The whole debate assumes that if the clubs had gone pro enough people could have been convinced to watch club union to justify the money now thrown at AFL and NRL - I reckon that's wishful thinking.