Australian Rugby / RA

[Adam84]

Meh, isn't the SANZAAR/RC agreement done come 2030? They'll throw us a token bone and be gone post 2030. Which probably makes sense since we are nearly destitute.

NZRU are fluffybunnys but you can hardly expect them to act in anything other than self interest. We'd give NZ the flick in a heartbeat if the roles were reversed.

Yep.. RA need to make the tough calls now and jettison ourselves from Super Rugby. NZRU have show their true colours far too often. On top they’re ruled by PE now, and I question whether these are the actions of a company trying to generate short term pump at expense of long term growth.

It’ll be sadly ironic when RSA somehow joins the 6 Nations because the TRC has been damage beyond repair due to the their actions.

 

[hoggy]

Yep.. RA need to make the tough calls now and jettison ourselves from Super Rugby.

Sadly about the only things RA are good at is not making the tough calls.

 

[Strewthcobber]

- Good morning highly paid Super Rugby CEOs, we would like you to vote yourselves and your salaries out of existence by voting to remove ourselves from Super Rugby
thanks RA.

- Hi RA, we are voting to remove the chairman instead, and please change your plans
thanks, highly paid Super Rugby CEOs

 

[Dan54]

Think we will all find with this RN's cup or whatever it is coming up, we will see a lot more changes to test rugby, bells seem to be ringing louder for RC played earlier etc etc, so we get closer to international season. RC is not going to fold, only change , , it will count towards RN's cup qualifying etc And I ask do we think it's really good or bad? We have scores of posts in here saying that full tours etc should come back etc, and I think we even saw a bit of a start with Wales playing Reds earlier this year. I genuinely hope if this tours with SA does go ahead, Aus do similar. And genuine question, those of you that have been following rugby for a longish time, who do you think would be Aussie's traditional rival that this kind of thing would work well with??
I will add although I lived there for 25 years or so I never quite got a grip on who it was.

 

[Dctarget]

Good idea putting the bled in Perth, least Kiwi representation might actually get a home crowd.

 

[Omar Comin']

To be honest, would anyone turn up to watch Japan vs Australia in Oz, I mean Eddie Jones ain't going to fill Suncorp with Japan how SA did or the All Blacks will, and Fiji will be worse.

Kiwis and SA better cough up something special to remove those match fees, or they can shove it.

Probably not immediately but it takes time to build rivalries. At least Japan and Fiji are good to watch, and the Wallabies would win more than they lose. And with Eddie coaching Japan it does help build the interest in those games if we do begin to play them more regularly.

Maybe state of origin would also work well in these NZ vs SA tour years.

 

[Strewthcobber]

Aussie's tradional rival that this kind of thing would work well with??

We would get a good response to tours from England, Ireland, South Africa, New Zealand.

But I think it's pretty unlikely we would be able to get the first two at the time of year we would want them

 

[Omar Comin']

- Good morning highly paid Super Rugby CEOs, we would like you to vote yourselves and your salaries out of existence by voting to remove ourselves from Super Rugby
thanks RA.

- Hi RA, we are voting to remove the chairman instead, and please change your plans
thanks, highly paid Super Rugby CEOs

If we ever leave Super Rugby I think you can be pretty confident that our Super Rugby teams would form the basis of whatever comes next.

 

[Ignoto]

Bloody hell, a magic round in Perth? Has anyone in RA actually done the West -> East flight in economy?

Doing it in normal daylight hours sucks let alone having a hangover from a 3 day bender.

 

[Strewthcobber]

If we ever leave Super Rugby I think you can be pretty confident that our Super Rugby teams would form the basis of whatever comes next.

Maybe. But would the highly paid Super Rugby CEOs continue to be highly paid?

 

[Omar Comin']

Maybe. But would the highly paid Super Rugby CEOs continue to be highly paid?

If it's because Super Rugby blows up on its own, then maybe not (and there'd be nothing they can do about it). But it's also possible that we go full domestic with some pretty significant money behind it (some combination of private equity and RA investing a chunk of the money gained from the world cup) and that they operate on similar budgets.

 

[Wilson]

Maybe. But would the highly paid Super Rugby CEOs continue to be highly paid?

Super CEOs don't actually control that many votes - the tahs don't have a vote as part of their super rugby license anymore because it's under RA control, I'm guessing it's the same for the brumbies now, and the Force are a separate entity to Rugby WA (and they don't necessarily vote the same way).

It's only the Reds where the organizational structure of the QRU means all 3 votes fall to the CEO, but there's a lot more going on at the QRU than super rugby these days, so it's far from guaranteed that Hanham would see it as cutting his own salary (not to mention the board would still have a pretty significant voice in what happened there).

 

[Strewthcobber]

Super CEOs don't actually control that many votes - the tahs don't have a vote as part of their super rugby license anymore because it's under RA control, I'm guessing it's the same for the brumbies now, and the Force are a separate entity to Rugby WA (and they don't necessarily vote the same way).

It's only the Reds where the organizational structure of the QRU means all 3 votes fall to the CEO, but there's a lot more going on at the QRU than super rugby these days, so it's far from guaranteed that Hanham would see it as cutting his own salary (not to mention the board would still have a pretty significant voice in what happened there).

You are right, my joke worked a lot better 12 months ago, but still, I think the point is there's a lot of vested interests in Australian rugby who don't really want the current situation to change, a lot of them have salaries that depend on it staying pretty similar (including players, coaches other staff and adminstrators).

And the other point is it's not RA's decision. They can recommend what they think is best, but they ultimately need the states, remaining Super Rugby teams and players union to vote for these sort of changes.

To your point about Super Rugby control, I think it's very unlikely that having battled the states to centralise and control pro rugby for a decade+, now that they have finally got somewhere, RA is ever likley to develove that into a different domestic comp

 

[Wilson]

You are right, my joke worked a lot better 12 months ago, but still, I think the point is there's a lot of vested interests in Australian rugby who don't really want the current situation to change, a lot of them have salaries that depend on it staying pretty similar (including players, coaches other staff and adminstrators).

And the other point is it's not RA's decision. They can recommend what they think is best, but they ultimately need the states, remaining Super Rugby teams and players union to vote for these sort of changes.

I think it's very unlikely that having battled the states to centralise and control pro rugby for a decade+, now that they have finally got somewhere, RA is ever likley to develove that into a different domestic comp

The broader collection of vested interests is definitely much more relevant, though I think plenty of them are pretty interested in something other than super and that interest is growing. The big issue there is getting them all (or enough of them) on anything like the same page.

I do think we're stuck in a bit of limbo with the current model of super and this move by New Zealand and South Africa is going to motivate RA to look to different structures going forward that give them more control over their own revenue streams. Whether or not that's necessarily the end of super, or just a re-gearing of the competition to have a greater domestic focus combined with cross over tournaments along the line of the Heineken cup remains to be seen, but even before this the writing has been on the wall for the competition for some time. The new super rugby commission could change that, but as much as I've wanted it in place and would love to see it take the reins and actually drive the competition forward I'm skeptical it's going to be anything other than the impotent SANZAAR administration with a new coat of paint.

That said I doubt too much major change will happen until 2030 and the end of the competition agreement when RA has something like a war chest, but they'll start making moves before then.

 

[Strewthcobber]

Can a Wallaby-focussed Nucifora-style centralised, cohesion based model even coexist with a competitive, tribalistic domestic competition?

 

[Tomthumb]

Can a Wallaby-focussed Nucifora-style centralised, cohesion based model even coexist with a competitive, tribalistic domestic competition?

Ireland is proving it can and does work, no?

 

[Strewthcobber]

Ireland is proving it can and does work, no?

Is URC domestic?

 

[Tomthumb]

Is URC domestic?

The Irish teams that compete in it are

 

[Bullrush]

The Irish teams that compete in it are

So Super Rugby is an Australian domestic competition For all those who have been begging for an Aussie domestic comp - here it is!

 

[Tomthumb]

So Super Rugby is an Australian domestic competition For all those who have been begging for an Aussie domestic comp - here it is!

The exact type of comp is irrelevant, what is relevant is that all our Super teams suck and we are partnered with someone that doesn't care about us