It isn't a case for the national interest either. The Force did what's best for the Force back then and now the Reds must do what's best for the Red's. The Australian franchises are in competition with each other so I don't get all this sharing the love.
Ruggo, spot on. I make no apologies for this assessment: it's been an embarrassing and quite ridiculous amount of time since our country won an S14/15, or a BC or a 3N. To fix that, amongst other things, we need
at least 2 S15 franchises that are like Manchester Uniteds or the Crusaders (as broad, long-terms success analogues holding and producing many world-class players than can win both local and bigger championships).
This will only happen with an essentially Darwinian system (forgive the close reference to you ;-) ) that promotes 'the best being attracted to the best' and all the virtuous circles that come from that. I would love the Reds to be one such team for, say, the next 3-5 years,
but I would rather have it as, say, both the Tahs and the Force being that, than just say one only Aus team being that, and all the rest effectively year in year out being also-rans and stragglers. In this mode of evolution each team, like a species, must fend for itself, meaning investment in the best management, coaching, player development etc, and any team that under-invests and gets the big things wrong, will justifiably die and/or be taken over by better managers (as happened in 2009 in QLD) for major repair, etc. Any de facto 'let's share the best players around' model will only lead to a kind of lowest common denominator mediocrity of outcome, with 4-5 'ordinary' teams and no big crowds and no big trophy cabinets. And, ultimately, the better, deeper player development and feedstock systems in the best teams will spawn many good young 'spare' players who'll want to join other teams to gain more experience and prominence for themselves, etc. And this is all good and will breed good outcomes at an aggregated national level faster than other other modality that shapes where the best players end up. (My advocacy of the above is one of the major reasons I have problems with the illusory, happy-sounding, 'salary cap' policy now so favoured by the ARU.)
