S18 on its way

[LeinsterRebel]

A 7 year old internet post...

 

[LeinsterRebel]

No I totally disagree with this. Maybe thats what you want, not what the fans love.

Fans want to see their team measuring against the top team in the world. Sorry to tell you thats its neither Australia or South Africa.

You are entitled to disagree with it. If you think that the rugby world likes watching South Africa as much as they do the Wallabies and All Blacks then there really is no point in arguing with you.

 

[PaarlBok]

You are entitled to disagree with it. If you think that the rugby world likes watching South Africa as much as they do the Wallabies and All Blacks then there really is no point in arguing with you.

Again thats not what I think.

Try to tell you that the All Blacks is far ahead the popular team in world rugby because they are the nr1 team.

If you want to chuck Australia in with them I would love to know why you think so?

 

[PaarlBok]

A 7 year old internet post.

You get my drift. We have done this since way back when.

 

[boyo]

 

[USARugger]

Before the pair of you elope, here's some numbers to chew on...

Below are the month-to-month search volumes reported by Google for a set of high-level keywords I picked out for each nation's rugby team, all laid out in the same formatting for accuracy and consistency in results. I first did an aggregate scoring of UK+USA+Canada+France and then broke it down to each individual nation after that.

This is a fairly accurate gauge of public interest in regards to just about anything in developed Western nations, where Google holds around 70% of all search traffic.

Aggregate

All Blacks: 66%
Wallabies: 24%
Springboks: 10%

United Kingdom

All Blacks: 68%
Wallabies: 18%
Springboks: 14%

France

All Blacks: 61%
Wallabies: 22%
Springboks: 17%

United States

All Blacks: 62%
Wallabies: 31%
Springboks: 7%

Canada

All Blacks: 70%
Wallabies: 20%
Springboks: 10%

 

[Mank]

Before the pair of you elope, here's some numbers to chew on.

Below are the month-to-month search volumes reported by Google for a set of high-level keywords I picked out for each nation's rugby team, all laid out in the same formatting for accuracy and consistency in results. I first did an aggregate scoring of UK+USA+Canada+France and then broke it down to each individual nation after that.

This is a fairly accurate gauge of public interest in regards to just about anything in developed Western nations, where Google holds around 70% of all search traffic.

I don't hold any particular attachment to the view that the Springboks are more popular than the Wallabies, so I don't mind one way or the other if your results are accurate or not. I am intrigued by how you picked the terms and how you obtained the stats (emphasis mine above).

 

[Omar Comin']

There are no disadvantage playing a double round (h&a) vs each opponent in the competition and top of the log is the winner. The further any competition move away from this format the more the luck factor come into it.

The disadvantage is no big finals games. You often get a standout team and the season is decided with several rounds to go. Even when it's close, the majority of teams are out of contention a long time before the end of the competition. A format with finals keeps fans of more teams interested for longer and also ensures huge blockbusters at the end of every season.

 

[LeinsterRebel]

Again thats not what I think.

Try to tell you that the All Blacks is far ahead the popular team in world rugby because they are the nr1 team.

If you want to chuck Australia in with them I would love to know why you think so?

I mention New Zealand and Australia because this is a discussion about rugby in the Southern Hemisphere.

The All Blacks are the most popular team (or at least the team most people want to watch). That is not up for debate.

The rivalry that the rugby world is most interested in is that with Australia, another side with a loved style of play. It is most certainly not South Africa, who by comparison are regarded as a brutal ugly but effective rugby nation. You can write all you want about rivalries South Africa has, it is irrelevant. Every country has multiple rivalries. The rugby purists' rivalry is that of NZ and Aus and that is the Super Rugby Championship biggest selling point. The competition has the potential to be a global phenomenon on the back of this.

I am not from any of these nations, I am amazed it is even being debated.


That is not saying that South Africa has nothing to offer, obviously it does as a great rugby nation. The arrogance of the Union is epitomised in the comments here.

For Super Rugby to progress the SA Union needs to know its place and it is most certainly not at the head of the table. They should be grateful to have a seat at the table and should work collaboratively with the other unions for the good of the game and the good of the competition.

 

[LeinsterRebel]

The disadvantage is no big finals games. You often get a standout team and the season is decided with several rounds to go. Even when it's close, the majority of teams are out of contention a long time before the end of the competition. A format with finals keeps fans of more teams interested for longer and also ensures huge blockbusters at the end of every season.

I would like to play the Kiwi sides home and a way and have a finals series. I don't think that 8 home games a year is sufficient.

 

[Highlander35]

If the Saffas dropped out, the Kiwis could easily just expand the ITM Cup.

26 weeks H&A, 2 weeks finals series, 3 week break for June Internationals, 6 weeks off for Rugby Championship on-weeks, 5 weeks for November Tours and a further 10 weeks for off-season/preseason.

That's what I'd do anyway. Don't know how they feel.

 

[LeinsterRebel]

If the Saffas dropped out, the Kiwis could easily just expand the ITM Cup.

26 weeks H&A, 2 weeks finals series, 3 week break for June Internationals, 6 weeks off for Rugby Championship on-weeks, 5 weeks for November Tours and a further 10 weeks for off-season/preseason.

That's what I'd do anyway. Don't know how they feel.

Good point.

I think it is getting to a point where SANZAR needs to decide what it wants with Super Rugby. It's at a cross roads.

It can be the biggest rugby tournament around with a massive global audience.

The alternative is to keep balancing the priorities with domestic competitions and training camps for the test sides, and see the trend of top talent going to Europe increase.

 

[TOCC]

Your position is straight up, no sentiment, use SA for everything you can, but give as little reciprocation as possible if there is no benefit for Australia. And yes, that makes complete business sense. But if that's your position, just remember it can go both ways.

Oh god lay off the self depreciation...

It's called professionalism, if there was no financial or playing benefit for South Africa do you really think they would continue to play Australia?? Absolutely not, they wouldn't think twice about cutting Australia away and aligning with Europe as they have talked of so many times.

Like you said, it goes both ways..




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[p.Tah]

At the end of the day the SANZAR nations need each other.

Australian broadcasters have a huge appetite for live sport. They have spend $2.3billion on the NRL and AFL TV rights. Unfortunately Australian rugby only gets a fraction of that.

Currently SA is the country with the rugby money, but what SuperSports will pay is nothing compared to what Australian Free to Air TV and Foxtel will pay for NRL and AFL.

Streaming TV such as NetFlix a serious threat to the Free to Air TV and subscription TV, their only saviour is live sport. Despite what has been reported to date I believe the rights for Super Rugby and the Rugby Championship will be higher than what has been speculated.

So SA has the real money now
NZ has the brands
Australia has potential to bring on substantial additional money, but this will take a lot of work and luck, but we all need each other.

I am all for expanding Super Rugby. I want teams in Asia, South America and hopefully one day on North America.

 

[Quick Hands]

I mention New Zealand and Australia because this is a discussion about rugby in the Southern Hemisphere.

The All Blacks are the most popular team (or at least the team most people want to watch). That is not up for debate.

The rivalry that the rugby world is most interested in is that with Australia, another side with a loved style of play. It is most certainly not South Africa, who by comparison are regarded as a brutal ugly but effective rugby nation. You can write all you want about rivalries South Africa has, it is irrelevant. Every country has multiple rivalries. The rugby purists' rivalry is that of NZ and Aus and that is the Super Rugby Championship biggest selling point. The competition has the potential to be a global phenomenon on the back of this.

I am not from any of these nations, I am amazed it is even being debated.


That is not saying that South Africa has nothing to offer, obviously it does as a great rugby nation. The arrogance of the Union is epitomised in the comments here.

For Super Rugby to progress the SA Union needs to know its place and it is most certainly not at the head of the table. They should be grateful to have a seat at the table and should work collaboratively with the other unions for the good of the game and the good of the competition.

I think I need to correct the view that the purists of the rugby world view the Aus v NZ rivalry as being something special. It's special to Australia, but New Zealand rate their biggest rugby rivalry as being the South Africans. The South Africans rate their biggest rivals as NZ. I doubt anyone in the world rates their matches against Australia as being their most important.

You need to remember that for most of the last 100 years Australian rugby had very little success against either NZ or SAF. Quite often the success came when the main All Blacks squad were in South Africa and the Wallabies went over to NZ and played their second stringers (and we even lost a lot of those). It wasn't until the mid 80s that we began to compete in any meaningful way with the ABs. Even then NZ would have preferred to play SAF, but sporting boycotts intervened.

Everyone in the world rates themselves by how the go against the ABs, to suggest that anyone thinks that way about the Wallabies is wishful thinking at best and possibly dangerously deluded.

 

[Quick Hands]

If the Saffas dropped out, the Kiwis could easily just expand the ITM Cup.

26 weeks H&A, 2 weeks finals series, 3 week break for June Internationals, 6 weeks off for Rugby Championship on-weeks, 5 weeks for November Tours and a further 10 weeks for off-season/preseason.

That's what I'd do anyway. Don't know how they feel.

NZRFU have stated time and again that they aren't interested in a trans-Tasman provincial competition. They want to play against the South Africans.

 

[Highlander35]

I meant go on their own. Scrap the Premiership/Championship split and do a double round robin.

 

[LeinsterRebel]

Every country cares more about their own country's rivalries. Outside of SANZAR the game everyone is interested in, excluding their own country, is New Zealand v Australia. I am not from either country and I talk about this through experience.

In Dublin, when Autumn internationals come around, the big ticket in town is the All Blacks game. The Wallabies game is a distant 2nd. The Springboks game is a very distant 3rd. From playing the game in Britain and socialising in those circles the interest and demand is the identical.

 

[LeinsterRebel]

NZRFU have stated time and again that they aren't interested in a trans-Tasman provincial competition. They want to play against the South Africans.

Everyone wants South Africa involved. The difficultly is the South African sense of entitlement which is holding back the game. I am sure many public quotes from rugby officials are just paying lip service to that.

 

[Tip]

Hopefully this is just a stepping stone to further expansion via another team in Argentina and Japan.

By the time this TV deal is up there should be a 6 - 8 team American Competition up and running.

Ideally this would lead to a situation where we can scrap Super Rugby and replace it with a Heiniken Cup Style tournament with Home & Away fixtures until the final.
(4 x 4team pools)
Which is 11 Games of Rugby if you make the final.

Run your Domestic seasons along side it which acts as qualification for next years Heiniken cup.

(Unfortunately I don't see SANZAR going down the Super 10 & Super B route, with promotion relegation)