That's ridiculous. All this provincial parochialism recently has been complete nonsense. As long as there are enough players in Australia to support 5 Super Rugby teams, then there is a place for those 5 Rugby teams. This is not State of Origin, but playing for a professional team. Yes, it would be desirable to have further players being injected from Victoria, WA and even SA but ultimately there is one large pool which all the teams draw upon.
I respectfully disagree. If we take a very basic premise that what the ARU is trying to do is spread the game of rugby, then we should expect more player participation and an expansion of club rugby, not only in player numbers but in quality. An expanded pool of players should provide at the very least, the basis of a representative/professional team and with time, be able to stand on its own two feet in terms of player development.
Now, how many local products are on offer in these 'growth' areas of the ACT and WA, bearing in mind the ACT has had a "super" team since 1996, WA since 2006 ? (Let's ignore Victoria for a moment, they've just started so let's give the VRU the benefit of the doubt).
I will give the ACT some leeway in that their population is reasonably small and at least some players have come through the ranks, though nowhere near enough to sustain a local rep side. However Perth has what, 1.5m compared to about 2 in the BrisVegas connurbation? What are the returns from this generous investment from the ARU? What has been the cost per capita?
Let's also consider the fact that Qld is a MUNGO state and rugby is a minority sport. By any comparble factors vis a vis the underdog minority sport vs entrenched majority sport (as with WA with aerial ping pong), Qld (and NSW for that matter) has fared significantly better in terms of not only general player participation but producing a sufficient quantity of professional players. Indeeed their ranks have been continually decimated by the expansion.
So until this siuation has changed, the experiments conducted by the ARU can only ever be considered failures and expensive ones at that.
