The ARU Laundry List

[USARugger]

The front page piece and ensuing discussion today about the most recent ARU top-up fiasco got me thinking about the ARU more than I usually like to. Specifically, it got me thinking about what other things the ARU has on it's plate right now so I decided to start running off a list. Would absolutely appreciate input on what I've included here as well as anything I may have missed. Being an American there are pieces I simply never read because I don't have the same level of access and exposure as a native Australian so I know for a fact this cannot be everything, and please if I'm wrong about something and the ARU have or are already handling it let me know. I'll try to update this list as the thread grows.

• Reestablishment of and acquiring sponsorship for a domestic third-tier competition to incubate and develop new talent as well as late-bloomers in a more competitive environment than is currently available
• Expanding/growing/developing Rugby Union to the Western Sydney suburbs as well as South Australia
• Dealing with the possible financial fall-out that could happen at the Waratahs this season as well as helping to ensure the financial stability and viability of all five Australian Super Rugby franchises (Force and Rebels in particular). The ARU should already be looking past the Lions tour if they want to be successful in this aspect in the future.
• Replacing Robbie Deans (not in the sense of "fire him now!" but in the sense of his time with the Wallabies will most likely be over after the Lions tour)
• Retaining both Link and Jake White as coaches either in one of the five Australian Super Rugby franchises or in the Wallaby setup
• Reevaluating how players are disciplined and the formation of a new paradigm in this regard, the ARU needs to develop a strategy to effectively deal with the new trend (trend is the wrong word because it's likely never going to stop) of very young, very famous, and very rich superstar players.
• Fixing the match payment/top-up system currently in place which is very clearly broken
• Come to terms with the Super Rugby franchises on an academy system so that there is a very clear and delineated path upon which promising young players are developed. The current system seems to be a bit of a mess as it is. This is not to say that the franchise academies should be done away with, not at all. But I do think a higher level of cooperation, communication, and collaboration between these academies and the national academy system would give us a greater ability to control the development of young players and integrate them into the senior Wallaby system both gradually and effectively.
• Improving the Australian 7s program and also improving how we use it. New Zealand has invested very heavily into their 7s program over the years giving them not only an outstanding 7s team (Do you really want NZ to potentially win more gold medals than Australia at the Olympics?!) but also a great pathway to develop 15s players and gradually incubate talent in a somewhat protected but still fully international test-eque environment.

 

[Inside Shoulder]

Bloody good piece on the front page.
I've said it before but the article only confirms my view that you need to go to centralised contracting: the layering of source of money just complicates the process beyond belief. i can see some complications relating to the Rebels with centralised contracting but that could be sorted out I am sure.
Whoever thought Palu, with his woeful injury history, was worth $300,000 is a fool.
He should have been on an incentive based contract: if $300,000 was his magic number they should have worked out what they wanted from him for that $300,000 - 12 tests over 2 years? - and offered him $25k per test.

 

[Sully]

The question then would be why would he sign an incentive based contract when he could go to France and earn that each year?

 

[Inside Shoulder]

The question then would be why would he sign an incentive based contract when he could go to France and earn that each year?

Money is not the only thing.
If thats his motivation then France is the place for him.
1 try, scored 5 years ago, in 46 tests doesn't seem a lot for a ball running No 8.
In 48 games Read has scored 9, Jerry Collins in 47 scored 5, kefu 10 in 60 matches.
Pocock already has 4 in the same number of games.
The discarded and disregarded Richard Brown - 4 tries in 23 games.

 

[Ash]

Then let him go.

The ARU needs to hire some number crunchers. Aging injury prone players are simply not worth, say, $300k at this stage of a World Cup cycle when they have other guys like, say, a Higgers, a Hooper and a Gill, etc who will miss out entirely.

If a guy like Palu then wants to chase the big dollars overseas over an incentive based contract, then he goes and another party can pay big dollars to carry the risk.

If the ARU put Palu and his potential replacements on incentive based contracts, it is potentially a zero sum game in terms of salary payments. If Palu leaves, then the other contracts can then be restructures to ensure the other players don't leave.

Thing is, while this all sounds perfectly logical I am willing to bet the ARU don't think like this. I bet the ARU could benefit greatly by, say, getting a bank as a sponsor, but including access to some of their quant guys instead of extra money.

 

[Inside Shoulder]

The other thing the ARU could do is to have a flexible exception to the rule that a test player has to be playing in Oz. There are good and sound reasons for this rule and i wold not jetison it entirely but it could free up some cash in the case of guys who are big game players but whose numbers just dont, at contract renewal time, stack up.

 

[suckerforred]

Great thread, particularly with reference to the article on the frount page. My thoughts...

Reestablishment of and acquiring sponsorship for a domestic third-tier competition to incubate and develop new talent as well as late-bloomers in a more competitive environment than is currently available

Certainly the third tier is needs to be a priority' This will then help with many of your further points.

Expanding/growing/developing Rugby Union to the Western Sydney suburbs as well as South Australia

Don't think we need to isolate this to specific regions. Australia wide growth is need to develop depth, strength & viability.

Dealing with the possible financial fall-out that could happen at the Waratahs this season as well as helping to ensure the financial stability and viability of all five Australian Super Rugby franchises (Force and Rebels in particular). The ARU should already be looking past the Lions tour if they want to be successful in this aspect in the future.

Long term vision has never been a strong point in sport. Apparently I am unusual when I try to point out that it needs to be 10-15 years before we make any calls on the performance of new teams such as the Rebels.

Replacing Robbie Deans (not in the sense of "fire him now!" but in the sense of his time with the Wallabies will most likely be over after the Lions tour)

Retaining both Link and Jake White as coaches either in one of the five Australian Super Rugby franchises or in the Wallaby setup

I don't think that sucession planning has been a priority for the ARU, the franchises, or many sporting organisations. It is difficult but needs to be at least attempted, particularly at a National level.

Fixing the match payment/top-up system currently in place which is very clearly broken

Maybe the unpaid intern at the ARU, who's job the top-up allocations clearly are, should read various threads & comments on this site. We seems to have a fair number of ideas and I am sure there would be the skilld out there in this forum to polish them into legally bindly contracts.

Come to terms with the Super Rugby franchises on an academy system so that there is a very clear and delineated path upon which promising young players are developed. The current system seems to be a bit of a mess as it is. This is not to say that the franchise academies should be done away with, not at all. But I do think a higher level of cooperation, communication, and collaboration between these academies and the national academy system would give us a greater ability to control the development of young players and integrate them into the senior Wallaby system both gradually and effectively.

They tried having just the one National Acadamy, but, well the fact that each franchise has gone back to their own in some form (Reds College, Rebels Rising etc). I am thinking that the ARU would be better off coordinating the activities of these 'acadamies' to ensure that they have the resources needed to make a meaningful contribution to the franschises & the National side.

 

[Inside Shoulder]

I don't think that sucession planning has been a priority for the ARU, the franchises, or many sporting organisations. It is difficult but needs to be at least attempted, particularly at a National level.

The one instance of succession planning I can readily think of in Oz rugby was from McQueen to Jones.
There are differing views on that one.

 

[Richo]

Then let him go.

The ARU needs to hire some number crunchers. Aging injury prone players are simply not worth, say, $300k at this stage of a World Cup cycle when they have other guys like, say, a Higgers, a Hooper and a Gill, etc who will miss out entirely.

If a guy like Palu then wants to chase the big dollars overseas over an incentive based contract, then he goes and another party can pay big dollars to carry the risk.

If the ARU put Palu and his potential replacements on incentive based contracts, it is potentially a zero sum game in terms of salary payments. If Palu leaves, then the other contracts can then be restructures to ensure the other players don't leave.

Thing is, while this all sounds perfectly logical I am willing to bet the ARU don't think like this. I bet the ARU could benefit greatly by, say, getting a bank as a sponsor, but including access to some of their quant guys instead of extra money.

I wrote about some of this on the Tahs 2014 thread, but basically I completely agree with you about valuations of players. Especially with a shrinking pool of money. The ARU needs to make every penny count.

Related to this, does anyone else find it odd that the ARU has decided to commit to a certain number of players receiving top-ups? Wouldn't it make a lot more sense to have a set pool of money and then contract as many players as appropriate from that pool? Then wouldn't it be easier to keep individual salaries down by spreading the pool wider?

 

[boyo]

Long term vision has never been a strong point in sport.

Or in politics.

 

[USARugger]

Certainly the third tier is needs to be a priority' This will then help with many of your further points

Absolutely. It's impossible to look at the ITM Cup and the benefits the NZRFU as a whole reaps from that competition and not immediately realize how important having a third-tier domestic competition of high quality and level of competition. It would improve the quality of rugby being played in Australia throughout franchises as well as the Wallabies. The only issue is that we must secure the financial viability of the franchises first, these competitions are just about impossible to run in the black so cash injections and sponsorships are needed.

Don't think we need to isolate this to specific regions. Australia wide growth is need to develop depth, strength & viability.

While Australia-wide growth is obviously the overarching goal here I think that with any project (especially one of a national scale) it is vitally important to have very well delineated objectives. This makes it very easy to judge the efficacy of your policies. While "Australia-wide growth" is clearly the mission statement, I do not think it is appropriate for that to be how we approach this. By naming specific regions it will be very easy to measure the level of success or failure specific policies and/or actions have brought in these areas. I only named Western Sydney and South Oz because they seem to be repeatedly mentioned as specific areas of interest by the way, being an American this is one of the aspects of the game in Australia that I am most disconnected from.

Also, as an increasingly marginalized sport it is important to realize the resources we have access to financially and otherwise will largely reflect this status in comparison to League/AFL/Whatever. I believe that because of that it is even more important to concentrate our efforts as much as practically possible in order to have the largest impact. Money still needs to be thrown at things, but it needs to be thrown on target.

Long term vision has never been a strong point in sport. Apparently I am unusual when I try to point out that it needs to be 10-15 years before we make any calls on the performance of new teams such as the Rebels.

Very true and I feel there needs to be a paradigm shift here, especially considering that the ARU was on the brink of a full fledged financial collapse before JON took over. Linking to that idea as well as your second statement (which I also agree with) I understand that Australia sort of "needed" both of the new franchises but I wish we could have spaced out their introduction considerably. It can take a very, very long time for a sports organization to become established much less before it starts producing quality players of its own. For that reason I wish there had been some delay on introducing the Rebels so that more could have been invested in cementing the Force as well as figuring out how talent would distribute across 4 franchises and all the things that come with that before adding a fifth.

I don't think that sucession planning has been a priority for the ARU, the franchises, or many sporting organisations. It is difficult but needs to be at least attempted, particularly at a National level.

If ARU don't already have the long list prepared for who they may want for the next coaching position then we are well and truly fucked as a rugby-loving public. It's one of the most important facets of what they do and if that isn't being taken deadly seriously...what is? They should have been looking into new options for the entire year leading up to the end of Deans' contract, at least.

Maybe the unpaid intern at the ARU, who's job the top-up allocations clearly are, should read various threads & comments on this site. We seems to have a fair number of ideas and I am sure there would be the skilld out there in this forum to polish them into legally bindly contracts.

Is there anyone here who as a functional and candid knowledge of how the entire top-up system works? I'm still pretty confused as to exactly how these contracts function in relationship to the franchises contracts as well as the criterion for determining who even gets an ARU top-up. The money that Palu had given to him after being nearly perpetually injured for the past two or three years makes me think that nobody in the ARU is sure on the criterion either.

They tried having just the one National Acadamy, but, well the fact that each franchise has gone back to their own in some form (Reds College, Rebels Rising etc). I am thinking that the ARU would be better off coordinating the activities of these 'acadamies' to ensure that they have the resources needed to make a meaningful contribution to the franschises & the National side.

From a geographic perspective I don't think that a single National Academy would be successful, at the very least they would need satellite campuses across Australia (I believe the franchise colleges should function more as these satellite campuses would). I just think exactly what you do, that they need to have more open collaboration with a national-level authority so they are not only working towards their own goals but Wallaby ones as well. Something like a high-performance summit once a year for the brightest stars at each respective franchise academy to get players accustomed to what the Wallaby set-up feels like and trains like before they may ever actually be included in the Wallaby set-up wouldn't be a bad idea. More and more so it seems these younger guys are less able to make that transition from Super Rugby to the Wallabies and that's not too surprising, it's an enormous step up in every aspect.