The Awful Truth About The ARU's Financial Position

[Aussie D]

RC, the only problem I can see in what you are proposing is that Bill Pulver and the bigwigs in the ARU don't think it is necessary (the feeling I get from some of their quotes) to get kids younger than 15 playing rugby.

Everyone criticises the board of the ARU but I am just as cynical about my local governing body, the Central Coast Rugby Union. There are clubs on the coast (particularly my old club the Rams) who have struggled for years (the Rams for about 2 decades with the exception of a 5 year period around the turn of the century) for player numbers and with funding. Surely any reasonable governing body would have sat down with said clubs at some point and looked through their retention and recruitment strategies and financial systems to find ways to help them to turn this situation around. The revival (for want of a better word) of rugby in this country needs to start at this level. The other problem is the development officers, the Rams had not seen the local development officer at training for any of their grades for a number of years when I was there. I met a guy who was coaching at another club a few years after I was last on the board and he said that he was friends with the local D.O and that to have him attend training you needed to contact him with proposed dates and what you wanted him to do to have him help out at training. Surely the guy being paid to work as a development officer should have been contacting the clubs (especially perennial strugglers) offering his services and even turning up unannounced to observe and offer advice where applicable (to the coaches in question after training).

How do fellow G&GR'landers feel about their district admin?

 

[RugbyFuture]

Just like their are problems and disjointedness between the state unions and ARU, the whole thing goes right down to juniors.

Speaking to someone at a club here and they were telling me they dont have or want anything to do with any of the nearby district clubs because they dont have the same goals and they're basketcases.

 

[Rugby Central]

RC, the only problem I can see in what you are proposing is that Bill Pulver and the bigwigs in the ARU don't think it is necessary (the feeling I get from some of their quotes) to get kids younger than 15 playing rugby.

How do fellow G&GR'landers feel about their district admin?

And therein lies the problem. Kids make there social networks outside of school well before they're 15. Kids aren't going to even try a sport later on unless their mates move. By which stage it's too late as the Falou's of this world are already in an NRL development program.

As for Club admin, in most cases their hands are tied. Kids can't just turn up and play. There's a heap of rules about transferring, out of region.etc.etc. If a kid wants to move to play with friends or give themselves a better chance to make reps then let them. Isn't it about getting kids playing?

I'm not particulalry familiar with the District level so I won't say too much. Although in my limited experience it looks to be a dogs breakfast of very old practices, individual empire building and trying to manage ARU, State and school programs overlapping the district competitions. This is why I said don't repair it.....replace it.

Keeping with the theme of this thread, there are so many different, overlapping and duplicated administrative costs that people, clubs and Administrations are paying more than they need to. Streamline the strategy rather than tack on extras and the ARU might find there's more than enough money to pay for development of the game.

 

[Quick Hands]

So true RC. The pathway is like spaghetti. Junior gold cup is just another layer. Its been said on the Declining Sydney Juniors thread how this should have been run out through district clubs with support and resources from the ARU, not an ARU micro-managed programme.

Competing school associations, village clubs, district rep teams, JGC, SJRU, CJRU, NSWJRU, district academies and there's probably a couple I've left out. It just never ends.

 

[suckerforred]

I'm not particulalry familiar with the District level so I won't say too much. Although in my limited experience it looks to be a dogs breakfast of very old practices, individual empire building and trying to manage ARU, State and school programs overlapping the district competitions. This is why I said don't repair it...replace it.
.

This......

 

[suckerforred]

Should I rasie the fact that QANTAS as naming rights sponsor looks on shaky ground.......

 

[Lindommer]

Lucky for Qantas they're ON the ground, wouldn't want them to have their current problems while they're up in the air.

 

[suckerforred]

Just thinking that one of the first things to go in the QANTAS cost saving measures will be sponsorship. Hope not because I think they are a good fit culturally but if QANTAS can't afford to maintain the support......

 

[Quick Hands]

At least we can be thankful that Alan Joyce isn't the CEO of the ARU. Helped send Ansett broke and now doing the same at Qantas.

 

[RugbyFuture]

we could blame other sports for it then

 

[Westie]

There are solutions. But unfortunately it is the will to persue them. The system in Australia is a write-off. It doesn't need tinkering, it doesn't need repairs. It needs to be thrown away and a new one built.

I'm not talking about artificially destroying Clubs, relocation of players or even some grand poo-bah centralised administration. Centralised Startegy, Yes, administration, no. It requires a strategy that looks at the U6 kid and says how do I get you to the Wallabies in the most direct route possible. No siphoning off for academies, no extra competitions that create separate streams, and sure as shit, no separation based on what school you go to.

Clubs WILL fail, others WILL grow. Some players will walk away from the game while many more will join up. But until there's a strategy in place where Bill can look that 5 year old in the eye and say, "I know exactly how to make you a Wallaby" we are pissing in the wind.

As you said QH, Rugby Union doesn't have the stomach to face the necessary pain and until it does, the potential will never be realised.

Dude. They don't want the bogans to play.

 

[wamberal]

Just thinking that one of the first things to go in the QANTAS cost saving measures will be sponsorship. Hope not because I think they are a good fit culturally but if QANTAS can't afford to maintain the support..

Sponsorships are important as part of the whole marketing effort. If Qantas cuts back on marketing they would be totally stupid. Marketing is essential to their survival.

 

[boyo]

Are the management of Qantas smart enough to realise that?

 

[Bruce Ross]

Are the management of Qantas smart enough to realise that?

Suggested removal of unnecessary verbiage.

And the answer is: No! Demonstrably they're as dumb as dog shit.
.

 

[TOCC]

Early indications are that QANTAS will maintain the marketing budget, however at $300million/annum you'd be silly to think they won't try and "improve efficiency".

 

[Crashy]

Qantas cancelled their sponsorship of the Socceroos.

 

[wamberal]

Qantas cancelled their sponsorship of the Socceroos.

Sponsorships come and sponsorships go. However, Qantas gets very good value out of the Wallabies, lots of exposure, and I would be certain that their market research tells them that a significant proportion of their business class travellers are rugby supporters.

The Socceroos play three or four times a year (except in a World Cup of course) in widely dispersed time zones, and their viewing and supporting demographic is errrr different to that of the Wobbs.

 

[Braveheart81]

QANTAS are locked in until the end of 2015. You'd assume that the deal would remain in place.

This year and particularly the 2015 RWC are going to be so crucial for Australian rugby.

If the Wallabies can continue with their late 2013 improvement and really challenge NZ over the next two years, we could be in a much better position to achieve a good sponsorship deal for 2016 onwards.

If the team does poorly then watch out!

 

[suckerforred]

Understand that QANTAS will class sponsorship as marketing and that they would be mad to decrease spending on marketing.

My thoughts are that at the end of the current arrangement, which covers RWC2015 as Braveheart pointed out, I get the feeling that QANTAS will be looking for move 'value' from every dollar they spend. Assuming that they will have dollars left to spend.....

This, from my point of view, will either mean wanting more from the ARU for the same $$$$ or wanting to spend less $$$ for the same 'marketing' in return. I don't know how much space there is the Wallabies time line for extra sponsor duties and we certainly know that the ARU can't afford to take a hit in the Sponsorship department.

Also the late announcment of the Asteron Life involvement with the Super Rugby conference does not fill me with a great deal of confidence in the current sponsorship management of the ARU. Yes I know that there are any number of reasons that this may have been delayed and that not all of them would have been the problem/fault of the ARU or mean that the dollars received by the ARU would have been less.

It is just an observation that the ARU is in some dire straights and so is the major naming rights sponsor of the Wallabies.

 

[RugbyFuture]

holden sponsored the NRL right before they shut down everything, so you never know.

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