Where to for Super Rugby?

[Teh Other Dave]

Like everyone on this forum, my views on the direction of Super Rugby relies heavily on historical context. I grew up going to Ballymore to watch the Super 8 and Super 10 matches. The Reds did quite well in those competitons in the 1990s, partly because of the outstanding talent in those squads (Jason Little had to leave in order to get a game!), but also because Queensland seemed to really embrace those competitions. They were a chance to play against the best teams of NZ, the Pacific, and later SA.

Super 12 was a week-in, week-out version of this. By extension, I see the best aspect of Super Rugby to be the challenge it presents teams - touring, playing against the differeing but brutal styles of SA and NZ rugby.

I guess it's why I'm one of those strange creatures that don't get quite as excited about local derbies. Don't get me wrong, there is immense satisfaction in seeing Qld down NSW. But I get even more out of seeing away wins in NZ and SA. Are there any tougher road trips in world sport?

 

[No4918]

When do we hear results of the meeting?

Please let it be soon.

 

[TOCC]

Saturday morning


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

 

[TOCC]

Less content means less money:

Fox Sports chief executive Patrick Delany declined to comment on the broadcasters’ position in relation to a possible reduction of the five Australian franchises.

However, observers believe Fox Sports would have a significant issue if any of the Australian teams were jettisoned during the remaining three-year term of the current broadcast deal. However, it is understood the pay-TV sports network would view a reduction as a permanent diminution in the long-term value of the media right. Fewer Australian teams would mean fewer local derbies, which are a major driver of ratings.

 

[RedsHappy]

This is the story of how an obsession with 'volume', 'revenue' and 'big national network' at the expense of determining how to ensure the sporting product actually offered to fans, sponsors viewers was attractive and sustainable is ultimately suicidal:

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/rugby-union/melbourne-rebels-an-a-opportunity-lost-20170309-guuirz.html?promote_channel=edmail&mbnr=MTI5NTM3NDU&eid=email:nnn-13omn598-ret_newsl-membereng:nnn-04/11/2013-rugby_heaven-dom-sport-nnn-btimes-u&campaign_code=13ISP000&et_bid=29069259&name=10020_bt_rugbyheaven&instance=2017-03-09--20-29--UTC

Moreover, it's the story of how a national governing body principally motivated by scale and 'prestige' (and, related, heightened remuneration for its senior officers) could not assemble the parallel competence necessary to develop the very code output quality essential to its long-term welfare.

What was once sowed is now being reaped.

 

[Twoilms]

Nothing new but a pretty good summation of how f'ed the game is.

I really don't understand the people who defend the ARU and rugby management in general. Easily, the worst run sport in the Country.

 

[Scoey]

My apologies if this has been covered elsewhere (I haven't read this thread) but I read this morning that the SANZAAR meeting to discuss the future of Super Rugby will be held over two days in London.

Is there a logical reason that I'm missing that would require the meeting to be held there? It just seems odd to me that organisations based in NZ, AUS, SA and ARG with their HQ in Sydney (I think) would choose to meet in London to discuss how they might streamline and improve their primary product.

 

[RedsHappy]

Nothing new but a pretty good summation of how f'ed the game is.

I really don't understand the people who defend the ARU and rugby management in general. Easily, the worst run sport in the Country.

Totally.

Twolims you make a very good point in that the remarkable deference/over-respect/excuse-making/etc to/for the elite Australian rugby bodies that we find here (until very recently) and throughout many tracts of Australian rugby is a significant part of the problem as a whole, namely chronically poor governance and strategic management that is endemic not peripheral.

Broadly, Australian rugby fans and most commentators typically considered that demanding high performance and properly accountable outcomes from our professional governance systems as somehow 'disloyal' and 'not fair' and 'unsympathetic' to the 'good rugby men' sitting above us all. These 'good rugby men' were 'always doing their best' within our 'niche code'.

The elite ARU and State RU groups relied upon this - observe the viciousness that for example JO'N used to apply publicly and through his network towards anyone that dared to doubt his management skills, and he usually 'won' - to protect and promote their mediocrity and intellectual laziness and to ensure no one was ever personally held accountable for outcomes, and that the excuses factory would always do its job to explain away failure and the creeping degradation of the code here.

Our deference and lack of vocal protest allowed this insular and self-protective system to relentlessly self-propagate.

Only now - when it's way too late and even the dumbest commentators can see the outline of the disaster ahead - do we see some form of concern and demand for change coming from a few isolated sources barking away at the margins.

For those of us that love the code but hate the way it's been run here for well over a decade, we have little but a bitter sadness.

 

[cyclopath]

My apologies if this has been covered elsewhere (I haven't read this thread) but I read this morning that the SANZAAR meeting to discuss the future of Super Rugby will be held over two days in London.

Is there a logical reason that I'm missing that would require the meeting to be held there? It just seems odd to me that organisations based in NZ, AUS, SA and ARG with their HQ in Sydney (I think) would choose to meet in London to discuss how they might streamline and improve their primary product.

Proximity to good red and white burgundy, Bordeaux and some lovely Rose. Maybe some good dessert wines too.

 

[No4918]

My apologies if this has been covered elsewhere (I haven't read this thread) but I read this morning that the SANZAAR meeting to discuss the future of Super Rugby will be held over two days in London.

Is there a logical reason that I'm missing that would require the meeting to be held there? It just seems odd to me that organisations based in NZ, AUS, SA and ARG with their HQ in Sydney (I think) would choose to meet in London to discuss how they might streamline and improve their primary product.

Firstly, good idea not reading the thread. Same some heartache and wait for the meeting results.

And yes, I had wondered about the meeting location as well. Considered there may have been meetings or other negotiations with World Rugby that could justify it. Haven't discovered yet if this is the case but may be since talk of changing the June tests to outside super rugby window has come up. Do hope it isn't just for the wine as Cyclo said.

 

[Scoey]

I've rationalised it in the same way too No4918.
But Cyclo has nailed my fear. It doesn't bode well if the meeting has been used as an excuse for a junket.

 

[Strewthcobber]

My apologies if this has been covered elsewhere (I haven't read this thread) but I read this morning that the SANZAAR meeting to discuss the future of Super Rugby will be held over two days in London.

Is there a logical reason that I'm missing that would require the meeting to be held there? It just seems odd to me that organisations based in NZ, AUS, SA and ARG with their HQ in Sydney (I think) would choose to meet in London to discuss how they might streamline and improve their primary product.

All of the World Rugby members are meeting in London at the moment to agree on the post-2019 international landsacpe.

Presumably the SANZAAR meetings have been arranged in the same location to fit in with these.

World Rugby executives meeting in Europe this week are understood to have all but reached agreement that from 2020, the June international window will be shifted to July.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/rugby/news/article.cfm?c_id=80&objectid=11814662

 

[Scoey]

Cheers! Good to know. I might withdraw from this thread now and wait until the outcome of the meeting is known.

 

[Twoilms]

Proximity to good red and white burgundy, Bordeaux and some lovely Rose. Maybe some good dessert wines too.

European wines are vastly overrated.

 

[wamberal]

It is really easy to criticise from a position of relative ignorance. None of us knows very much about the politics and financial realities.


Neither does Georgina, by the way. But she has to produce some clickbait. And a bit of ARU-bashing is the way to go, apparently.


The underlying problem is the bloody game itself. League has survived all sorts of ructions, mismanagement, scandals, coups, internecine rivalries. And yet it has survived and prospered. That is because the game itself has always been relatively popular as entertainment.


Our sport, over the 60+ years that I have been following it, playing it, and grieving for it, has been popular for about 15 years of that time, in total.


There's the problem, right there.

 

[TOCC]

While all other unions are sending their Chairmans to this Chairmans meetings, the ARU shave signalled their intent by leaving ARU Chairman Cameron Clyne at home and sending Deputy Chairman Brett Robinson instead.

 

[wamberal]

While all other unions are sending their Chairmans to this Chairmans meetings, the ARU shave signalled their intent by leaving ARU Chairman Cameron Clyne at home and sending Deputy Chairman Brett Robinson instead.

What intent are they signalling?

 

[NTT]

Talking to people in the know here in Perth, the problem the franchises have around profitibility is the number of home games they have. 7 home games is a guaranteed loss for the franchises as it just isn't enough games to sell tickets for. The commonly agreed to number across all of the Perth football codes is that you need at least 10 home games to turn a profit with an average attendance of 15 000. This is where the structure of the competition hurts the ARU the most and the franchises the most. This is what is driving the need for a home and away conference set up for Australia.
This was all thrust upon the ARU by our partners in SANZAAR. The increased share of tv revenue was supposed to be the trade off to keep our franchises afloat but has fallen short of what is required and compounded by an unpopular competition format.
There is also no question that the ARU needed to bite the bullet and set up our pathways to keep up with the top nations on the field. The trouble is most of the top nations can out spend us on development and grassroots. The ARU knows this and is doing what it can to streamline the professional arm of rugby in Australia to rectify the situation. More home games for our franchises to sell tickets for is one step they are trying to address at this meeting as well as the restructure of how our franchises operate. Not all of our franchises have bought into restructuring to a centralized model of administration which, although the desire for autonomy is understandable, it is also holding up the process of cost cutting to allow extra money for grassroots.
The ARU is trying its best to implement measures to stabilize its finances but is facing internal and external opposition to get the changes through. It is a very tough task that takes some time to get done and is not helped by the "old rusty fences as Cannon puts it". We can sit back and take pot shots at the ARU all we want but we must at least acknowledge and understand the situation they are in. They govern for all, not just some.

 

[Strewthcobber]

While all other unions are sending their Chairmans to this Chairmans meetings, the ARU shave signalled their intent by leaving ARU Chairman Cameron Clyne at home and sending Deputy Chairman Brett Robinson instead.

It's a meeting of the World Rugby Council. Robinson and Pulver are our delegates to the Council.

Robinson's even a member of the executive of the WRC

http://www.worldrugby.org/organisation/structure/council?lang=en

 

[dru]

Nothing new but a pretty good summation of how f'ed the game is.

I really don't understand the people who defend the ARU and rugby management in general. Easily, the worst run sport in the Country.

For goodness sake, that is evidence of ARU problems?

"It's about your local rugby clubhouse, whose door you probably haven't darkened in a while but boy, weren't you dismayed when you woke up and read it's volunteer board was trying to sell the joint to finance a future."

Sounds like Eastwood perhaps? But portrays as evidence of ARU fail.

"Just how much money is the ARU ploughing into clubs with falling attendances and members? Try an $8 million last year."

So it would be a good thing to support suburban clubs but not Force or Brumbies? Or the Reds? Hang on though, Eastwood isn't suburban, it's part of a SS where the NSWRU funding is skewed towards and AWAY from subbies rugby.

And for me the kicker:
"AS outspoken club rugby identity Brett Papworth is fond of saying, there are too many good causes in Australian rugby and nowhere near enough money to fund them all."

So the Eastwood identity and general all round shite besmercher Papworth is quoted as saint.

Yes, you are right twoilms, this article does indeed say a lot about what is wrong with Rugby in Aus. And many of us will see this starting as a navel gazing Sydney-centric rugby view point hell-bent on creating problems for rugby outside of NSW.

No wonder fans of the Force have a chip on their shoulder.