Where to for Super Rugby?

[brokendown]

the WA police union have their own agenda-they are just stirring the pot

 

[Inside Shoulder]

He had the balls to get a $1.6 billion TV deal, knowing he would have to lose his own job over it because of Uncle Rupe.

But they got the record deal.

It's not the popular thing to say, but it turns out that recently departed NRL CEO Dave Smith may have in fact done a great job with the rights.​

He did a record free-to-air deal with the Nine Network in full knowledge that that would put him even further in the sights of News Corp. Their executive team were left red-faced when Rupert Murdoch lobbed into town to the news that Nine had sealed the rights.​

The result was some serious Smith bashing and a refusal to deal with him. Smith left – or was made to leave – before the deal was complete, but his decision to do things his own way brought the game a great deal.​

He knew his head would be lopped off for daring to buck convention, but he wasn't in the job to make friends. He departed without tears being shed, but he left the game in greater financial form than when he joined in 2013.​

http://www.smh.com.au/rugby-league/...hildren-in-refugee-camps-20151128-glah4d.html​

I must have been reading Rupert' papers to gain the impression I did.

 

[I like to watch]

^^^^Nope, bear in mind, that was a Danny Weidler article, so balance is not even a consideration......
Not saying it was warranted,but Smith was copping it from all quarters for most of his time there.
He had to appoint Todd Greenberg in a new role, to shutdown widespread complaints about his lack of knowledge of the game.

 

[kiap]

He had to appoint Todd Greenberg in a new role, to shutdown widespread complaints about his lack of knowledge of the game.

Nah.

So-called "Head of Football" Greenberg barely made a jot of difference and continued in that vein as CEO.

It was always a fight about NRL clubs wanting more cash diverted their way, not gaffes about "Benji" Barba.

$50m surplus? - We'll be having that, thanks. Nothing new there.

The thing about Smith's deal with Channel Nein was that Foxtel ended up subsidising the game on free-to-air and it put NRL on the same sort of footing as AFL for the first time since the Super League war.

Nailed it. But a bloke can only do that trick once. He had to go. And for that reason Smith is not an option for rugby union either.

 

[Saxter]

This is a long post so instead of taking up real estate here I've just posted it as a page on my blog. It's my proposal for a NEW format for Super Rugby rather than cutting a team.

Summary.
3 x confs. 6 in each. AFRICA | AU + JAPAN | NZ + ARG
Home & Away + 1 x Bye
Top 2 from each Conf into Finals
Top 2 teams (by points on leaderboard) Bye first week of Finals
Semis
Final

Reasoning.
A season of intense local derbies, home & away, vying for 2 x finals spots. Then come finals the excitement of the International flavour. Keeping Africa in their own timezone removes 3am matches.

You can see more on my thoughts and Pros & Cons by clicking here.

Thoughts?

 

[half]

^^^^

Why Aust & Japan and not Aust & NZ

 

[Saxter]

^^^^

Why Aust & Japan and not Aust & NZ

Just due to the local derbies aspect and in an attempt to keep the structure as simple as possible

 

[I like to watch]

Nah.

So-called "Head of Football" Greenberg barely made a jot of difference and continued in that vein as CEO.

It was always a fight about NRL clubs wanting more cash diverted their way, not gaffes about "Benji" Barba.

$50m surplus? - We'll be having that, thanks. Nothing new there.

The thing about Smith's deal with Channel Nein was that Foxtel ended up subsidising the game on free-to-air and it put NRL on the same sort of footing as AFL for the first time since the Super League war.

Nailed it. But a bloke can only do that trick once. He had to go. And for that reason Smith is not an option for rugby union either.

Greenbergs effectiveness in either role is irrelevant, he was appointed only a couple of months after Smith started,well before media negotiations had commenced.
Square peg, in a round hole.
Smith was a poor hire, because he had no understanding of the culture of the game, he thought it was no different to selling widgets.Everything was simply about increasing margins.
Which to some degree Billy P should plead guilty to.

 

[kiap]

Meh. That's why he was hired. Dogs stalwart Greenberg understood all about the culture of the game. It made no impact.

 

[Joe King]

This is a long post so instead of taking up real estate here I've just posted it as a page on my blog. It's my proposal for a NEW format for Super Rugby rather than cutting a team.

Summary.
3 x confs. 6 in each. AFRICA | AU + JAPAN | NZ + ARG
Home & Away + 1 x Bye
Top 2 from each Conf into Finals
Top 2 teams (by points on leaderboard) Bye first week of Finals
Semis
Final

Reasoning.
A season of intense local derbies, home & away, vying for 2 x finals spots. Then come finals the excitement of the International flavour. Keeping Africa in their own timezone removes 3am matches.

You can see more on my thoughts and Pros & Cons by clicking here.

Thoughts?

Perfect!

Would be a shorter season, but that would be compensated by a significant decrease in travelling costs, much higher fan engagement overall with pure local derbies and games on at optimum times. But still not sure if the broadcasters would allow a reduction in content before the current agreement is up.

Adding to the several pros on your blog, another plus is that it will be finished before the June internationals, and thus no break in the competition.

I liked your point about this Super Rugby suggestion being different to the Curry Cup and Mitre 10 Cup in that it has the international component, and the domestic comps don't have the 30 best test players like Super Rugby does, but it's still a different concept to the original Super Rugby concept and the NZRU especially would need some convincing. However, it can't be denied that (based on viewing numbers) the majority of fans in NZ are more interested in the local derbies too (even if some fans would prefer less of them). And money talks. Even though the NZ players often say they feel like the intensity of the local derby is at a test level, and would prefer less of them, I actually think it's good for the AB's.

Overall, it is my preferred model. It would solve the domestic problems in Oz and re-engage fans, and Super Rugby would receive a new lease of life.

There would be no need to cut a team as all conferences would be vibrant and competitive, and only the best would play the best in the finals. Excitement would be at fever pitch.

 

[WorkingClassRugger]

Perfect!

Would be a shorter season, but that would be compensated by a significant decrease in travelling costs, much higher fan engagement overall with pure local derbies and games on at optimum times. But still not sure if the broadcasters would allow a reduction in content before the current agreement is up.

Adding to the several pros on your blog, another plus is that it will be finished before the June internationals, and thus no break in the competition.

I liked your point about this Super Rugby suggestion being different to the Curry Cup and Mitre 10 Cup in that it has the international component, and the domestic comps don't have the 30 best test players like Super Rugby does, but it's still a different concept to the original Super Rugby concept and the NZRU especially would need some convincing. However, it can't be denied that (based on viewing numbers) the majority of fans in NZ are more interested in the local derbies too (even if some fans would prefer less of them). And money talks. Even though the NZ players often say they feel like the intensity of the local derby is at a test level, and would prefer less of them, I actually think it's good for the AB's.

Overall, it is my preferred model. It would solve the domestic problems in Oz and re-engage fans, and Super Rugby would receive a new lease of life.

There would be no need to cut a team as all conferences would be vibrant and competitive, and only the best would play the best in the finals. Excitement would be at fever pitch.

I think they might be more open to a cut in content if it ensures higher overall ratings.

This isn't too far from S12 in that it would be a 11week regular season. Plus three weeks of finals. The key would be in the marketing of the concept. Look to the likes of the BBL and the 7s circuit for guidance on that front.

 

[RedsHappy]

Gee, if only the real answer to Aus's pro rugby problems was one of comp type and comp structure.

Like more 'macro change' alternatives, and less conferences, more teams in less conferences, and more local derbies, and no Japan, and more 'play everyone once' and better domestic comps and FTA access, and streaming deals, and more and better club linkages and..................

None, not one, of these structural shuffle-rounds and macro readjustments and comp redesigns concepts and 'blame the comp structure blame games' deals adequately (or even at all) in any substantive manner with the fundamental problems we have in Australian pro rugby today, namely:

- our base, core rugby skills are not good enough​

​

- our base skills have deteriorated, let alone remained stable​

​

- consequently, our error rates in-game are far too high​

​

- as a result we can't adopt or apply more 'advanced' game strategies and cohesive attacking patterns based on multi-phase unstructured ensemble play as we don't have the skills to execute them well enough​

​

- our best competitors have grown and improved their base skills whilst adding further enhanced skills and even lower error rates on top and can sustain the foregoing for a whole game​

​

- our common S&C standards are highly questionable and too few of our pro teams can sustain high enough playing standards for 80 minutes​

​

- our elite rugby coaching lacks any depth and is manifestly generally of too low a grade​

​

- the above deficiencies reflect 2017's pro player stocks but these stocks reflect massive deficiencies in Australia's all-of-system rugby player development and rugby coaching development models (such as they are).​

​

These are the problems that reflect themselves in appalling Super w-l rates and 'consistent inconsistency' displayed in almost all our Super teams performances.

Australian fans generally pay seat money to see their teams win often at home. The income from our pro rugby dries up when that fails to occur, or occur often enough.

(We seem in some quarters to be kidding ourselves that our 2017 Super competitive performances and such like arise from the number 18 and if it was say 16 or 15 or some reduced number and 'with more local derbies' we'd be in a so much better space. But we wouldn't really, not in fundamental terms relating to the standard of rugby we could sustain.)

Cue today's Super rugby Foxtel viewership and home crowd numbers. They are seriously crisis-level and unambiguously unsustainable.

No amount of comp redesigns and such like on their own will even barely improve the above core problems - such redesigns will just 'kick the can down the road' for a year or two only for it to rear its very ugly hard again and with even more severe negative consequences for the code as a whole and for those re-jigged comp structures.

The central question, the most germane of all challenges, for Australian rugby is how to proceed to address and fix the above core skills and coaching -based problems because if they remain as they are - in whatever competitive guise - pro rugby in Australia will experience 'the chronicle of a death foretold' in that we can reliably, with virtual certainty, predict today what will unfold in the immediate future.

 

[wamberal]

Redesigning the current Soup is probably essential, at least some money will keep rolling in, for a while.


However, this is just a holding pattern while hard decisions are made. Otherwise we will just run out of fuel.

 

[Joe King]

Gee, if only the real answer to Aus's pro rugby problems was one of comp type and comp structure.[/B]

Like more 'macro change' alternatives, and less conferences, more teams in less conferences, and more local derbies, and no Japan, and more 'play everyone once' and better domestic comps and FTA access, and streaming deals, and more and better club linkages and......

None, not one, of these structural shuffle-rounds and macro readjustments and comp redesigns concepts and 'blame the comp structure blame games' deals adequately (or even at all) in any substantive manner with the fundamental problems we have in Australian pro rugby today, namely:

- our base, core rugby skills are not good enough​

​

- our base skills have deteriorated, let alone remained stable​

​

- consequently, our error rates in-game are far too high​

​

- as a result we can't adopt or apply more 'advanced' game strategies and cohesive attacking patterns based on multi-phase unstructured ensemble play as we don't have the skills to execute them well enough​

​

- our best competitors have grown and improved their base skills whilst adding further enhanced skills and even lower error rates on top and can sustain the foregoing for a whole game​

​

- our common S&C standards are highly questionable and too few of our pro teams can sustain high enough playing standards for 80 minutes​

​

- our elite rugby coaching lacks any depth and is manifestly generally of too low a grade​

​

- the above deficiencies reflect 2017's pro player stocks but these stocks reflect massive deficiencies in Australia's all-of-system rugby player development and rugby coaching development models (such as they are).​

​

These are the problems that reflect themselves in appalling Super w-l rates and 'consistent inconsistency' displayed in almost all our Super teams performances.

Australian fans generally pay seat money to see their teams win often at home. The income from our pro rugby dries up when that fails to occur, or occur often enough.

(We seem in some quarters to be kidding ourselves that our 2017 Super competitive performances and such like arise from the number 18 and if it was say 16 or 15 or some reduced number and 'with more local derbies' we'd be in a so much better space. But we wouldn't really, not in fundamental terms relating to the standard of rugby we could sustain.)

Cue today's Super rugby Foxtel viewership and home crowd numbers. They are seriously crisis-level and unambiguously unsustainable.

No amount of comp redesigns and such like on their own will even barely improve the above core problems - such redesigns will just 'kick the can down the road' for a year or two only for it to rear its very ugly hard again and with even more severe negative consequences for the code as a whole and for those re-jigged comp structures.

The central question, the most germane of all challenges, for Australian rugby is how to proceed to address and fix the above core skills and coaching -based problems because if they remain as they are - in whatever competitive guise - pro rugby in Australia will experience 'the chronicle of a death foretold' in that we can reliably, with virtual certainty, predict today what will unfold in the immediate future.

Yes, of course. I may have given the wrong impression there. Saxter's Super Rugby suggestion won't fix the core skills and coaching problems that you highlight. They are a topic of real importance and probably deserve their own thread.

 

[RedsHappy]

Yes, of course. I may have given the wrong impression there. Saxter's Super Rugby suggestion won't fix the core skills and coaching problems that you highlight. They are a topic of real importance and probably deserve their own thread.

Joe, partly my point with the post above is that the issues of our base skills, our coaching capability and overall quality, player developmental systems etc cannot be disentangled from a useful debate about 'Where to for Super rugby?'

Whatever we do with our place in Super Rugby, and/or whatever new pro comp structures emerge, even if we leave Super entirely, we will IMO be left with the peak issues and challenges I raised above.

In fact I would argue this: we need to recraft our position in Super Rugby, or recraft even more deeply our pro rugby comp structure as a whole, all in a manner wholly led by, not predominating over, the need to fix our base game capabilities and our base of decent-enough rugby coaching.

We need a radical new holistic Australian pro rugby system and MO that most critically of all marshals all the key resources essential to fixing the core of our pro playing layer.

And if the answer is: 'after due analysis we have confirmed the resources needed in people, skills and $ terms for a medium-term strategy to fix our base pro rugby quality and unfortunately the available and affordable level of those resources means we can only manage this curative program for (say) 180 players max. in total' then we should reduce our pro comp participation level to solely that number of players and no more.

Today, our core problem is, brutally, that we have more pro players than we have a demonstrated capability to advance them, overall, to adequate and competitive levels of pro comp performance; that is the proven reality.

IMO this is how we need to think radically about the issues we really do face vs a forlorn hope that the solutions lie in FTA, comp structure alterations and so on.

Forget the grand visions and 'Australian rugby must have X Super teams' and 'we have to have a national game' and all that as it won't mean a hill of beans if the general standard of the teams and players designed to fit such an irrelevant-to-quality-of-displayed-product model is so ordinary or uncompetitive that the game goes broke chasing the wrong dream.

 

[dru]

I still believe we need a National footprint. This is right now topical.

Pathways are an historical and current issue. Fixing it might help the RWC after the next one. But without an appropriate tier below the WBs we go nowhere.

They are complimentary not competing issues.

 

[Joe King]

This is a long post so instead of taking up real estate here I've just posted it as a page on my blog. It's my proposal for a NEW format for Super Rugby rather than cutting a team.

Summary.
3 x confs. 6 in each. AFRICA | AU + JAPAN | NZ + ARG
Home & Away + 1 x Bye
Top 2 from each Conf into Finals
Top 2 teams (by points on leaderboard) Bye first week of Finals
Semis
Final

Reasoning.
A season of intense local derbies, home & away, vying for 2 x finals spots. Then come finals the excitement of the International flavour. Keeping Africa in their own timezone removes 3am matches.

You can see more on my thoughts and Pros & Cons by clicking here.

Thoughts?

Another thought, if they used a structure like this from 2020 when the inbound tests move to July, they could play a pre-season knock-out comp to increase the international component to help compensate for that.

 

[Joe King]

Joe, partly my point with the post above is that the issues of our base skills, our coaching capability and overall quality, player developmental systems etc cannot be disentangled from a useful debate about 'Where to for Super rugby?'

Whatever we do with our place in Super Rugby, and/or whatever new pro comp structures emerge, even if we leave Super entirely, we will IMO be left with the peak issues and challenges I raised above.

In fact I would argue this: we need to recraft our position in Super Rugby, or recraft even more deeply our pro rugby comp structure as a whole, all in a manner wholly led by, not predominating over, the need to fix our base game capabilities and our base of decent-enough rugby coaching.

We need a radical new holistic Australian pro rugby system and MO that most critically of all marshals all the key resources essential to fixing the core of our pro playing layer.

And if the answer is: 'after due analysis we have confirmed the resources needed in people, skills and $ terms for a medium-term strategy to fix our base pro rugby quality and unfortunately the available and affordable level of those resources means we can only manage this curative program for (say) 180 players max. in total' then we should reduce our pro comp participation level to solely that number of players and no more.

Today, our core problem is, brutally, that we have more pro players than we have a demonstrated capability to advance them, overall, to adequate and competitive levels of pro comp performance; that is the proven reality.

IMO this is how we need to think radically about the issues we really do face vs a forlorn hope that the solutions lie in FTA, comp structure alterations and so on.

Forget the grand visions and 'Australian rugby must have X Super teams' and 'we have to have a national game' and all that as it won't mean a hill of beans if the general standard of the teams and players designed to fit such an irrelevant-to-quality-of-displayed-product model is so ordinary or uncompetitive that the game goes broke chasing the wrong dream.

Yep, no worries. I get where you are coming from. And it's a fair point to make

 

[wamberal]

I still believe we need a National footprint. This is right now topical.

Pathways are an historical and current issue. Fixing it might help the RWC after the next one. But without an appropriate tier below the WBs we go nowhere.

They are complimentary not competing issues.

I have said it before, and I will say it again. There is absolutely no point in strategising for an impossible scenario.


If by "footprint" you mean some level of fully professional competition which is genuinely nationally based, I would class that as an impossibility.


Having an amateur involvement is obviously a different ball of wax. But that depends on the grassroots support.

Grassroots support has to exist before anything else. All our competitors grew from the ground up. Yes, they had a lot of advantages compared to us, but nevertheless their grassroots came before the success, not as a result of it (although of course success is great in terms of growing the grassroots. Fame, money, exposure, all these things lead to greater participation).


If we do not have a "national footprint" by now, we never will.

 

[dru]

We do currently have a national footprint Wam. Unfortunately the ARU is trying to destroy it.