Where to for Super Rugby?

[cyclopath]

IMHO the biggest issue with Australian Super teams is the skill deficit in basic skill execution in game. We have players, superstars who cannot execute the basic skills for their positions. The NRC does F^%$^% all to address that, it is not a development competition, it simply does not have a long enough season and the squads are not assembled long enough to develop any real combination. The only thing it is good at is burning the money supporting it (even if it is cost neutral for RA) and being part of the idea that more product is a good outcome with no regard to the quality.

Until the development pathways are fixed the performance issues of the Australian Professional sides will not be addressed. And by development I do not mean "identifying" potential talent at 16 years old and paying them shit loads or contracting them to EPS or somesuch, that is not the way.

Interesting yesterday I watched the U16 elimination finals for a regional NSW competition and saw a 16 year old kicking goals from outside 40M. making clearing kicks from his goal line to the 40m line and over half way from the 22. Interesting that the current Wallaby 10 cannot execute that skill.

It's true.
As an aside - there is also the odd aspect that, strangely, at club and junior levels it seems more orthodox - i.e. clear the ball into touch (as most of us were trained to do when young). It seems to have become a tactic in some teams (Tahs for sure, Wallabies a bit too, a few other teams this year as well) to not actually go for touch ( I don't really know why) and even put up high-balls from the 22 or thereabouts (again, why??). Strange. I mean, how is it better to put the ball near the touch line 40m out rather than over it? Somebody with a spreadsheet would probably know the answer. I'm not that clever.

 

[half]

And there we see the problem, we have some here saying Aus and NZ need to get out of Sanzaar because it hurting the game,(and games are not right time for them) and others like yourself saying well we need to stay in because of money that comes from SA in TV deals. I actually would say a lot of in between is the case, NZ rugby actually sells reasonably well in Europe and Asia (my son in Italy often watches ITM cup games live), but I really believe that all 3 Unions know there really is more strength in the 3 being together!

That is not me, I have been advocating we get out of Super Rugby from roughly 1998.

I always said we need to develop a plan "B" and get out of Super Rugby, its had me banned and considered a serial pest at times.

HOWEVER I have always advocated we can't do an effective plan "B" under 4 years if we wish to get the rugby family on board.

RA / ARU have always tended to make decisions from the top down and its never worked. I have said take your time and argue your case from one oval to the next.

 

[Rugbynutter39]

And there we see the problem, we have some here saying Aus and NZ need to get out of Sanzaar because it hurting the game,(and games are not right time for them) and others like yourself saying well we need to stay in because of money that comes from SA in TV deals. I actually would say a lot of in between is the case, NZ rugby actually sells reasonably well in Europe and Asia (my son in Italy often watches ITM cup games live), but I really believe that all 3 Unions know there really is more strength in the 3 being together!

Bid of both - twiggy providing some funded options for Asia pacific growth to lesson reliance on nz hopefully and to be little more in control of our destiny. Baby steps though as won’t happen overnight but nz has imho done little for growing the game in our region vs nz and all black self interest.

Imho nz has not yet worked out 1+ 1 = 3


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[Braveheart81]

Bid of both - twiggy providing some funded options for Asia pacific growth to lesson reliance on nz hopefully and to be little more in control of our destiny. Baby steps though as won’t happen overnight but nz has imho done little for growing the game in our region vs nz and all black self interest.

Imho nz has not yet worked out 1+ 1 = 3

They've produced a pretty solid percentage of the players playing the game at all levels in Australia.

For an economy as small as New Zealands, trying to maintain their position as the best side in the world seems like a pretty strong financial plan.

 

[Dan54]

Bid of both - twiggy providing some funded options for Asia pacific growth to lesson reliance on nz hopefully and to be little more in control of our destiny. Baby steps though as won’t happen overnight but nz has imho done little for growing the game in our region vs nz and all black self interest.

Imho nz has not yet worked out 1+ 1 = 3


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You don't think NZ has done little to grow the game in this region vs NZ self interest? I think when the provincial teams kept coming to Aus at a loss during 70/80s, it was to keep growing the game here . So do you really think that it is NZ's job to hurt itself to make the game stronger in Aus etc? Really? As I said surely their first and foremost job is to look after NZ's interest, or do you think ARU should be thinking about the rest of the world before it's own? Man I don't know any board for any sport in the world who's job it is to put other boards/countries' interest before their own!! Don't get me wrong , I am sure they are probably pretty keen on Aus rugby being strong, and they actually actively help Asian countries with coaching personal and intellectual properties and have done for quite some time. Even places like Georgia got their test coach by going through the NZRU and getting help to recruit coaches.

 

[waiopehu oldboy]

[quote="Rugbynutter39, post: 1025806, ......but nz has imho done little for growing the game in our region vs nz and all black self interest.

Imho nz has not yet worked out 1+ 1 = 3


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk[/quote]

Growing the game in the region isn't NZR's job, it's World Rugby's.

 

[Gnostic]

@ Dan54 - It would be silly to expect the NZRU to "hurt itself" to keep the game afloat in Aus. Bloody stupid in fact. I'd go further and state that without some serious re-structuring and a clear out of the old boys network at all levels they would and should avoid hitching their wagon irrevocably to Australian Rugby, unless they can take over some segments.

That said I do not doubt there remains some very bitter people in NZ Rugby over the RWC 2003 fiasco that saw hosting rights stripped away, and rightly so to a certain degree as the parasitic banker JON was in there like flies on shit to profit from the situation as quick as he could instead of holding out to help a mate. Ultimately though the fact that the NZRU failed to deliver "clean stadiums" was their fault.

All that said, I think there is some growing feeling in NZ that Super Rugby is dying and is lacking in serious competition.

 

[half]

They've produced a pretty solid percentage of the players playing the game at all levels in Australia.

For an economy as small as New Zealands, trying to maintain their position as the best side in the world seems like a pretty strong financial plan.

BH
AS discussed we have a very different view on rugby history and future direction. I believe what you see as a great strength, I see as an incredible weakness.

I am almost too scared to post this as previously it’s resulted in much angst, bans, and many claims of various nature.

NZ history, of being almost unbeatable over say the last 20 to 30 years, IMO has become a massive weakness for Australian rugby.

The turning point for Super Rugby was the 2010 FIFA world cup in South Africa. Media of the day was saying that black SA was the main sport in SA. Media reports of the day highlighted how soccer was the game of black SA. Media reports indicated rugby was only powerful because of past history and only supported by whites. Whether this is true or not is useless arguing it now, as it was what was being said.

What happened questions were being asked by non-rugby folk, and many of these folk provided a kinda test watch support for rugby. The question was how can three nations be the top 3 nations with NZ with a population of 5 million, SA with 2 million whites and Australia being the number 4 code in player numbers.

This still lingers and with NZ winning everything, it hurts rugby in Australia. Rugby as a code has never tried to argue and explain this.

Why this is so incredibly important is because of juniors and as a sport we need to be appealing as a challenge.

Super Rugby with only a few teams in each country plays into this narrative and with preserved falling standards as well the damage moving forward to attract people to watch rugby and as these numbers fall other codes are expanding.

 

[cyclopath]

That is not me, I have been advocating we get out of Super Rugby from roughly 1998.

I always said we need to develop a plan "B" and get out of Super Rugby, its had me banned and considered a serial pest at times.

HOWEVER I have always advocated we can't do an effective plan "B" under 4 years if we wish to get the rugby family on board.

RA / ARU have always tended to make decisions from the top down and its never worked. I have said take your time and argue your case from one oval to the next.

If you don't mind me asking, I'm curious as to why you felt we should have gotten out of Super Rugby in 1998. It was barely 2 years old at the time. And in fact the subsequent several years had very good crowds and TV exposure (FTA had games, plus Fox). What were the issues you saw at the time?
Edit - genuine question, not having a go at what you wrote, by the way.

 

[Braveheart81]

BH
AS discussed we have a very different view on rugby history and future direction. I believe what you see as a great strength, I see as an incredible weakness.

I am almost too scared to post this as previously it’s resulted in much angst, bans, and many claims of various nature.

NZ history, of being almost unbeatable over say the last 20 to 30 years, IMO has become a massive weakness for Australian rugby.

The turning point for Super Rugby was the 2010 FIFA world cup in South Africa. Media of the day was saying that black SA was the main sport in SA. Media reports of the day highlighted how soccer was the game of black SA. Media reports indicated rugby was only powerful because of past history and only supported by whites. Whether this is true or not is useless arguing it now, as it was what was being said.

What happened questions were being asked by non-rugby folk, and many of these folk provided a kinda test watch support for rugby. The question was how can three nations be the top 3 nations with NZ with a population of 5 million, SA with 2 million whites and Australia being the number 4 code in player numbers.

This still lingers and with NZ winning everything, it hurts rugby in Australia. Rugby as a code has never tried to argue and explain this.

Why this is so incredibly important is because of juniors and as a sport we need to be appealing as a challenge.

Super Rugby with only a few teams in each country plays into this narrative and with preserved falling standards as well the damage moving forward to attract people to watch rugby and as these numbers fall other codes are expanding.

Does any of this have anything to do with my post? I can't find a link.

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[half]

If you don't mind me asking, I'm curious as to why you felt we should have gotten out of Super Rugby in 1998. It was barely 2 years old at the time. And in fact the subsequent several years had very good crowds and TV exposure (FTA had games, plus Fox). What were the issues you saw at the time?
Edit - genuine question, not having a go at what you wrote, by the way.

Tis an excellent question, and I hope I can explain why.

Some context which maybe explain my thought processes, at this point in time in my career, I had been heavily involved in researching business options, many of them where quite large, two of note were on Rupert’s Murdoch’s private staff in developing a commercial printing division, another on whether to build the North West Shelf . Many others including many “”no goes””” i.e. project that never came to being.

By 98 and with 26 year’s work experience and 20 of these in business analysis I had become hhhmmm trying to be kind to myself very judgemental on what various business were doing., pertaining to future business plans.

My business sense told me in 98, that Super Rugby was the result of a war between Packer & Murdoch. The Super League war had scared the life out of rugby and we grabbed happily the News offer.

There was no doubt we needed that initial deal.

But then News started to create Super Rugby to suit itself, common among other codes as well. Our traditional competitions like Shute Shield were being cast aside and traditional state teams converted into club sides. Casting aside old teams was not what News did to other codes.

At some point in 1998 I suggested we needed to develop a way of not being totally reliant on Super Rugby. We needed like NZ & SA had local domestic competitions to support Super Rugby.

I reasoned we needed a greater spread of revenue and revenue in different places to support other tiers of the competition.

I actually wrote quite a bit once on a European Cup model, with say the Currie Cup in SA and NZ & a new competition in Australia with up to 12 teams [4 each] going to a home and away knock out competition. I still think this is not a bad idea.

My other concern was the limited number of teams at first only two and compared this to the ARL & AFL of the time.
I saw how Super Rugby in a European Cup model would work well.

However trying to make Super Rugby ‘s Australia's local domestic competition I saw as absolutely stupid.

Equally I saw beyond intrude at Shute Shield level, Eastwood as an example sits on the boarder of Australia’s largest industrial park of its kind many think the Silcom Valley of the Southern Hemisphere and yet struggled for sponsors.

What I saw was the need to develop a national competition to compete with league & AFL, and creating only a couple of teams was never going to worl.

BUT BUT BUT the old rugby admins like the Gordons, Randwicks etc were totally out of there depth. Rugby needed to appoint a number of professional managers JON top down approach ignored the lower levels.

In summary I saw a lazy ARU take an easy route, rather than do what I through was essential and that was a root and branch overhaul and the development of 12 to 14 team competition.


Hope that answers you question.

 

[Gnostic]

@ Half. Wow. It took me until about 2007-8 to come to that realisation that Super Rugby was killing the game, not with money, but by actually reducing the skills of those selected to be "elite" players, and people drifted from the game because the top end simply didn't perform not only to expectations in terms of results but in terms of execution.

In the "old days" Australian Rugby was far from "successful" but you knew and could see that the players played largely to their potential and were getting whipped by far better sides. Then came the golden decades and some truly world class players backed by very good players and we had a run from 82-2003. Unlike others I don't see the success in terms of win loss, but in terms of the rugby played (why I don't really rate the Macqueen years as great rugby, even with the outstanding win:loss - the actual endless recycle game lacked imagination and whilst successful in that period they got away with some very questionable interpretations of the laws even then). The further we got from the grass roots and players learning their trade at grade and park levels the more the skill levels degraded.

 

[Rugbynutter39]

Dan myopic view imho - as you grow your market by making rugby stronger in the region....

Again the 1 + 1 = 3. I just think there is lack of vision by NZRU as suffers from small country syndrome and lack of real ambition to lead growth in the region and understanding how they could do that which would actually greatly benefit NZ rugby.

I equally have a low opinion of ARU / RA to do the same - thank goodness for someone like Twiggy and his team who has more understanding than others of opportunities in Asia Pacific that could be better tapped into....

 

[cyclopath]

Tis an excellent question, and I hope I can explain why.

Some context which maybe explain my thought processes, at this point in time in my career, I had been heavily involved in researching business options, many of them where quite large, two of note were on Rupert’s Murdoch’s private staff in developing a commercial printing division, another on whether to build the North West Shelf . Many others including many “”no goes””” i.e. project that never came to being.

By 98 and with 26 year’s work experience and 20 of these in business analysis I had become hhhmmm trying to be kind to myself very judgemental on what various business were doing., pertaining to future business plans.

My business sense told me in 98, that Super Rugby was the result of a war between Packer & Murdoch. The Super League war had scared the life out of rugby and we grabbed happily the News offer.

There was no doubt we needed that initial deal.

But then News started to create Super Rugby to suit itself, common among other codes as well. Our traditional competitions like Shute Shield were being cast aside and traditional state teams converted into club sides. Casting aside old teams was not what News did to other codes.

At some point in 1998 I suggested we needed to develop a way of not being totally reliant on Super Rugby. We needed like NZ & SA had local domestic competitions to support Super Rugby.

I reasoned we needed a greater spread of revenue and revenue in different places to support other tiers of the competition.

I actually wrote quite a bit once on a European Cup model, with say the Currie Cup in SA and NZ & a new competition in Australia with up to 12 teams [4 each] going to a home and away knock out competition. I still think this is not a bad idea.

My other concern was the limited number of teams at first only two and compared this to the ARL & AFL of the time.
I saw how Super Rugby in a European Cup model would work well.

However trying to make Super Rugby ‘s Australia's local domestic competition I saw as absolutely stupid.

Equally I saw beyond intrude at Shute Shield level, Eastwood as an example sits on the boarder of Australia’s largest industrial park of its kind many think the Silcom Valley of the Southern Hemisphere and yet struggled for sponsors.

What I saw was the need to develop a national competition to compete with league & AFL, and creating only a couple of teams was never going to worl.

BUT BUT BUT the old rugby admins like the Gordons, Randwicks etc were totally out of there depth. Rugby needed to appoint a number of professional managers JON top down approach ignored the lower levels.

In summary I saw a lazy ARU take an easy route, rather than do what I through was essential and that was a root and branch overhaul and the development of 12 to 14 team competition.


Hope that answers you question.

Thank you for replying. I don't necessarily agree with every word, but a lot makes sense. I would also add that the ARU was put in a "easy" position to be lazy, with the 2001 Lions and 2003 RWC windfalls. And we all know what happened to those dollars! The easy and lazy route was taken. Personally, in the mid 2000s I thought the product was pretty good, and probably didn't really think beyond it too much. I went to the Tahs games most weeks, they drew 30K or more a lot of the time, the rugby was good to watch. I guess it was easy to be complacent. I would put the tipping point more around then (2003-2007). The early days of Super were a necessary leap with the new onset of professionalism, in my mind. And for rugby in Australia, it was a big leap. The Wallabies flew high for a good while, plus the Brumbies were a revelation, The Tahs and Reds had their moments as well. They stole some thunder from League. These consequences were not all necessarily predictable, or down to the ARU doing anything amazing per se. But they did it, nonetheless. Some of it was probably dumb luck. The real miss, for mine, was the lack of reinvestment (when we had the money) in skills / development / growth and planning for the future. That was the "lazy" ARU. That was unforgivable.

 

[half]

Thank you for replying. I don't necessarily agree with every word, but a lot makes sense. I would also add that the ARU was put in a "easy" position to be lazy, with the 2001 Lions and 2003 RWC windfalls. And we all know what happened to those dollars! The easy and lazy route was taken. Personally, in the mid 2000s I thought the product was pretty good, and probably didn't really think beyond it too much. I went to the Tahs games most weeks, they drew 30K or more a lot of the time, the rugby was good to watch. I guess it was easy to be complacent. I would put the tipping point more around then (2003-2007). The early days of Super were a necessary leap with the new onset of professionalism, in my mind. And for rugby in Australia, it was a big leap. The Wallabies flew high for a good while, plus the Brumbies were a revelation, The Tahs and Reds had their moments as well. They stole some thunder from League. These consequences were not all necessarily predictable, or down to the ARU doing anything amazing per se. But they did it, nonetheless. Some of it was probably dumb luck. The real miss, for mine, was the lack of reinvestment (when we had the money) in skills / development / growth and planning for the future. That was the "lazy" ARU. That was unforgivable.

Like wow we are almost in 100% agreement on the 2000's.

Let me further clarify my position or thoughts from very early on.

We lacked professionalism everywhere, especially at local club level say Eastwood, Randwick etc.

However we had an exceptional product.

Enter now the false Gods who who said ""'Rugby is Great Again"" and its down to me. The Gods even believed their own BS.

When the truth of the matter was in the early 2000's soccer was on its knees, league still recovering from the Super League war, and AFL in recovery mode and starting to plan some massive expansion. However the new rugby Gods deemed none of this mattered it was their foresight not poor management by others.

Rugby not only did not invest in a new local competition, it also failed to invest in management and management systems.

So rugby remained clueless when it came to critical thinking and analysis.

This equally holds true today in fact you could argue it worst today.

One of the reasons I push so hard for private ownership in an independent competition is it would bring a bunch of team managers and a board with savvy skills, and a board with business expertise with business and government connections.

 

[Lindommer]

If I could add to these comments above the establishment of a competition similar to the Currie Cup and NPC was essential to the development of Oz rugby; without one the broadcasters marked us down in the early carve-ups and the players wanted one as clearly expressed in the CapGemini conference in 2006. So, the ARC got up in 2007. The first thing O'Neill did on his return in 2008 was cancel it without any attempt to fix its flaws. If ever there was a sliding door moment in the history of Australian rugby it was the cancellation of the ARC by JON in 2008, with some assistance from the power-brokers at Uni, Easts, Randwick and Eastwood.

 

[hoggy]

If I could add to these comments above the establishment of a competition similar to the Currie Cup and NPC was essential to the development of Oz rugby; without one the broadcasters marked us down in the early carve-ups and the players wanted one as clearly expressed in the CapGemini conference in 2006. So, the ARC got up in 2007. The first thing O'Neill did on his return in 2008 was cancel it without any attempt to fix its flaws. If ever there was a sliding door moment in the history of Australian rugby it was the cancellation of the ARC by JON in 2008, with some assistance from the power-brokers at Uni, Easts, Randwick and Eastwood.

Yes, Jon O'Neil a classic example of the leaders of the RA and that top end model, those back room deals and visions of grandeur, he spent all his time building the roof, and left the game broke in 2012 with a Million dollar redundancy package.

 

[Braveheart81]

What sport doesn't have a top down model?

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[hoggy]

What sport doesn't have a top down model?

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Successful sports, they build from the base.

 

[Rugbynutter39]

Successful ones have top down and bottom up approach - clearly rugby has suffered neglect of bottom up focus which trying to address after long period of neglect.