Where to for Super Rugby?

[dru]

Complete failure on every count.

Here is the Arbib report itself. Interesting reading.

http://myrugby.rugby.com.au/myrugby/images/docs/Gov/Details.pdf

 

[wamberal]

Here is the Arbib report itself. Interesting reading.

http://myrugby.rugby.com.au/myrugby/images/docs/Gov/Details.pdf

Bureaucratic bumf. And I speak as a CPA who has worked in general management in a very large and very successful professional sporting organisation (not in Australia, and not in rugby).

 

[I like to watch]

Litigation update:
Promises made to force in 2016: check.
Representations implied or express made to Rebels on purchase of licence: check.
Promises made to SANZAAR: check.
Promises and representations inconsistent with one another thereby revealing their falsity: check.
All systems are go: BET365 framing a market - no litigation the rank outsider.

If we are framing markets, what's the betting the ARU rushes through contracts to secure Billy P's tenure before this imbroglio gets any worse.

 

[dru]

Bureaucratic bumf. And I speak as a CPA who has worked in general management in a very large and very successful professional sporting organisation (not in Australia, and not in rugby).

Don't disagree, but seems at odds with your general pro-ARU stance.

 

[Quick Hands]

If we are framing markets, what's the betting the ARU rushes through contracts to secure Billy P's tenure before this imbroglio gets any worse.

With a significant golden parachute in case of early departure and not forgetting a non-disparagement clause.

 

[Gnostic]

There may well be, but Gnostic isn't.

Yeah I'm not in Sydney. So there. I can't discount that some may well regard me as a miserable bastard, in fact I may have been called things along those lines once or twice, perhaps with more colourful language for emphasis.

 

[Rugbynutter39]

The NRL went through far worse than this.


The Super League wars dwarfs anything that has happened in rugby.



But the game survived. Why? Because enough people like it, so they continued to watch it, support it, and play it.


A game cannot not be destroyed by quote/unquote management mistakes, incompetence, bad decisions, or any other top down influence.


A game can wither away, however. If the base starts to lose interest (or if the base is not regularly refreshed with new members), the end is nigh.


We live in a democracy, people make choices. Like it or not, look at the trend lines realistically. Our high point as a sport was reached in the early oughties, and it has been downhill ever since.


Blaming Pulver or the ARU, or Uncle Tom Cobbly, misses the point entirely. Ask your neighbour or your workmate whether they like rugby or not. Listen carefully to what they say.

No you are so wrong and miss the point made that poor decisions and abject failure to convert casual sports fans of the wallabies was due to decisions at the top with failure to invest in much else then super rugby with failure of nrc Mark 1 leading to investment in nrc Mark 2 only being some years ago.

Opportunity loss rests heavily on the governing body.

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[Blue]

I don't know whereto for Super Rugby bit as long as it is as far away as possible from the rubbish served up in Pretoria, Durban, Sydney and Perth this weekend.

The basic lack of skill, vision and execution on display by 8 professional sports teams is dumbfounding.

And it seems to me it is just getting worse.

 

[Gnostic]

Easy to outline problems Gnostic but much harder to propose solutions so how about telling us what we could do instead to improve and/or create a better rugby product. As nrc is at least trying to do something different and happy to accept better alternatives to work towards via constructive debate but just criticising something with out alternatives gets us no where.



So what would you propose as alternatives as we can't just criticise without alternatives being proposed as that is destructive and not constructive which has been the bigger problem amongst different rugby stakeholders imo.



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Alright, its pretty easy to see that the top end of town is fundamentally broken and disconnected from a large part of the fan base. Let Super Rugby and SANZAAR stand on their own. Let the ARU run it if they want. IMO both will collapse by 2020.

So from the grass roots up we need to be looking at a new governing body and structure to step in and replace the ARU when it goes arse up, have everything in place ready to go (or maybe even pre-empt it and have a take over). I favour an independent commission style body myself, no old boys appointments unless they actually win the jobs, through a genuine process.

As for competitions, without the complete support of the club structure the NRC doesn't work in NSW. Regardless of what people think about those who don't support it those are the simple facts, and consider that once Super Rugby goes arse up the apparently elite players will not be present anyway

It should be apparent that I do not believe in top down models, they have been totally proven time and time again not to work, and so we need to build on the real grass roots, the clubs and that is not just Shute level but subbies and juniors. The top being the Wallabies are the reward for performance at the lower level, not an achievement of a contract from that level which is then set for a few years regardless of performance.

Now I know that straight up the problem is loss of "elite" players as the big funding will simply disappear, but that is an inevitable fact now I think. The ARU via SANZAAR not only killed the golden goose, they cooked her and the eggs and had a fine old banquet while it lasted. What is left really? How much of the pretty impressive fan base we had in the early 90's is left? We have no choice really but to start again from the bottom.

 

[RedsHappy]

Am i the only person sniffing something odd with Wayne Smith's "You couldn't make it up if you tried?". Or perhaps earlier reporting?

Originally we were told that SANZAR was waiting on SARU and ARU to discuss with the stakeholders before confirming a revised format. Now we are told there was a commitment giving by the ARU in London.

Those two statements sound mutually exclusive, don't they?

Dru - my apologies - the joking headline of that post 'You Couldn't ............' and etc etc was in fact mine for purely our (probable) amusement's sake.

But every word of the quoted article were exactly and precisely Smith's.

Btw, and no one's picked up on this yet, a highlight of that article being that, for the first time in a while, it's clear that ARU board members are now leaking to Smith of their disquiet over management's conduct and seemingly very poor transparency back to them over the real state of legal agreements the ARU has with the Force and Rebels.

It thus seems increasingly clear that the gap between 'the great cull of one team done in 2-3 days of 'due process'' (as Clyne announced it), and the true legal reality of various parties' rights in relation to the proposed culling, is huge and highly problematic.

And remarkably, it's appearing that ARU management did not adequately understand or appreciate the seriousness of their legal entanglements (that they had signed) and how this would influence the entire culling process.

The other interesting piece from that article being that the Brumbies basis for non-culling was allegedly their 'superior football program'.

How that was assessesed, objectively or otherwise, and by whom of course remains a conplete mystery.

Finally dru it's reasonably obvious the ARU went to London in March with the specific recommendation that the Force would be the cullee as they commenced leaking that precise recommendation to News Corp journos soon thereafter, and on more than one occasion. Senior officers of the Force also effectively confirmed that when they reported that the ARU executives who visited them right after Clyne's infamous declaration communicated that the decision to cull the Force was a 'fait accompli' and was what would be announced thereafter.

 

[wamberal]

Things that we could do that are within our control.


Firstly, call a crisis meeting with Fox Sports. Explain to them that to a large extent the future of the game depends on them. They absolutely have to do something about the quality of their commentators. People like Clark have to understand that the big challenge is to make the game intelligible to the casual viewer (on the heroic assumption that some will tune in, and that if they actually understand what is happening, they might stay).


Stop all the meaningless statistics. Who cares how many times, how often, what the referee's mother's maiden name is, etc etc. Start telling people what they do not know. They do not need to be told what they can see with their own eyes, but the inexperienced viewer does need to be told what is happening. At the breakdown in particular. But also in the scrum and the lineout.


It might grate on the experienced viewer, but it is also important to keep telling the new viewer where each franchise comes from.


Tell Fox Sports that they need to start cross-promoting the Shute Shield telecast. And any other stray rugby on other channels.


Talking of the Shute Shield, it is now apparent that it should be getting more promotion generally. It is good, attractive, rugby most of the time. We need to start leveraging off it. Forget all the petty jealousies, and local resentment, this competition is worth all of us pushing.


In terms of potential audience appeal, it beats the NRC hands-down. Not least because it lasts a lot longer, but also because it is built on traditional rivalries. And traditional rivalries are not essential, but they help an awful lot.


Frankly, the missus and I watch every Shute Shield game through, live. I cannot remember the last time we watched a Soup game through, from beginning to end. And certainly not live. We always record it and watch it on replay.


Okay, we are a sample size of 2. But I wonder how many other rugby tragics (not to mention the huge number of potential and actual viewers that are not rusted on) feel similarly.

 

[RedsHappy]

I don't know whereto for Super Rugby bit as long as it is as far away as possible from the rubbish served up in Pretoria, Durban, Sydney and Perth this weekend.

The basic lack of skill, vision and execution on display by 8 professional sports teams is dumbfounding.

And it seems to me it is just getting worse.

Blue, correct.

The essence of the situation is that, for at least 5-10 years now, SARU and the ARU here have made their overwhelming priority the provision of vastly more rugby product _quantity_ vs any genuine attempt, plans or serious programs to simultaneously improve rugby product _quality_.

In parallel the far better led and managed NZRU have initiated a large range of in-depth programs (the off-loads skills program is an obvious one of many) that essentially left NZRU rugby quantity levels where they were but invested heavily in deepening NZ's rugby quality in many dimensions, and in that they have so obviously succeeded with quite stunning results.............just as the strategic deficiencies of SARU's and ARU's 'quantity first' idiotic prioritisation are now compellingly obvious to all rugby stakeholders.

Just one of reasons SANZAAR - another 'quantity first' conspirator - is in crisis over how best to cut back the crap rugby product quality it has been designing and championing.

 

[dru]

Btw, and no one's picked up on this yet, a highlight of that article being that, for the first time in a while, it's clear that ARU board members are now leaking to Smith of their disquiet over management's conduct and seemingly very poor transparency back to them over the real state of legal agreements the ARU has with the Force and Rebels.

This would imply that the board has a problem with the CEO would it not?

There is no doubt in my mind here that heads must roll.

 

[RedsHappy]

This would imply that the board has a problem with the CEO would it not?

There is no doubt in my mind here that heads must roll.

It equally could imply that certain ARU board members want to 'protect their own positions' and distance themselves from this screamingly obvious 'culling' fiasco.

The corporate types on the ARU board are all experienced enough to know that this escalating fiasco makes the ARU board look like puss-in-boots amateurs that have badly mishandled a high profile, crucial-to-board-credibility matter.

 

[Inside Shoulder]

If we are framing markets, what's the betting the ARU rushes through contracts to secure Billy P's tenure before this imbroglio gets any worse.

I heard a few months ago that he was so jack of it he was out at the end of his current term.
He said something on Friday that made me think that wasn't right.
Offsiders on the ABC was pretty much on the money this AM in the way it described the ARU but it also said Netball has some governance issues.
And then you have the AOC debacle.
Its looking to me that the number one qualification for a sports administrator should be a lack of interest in being a sports administrator since nepotism, short sightedness and inbreeding currently permeate nearly all our sports.

 

[Upthenuts]

I don't know whereto for Super Rugby bit as long as it is as far away as possible from the rubbish served up in Pretoria, Durban, Sydney and Perth this weekend.

The basic lack of skill, vision and execution on display by 8 professional sports teams is dumbfounding.

And it seems to me it is just getting worse.

bit harsh on the game in perth, that was a good close game, cant always have 10 tries a game

 

[Inside Shoulder]

Blaming Pulver or the ARU, or Uncle Tom Cobbly, misses the point entirely. Ask your neighbour or your workmate whether they like rugby or not. Listen carefully to what they say.

Odd way to end your post: what do you predict they will say?

 

[Inside Shoulder]

Bureaucratic bumf. And I speak as a CPA who has worked in general management in a very large and very successful professional sporting organisation (not in Australia, and not in rugby).

Oh FFS - I thought I was reading a post of yours from a year ago.
We know how good you were - but as John McEnroe said "the older I get the better I was"

 

[Rugbynutter39]

I heard a few months ago that he was so jack of it he was out at the end of his current term.
He said something on Friday that made me think that wasn't right.
Offsiders on the ABC was pretty much on the money this AM in the way it described the ARU but it also said Netball has some governance issues.
And then you have the AOC debacle.
Its looking to me that the number one qualification for a sports administrator should be a lack of interest in being a sports administrator since nepotism, short sightedness and inbreeding currently permeate nearly all our sports.

I am happy with concepts of build from bottom up but to suggest we just rely on shute shield with no professional opportunities will not support grass roots. We have more pi players involved because of more pro opportunities created since moving to professional era from.amateur era but still not enough to stop league killing it in this market for talent. We don't create better professional pathways that are sustainale will only further damage grass roots against the well drilled other football codes who are now making headway in rugby traditional former monopoly areas of private schools.

The answer is NOT to ignore and not have any professional competition for oz Rugby market as may as well raise the white flag.

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[blues recovery]

Oh FFS - I thought I was reading a post of yours from a year ago.
We know how good you were - but as John McEnroe said "the older I get the better I was"

Just read the posts like a John Clarke paradoy
They all then make a bit more sense and are quite amusing