Where to for Super Rugby?

[todd4]

I'm also concerned that the Tahs and Reds aren't on the chopping block.

Like the SARU, the ARU should have laid out some criteria and left every team on the table.

As mentioned, at such a stage we may not be happy about the decision, but atleast we'd understand it.

Despite being a Force supporter I still wouldn't think it right for the Tahs & Reds to be on the chopping block. They still are the nurseries for Rugby players. The Brumbies on the other hand..

 

[Micheal]

To return to my previous point - what are the key criteria that should be considered?

I'm not talking about the criteria that is being considered.

Perhaps a few forum members with the right expertise could draft up a .ppt on a Google drive somewhere with a fair evaluation that flows on from such criteria which would, if nothing else, provide the ARU with some more questions to answer.

If its strong enough in terms of quality it could potentially end up in Alan Jones' hand and give him more to yell at Bill Pulver about.

Just a thought. We often talk about how the ARU and respective state unions need to be more innovative, but perhaps we need to get more innovative in how we apply pressure to them.

 

[Rugbynutter39]

Exactly. In my mind, until the ARU figure out how to wriggle themselves out of the legal straight jacket they're in, nothing is off the table.

In fact, I still believe there is a 2018 where we will see 5 Australian franchises play.

Why? The ARU, from all accounts (and boy oh boy is there a lack of transparency), simply don't have the funds to battle this out in court for too long.

The Force have made it very clear they will go down swinging and are more than happy to go bankrupt on legal fees if it means the ARU has to do likewise.

Its insanely spiteful but can you really blame them?

The most alarming thing out of this fiasco is how much damage has been done to aru credibility. Seriously how can this inept organisation still continue to be in control (at least with current personnel in place) of Australian rugby with this latest fiasco and untold damage they have done to Australian rugby.

They need major bloodletting at aru level and general restructure of how rugby is governed to have any chance of rebuilding Rugby in this country as we are starting at much lower base after this latest episode and damage done from cutting whatever team is cut. They probably expanded too quickly but more So failed to acknowledge their failure in pinning their hopes on professional rugby on super rugby without a plan b.

If we the rugby public were allowed to vote on aru appointments I would be getting rid of 80% of them.

Totally unacceptable performance by the aru.

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[Rugbynutter39]

Can't see this happening.
ARU can't possibly enter into legal battle with Force, as it opens them up to claims from SANZAAR as well.
They simply have to give Cox a big bag of money, or the Brumbies...

One big problem _ they have no money and with super rugby crowds down and potential test matches against lesser nations this year with fan interest at all time low....even the wallabies cash cow is under serious threat.

We are heading down the path of financial disaster even if a super rugby team is cut. Great job aru...

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[Rugbynutter39]

ARU bag of money:

They might have to take a loan to pay for the paper bag....

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[Merrow]

Tradition of 22 years...right..

I wasn't saying anything about tradition re the Brumbies, I was merely pointing out the fact to Michael that if you take away the tradition of the Tahs and the Reds, then what's keeping them in the comp.

 

[Inside Shoulder]

Despite being a Force supporter I still wouldn't think it right for the Tahs & Reds to be on the chopping block. They still are the nurseries for Rugby players. The Brumbies on the other hand..

They're not.
This is not semantics either.
While NSW & QLD produce the bulk of players their pro offshoots routinely waste that advantage.
They are complacent. League will pick up the good ones and we'll chase them with $$$ then.
There is no real tie in, certainly in NSW, between the juniors of potential and the pro setup. They wait to see who the school associations pick in their rep sides and then rely on NSW Schools RU to pick the right ones and they basically go with them for u20s.
And on that note: how does Pat McCutcheon land the NSW U20s as his first coaching gig? The guy may be a genius for all I know but how can that role be your first gig?
That type of nepotism can just about explain how we got into this mess.

 

[RedsHappy]

Despite being a Force supporter I still wouldn't think it right for the Tahs & Reds to be on the chopping block. They still are the nurseries for Rugby players. The Brumbies on the other hand..

todd4, I think that's right.........but as an aside QLD's nursery generation of new players is getting extremely narrow. Dangerously narrow I would argue and reflects the reckless general RU negligence towards the enhancement and growth of a broader-based schools rugby network in QLD.

Of the QLD players selected for the elite schoolboys squad this year, I think Nic D reported here that 22 out of 23 were from QLD GPS schools.

And let me update you if needed, the dark clouds over schoolboy rugby here are worsening: the rugby-playing GPS schools in QLD have had a total gutful of getting zero interest and support or engagement from the ARU and QRU whilst they watch on as soccer and AFL present their schools with pro-active player development programs and such like.

As they play the game at school GPS school kids are large fillers of local amateur junior rugby clubs in the 'grassroots' sector, this key fact is often forgotten. If GPS rugby falls away in numbers and family motivation, there will be a big double hit coming as both GPS numbers fall in parallel with local junior rugby club numbers.

The lack of proper attention by Australian rugby's so-called 'leaders' to the core sources of their future elite (and all) players is scandalous. These people are supposed to do nothing else but be the pro-active guardians of the code at large and its derived rugby community.

 

[Inside Shoulder]

Tradition of 22 years...right..

Traditionally they've won more super comps than the moribund blazer brigade in NSW & QLD - with players those states didn't want: that's their tradition - misjudgment on and off the field.

 

[half]

^^^^^^

Re the money / revenue thing.

Barbarian in the ratings thread very astutely posted soccer was having issues with its media deal, especially regarding the size of the revenue deal.

Further he pointed out that outside AFL, NRL, Cricket it was difficult for any code to raise significant revenue.

With this in mind and given we are creating a situation where more than likely need to re enter negotiations.

From what I have read European ratings are down a lot, as are SA ratings.

This is taken from Wookies site today and the Wookie compares the A-League to Super Rugby.

Rugby

• After 9 rounds of Super Rugby, AU crowds down 28% to 11,809 ave, Fox ratings down 16% to 53,077 ave

Our history is both crowds and ratings fall as the seasons goes on. Meaning I guess rating could fall below 50K and crowds below 10K.
Soccer. Note they have three final matches left which should lift both crowds and ratings.
On the finals to date

• Aleague Week 1 Finals Ratings up 16% on Metro FTA at 128k, Fox up 26% to 356k Overall up 23% for Finals Wk 1. Crowds down 12.59% to 13,717

Overall there ratings over 137 games is 64, 507, up from 58, 162 last year, with crowds averaging 12, 313. The likely result after the finals is 66, 500 ratings and close to 13K crowds.
Back to the money could the re-negotiation result in a massive reduction in revenue.

 

[Rugbynutter39]

0

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[The Honey Badger]

Everyone seems to forget that this is only for the next, 3 years and then conceivably a 5th team could be added back.

This is the deal that needs to be done with both Sanzaar and the franchise. (a temporary cut only)

I think the most likely team something can be negotiated with is Melbourne and given they were last in there is more logic than the Force or Brumbies.

So cut the Rebels but get each remaining franchise to play 1 home game (vs a NZ side) in Melbourne. This way Melbourne still gets some Super Rugby and the hope would be the ex pat NZ people in Melbourne plus the Rugby lovers and other supporters from interstate and NZ would create a decent crowd.

But I also think the Rebels could also continue to exist in some form as a Victorian reprenative team. Perhaps mostly made up of U20 players and other fringe players.

This team could play some
Exhibition matches vs the likes of NSW Country and QLD Country and Maybe a combined TAS/SA team, and perhaps a WA Barbarians team.

Think you could do something along those lines to keep the Rebels brand alive and give Melbourne people some quality rugby to follow. This keeps a development pathway in place.

Then in 2021 back in to Super Rugby proper in hopefully a fully revamped competition that works.

Thougjts

 

[Slim 293]

It's not a bad idea HB...........

Personally, I'm completely opposed to cutting a team but if we have to then the Rebels IMO should be the front runners for the axe, and I say that as a Melbourne based rugby supporter.........

Obviously the only thing preventing that decision from being made is the private ownership.

But if we could spend the next few years drawing up a new competiton model, and then reintroduce the team on the back of some decent publicity it could give them a bit of a boost down here.

 

[Rugbynutter39]

Traditionally they've won more super comps than the moribund blazer brigade in NSW & QLD - with players those states didn't want: that's their tradition - misjudgment on and off the field.

You don't cut a super

Everyone seems to forget that this is only for the next, 3 years and then conceivably a 5th team could be added back.

This is the deal that needs to be done with both Sanzaar and the franchise. (a temporary cut only)

I think the most likely team something can be negotiated with is Melbourne and given they were last in there is more logic than the Force or Brumbies.

So cut the Rebels but get each remaining franchise to play 1 home game (vs a NZ side) in Melbourne. This way Melbourne still gets some Super Rugby and the hope would be the ex pat NZ people in Melbourne plus the Rugby lovers and other supporters from interstate and NZ would create a decent crowd.

But I also think the Rebels could also continue to exist in some form as a Victorian reprenative team. Perhaps mostly made up of U20 players and other fringe players.

This team could play some
Exhibition matches vs the likes of NSW Country and QLD Country and Maybe a combined TAS/SA team, and perhaps a WA Barbarians team.

Think you could do something along those lines to keep the Rebels brand alive and give Melbourne people some quality rugby to follow. This keeps a development pathway in place.

Then in 2021 back in to Super Rugby proper in hopefully a fully revamped competition that works.

Thougjts

I accept a team needs to be cut due to poor past strategic decisions and management which means at this point no choice...what i find difficult is which team should be cut. As long term all areas current super rugby teams represent no brainer as viable areas but short term clearly not viable as flawed model we are supporting which would take time and real leadership to turn around.

Love the game but the romance is being tested where moving from trial separation to divorce is the real contemplation.

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[RedsHappy]

To return to my previous point - what are the key criteria that should be considered?

I'm not talking about the criteria that is being considered.

Perhaps a few forum members with the right expertise could draft up a .ppt on a Google drive somewhere with a fair evaluation that flows on from such criteria which would, if nothing else, provide the ARU with some more questions to answer.

If its strong enough in terms of quality it could potentially end up in Alan Jones' hand and give him more to yell at Bill Pulver about.

Just a thought. We often talk about how the ARU and respective state unions need to be more innovative, but perhaps we need to get more innovative in how we apply pressure to them.

That being one of the best observations made here in some time.

There are two problems in this notable zone of concern:

One, and this is important, the ARU's and local RU's governance systems provide zero mechanisms of for, for example, 'grassroots' or any kind of 'outside' rugby-loving group to be heard, represented formally, or easily elected to such bodies' boards or other formal committees.

Appallingly, the boards of our State RUs are typically and solely hand-picked by their respective Chairmen via his personal network.

There are not even proper, well-advertised, serious, regular fora by which fans of the code can openly engage in Q&A with the RU boards and their managers.

Summarily Michael, our governing rugby institutions show zero sincere interest in building pathways, mechanisms or approaches by which the general, everyday rugby community can be represented within them, or even communicate on a structured basis with them.

The whole edifice is consciously archaic; I say consciously as the existing elites have shown no desire of any kind to allow their communities _that they are supposed to serve_to engage with them in a proper, democratic and institutionalised manner.

Two, and this has always surprised and concerned me greatly about Australian rugby fans in general.

Up until very recently, I would assess that the Australian rugby community is generally a passive, docile, compliant and un-protesting one.

The remarkable tendency inside Australian rugby - in a country that supposedly is sceptical and cynical about its elites - is to blithely believe that our RUs and ARU are 'probably good people doing their best for the game and somehow deserve to be there' vs holding these parties actively accountable for the code's success and growth and expecting change at the top when the opposite of that keeps regularly occurring (as it has).

We have seen examples of that tendency here, in these GAGR pages, over the years.

Essentially, we seem to truly care too little, and/or, and I suspect this to be the telling point, our cultural and social genesis as rugby fans is one where deference to 'superiors' and excessive trust in the innate superiority of superiors is far too indentured.

This truth, which comes right up the guts from us and is not some inter-galatical force (buttressed btw by its refection in an appallingly supine local rugby media that for years has mostly lazily and irresponsibly fawned at the feet of our RU board), has aided the ARU and local RU elites in gradually building a powerfully embedded institutional culture characterised:

- by self-service not community-service,

- by self-aggrandisement and self-preservation not a proper acceptance of accountability and outward-facing responsibility and the decent and democratic actions that should derive from that,

- by a management modality that is based upon a kind of 'good blokes working together' mindset and not a modern managerial loyalty to measurable performance metics and code-health outcomes (such as skills levels, grass roots dynamism, player development, w-l ratios over time, coach skill development and growth etc.), and

- the selection of 'good rugby and business mates' to sit alongside themselves and not a proper openness to a wide range of objectively chosen skills and talents and backgrounds.......

- and thus ultimately does arise the notorious arrogance, complacency and rank insularity that inexorably builds like a pervasive virus from the foregoing cultural attributes.

My view is that both thematics I describe above now tightly interrelate and cross-reinforce each other and thus together are the core genesis of why Australian rugby has now, gradually but surely, entered a crisis state that may soon enough threaten its very demise.

I return to your point: perhaps we need to protest better and more innovatively.

You are 100% right. But the consequences of all above is that IMO, apart from our veritable moon-howling here which is at least something honest and a good vent for our anger and alarm, the only meaningful way we could do better would be to .............

...........actually form a funded protest group with a full complement of PR skills, social media skills, dedication to invested time, resources to lobby aggressively to applicable local rugby stakeholders, strong links to and support from the non-compliant opinion-influencers like Jones, Fitzsimmons, Papworth (dropping in the process and higher cause our personal likes or dislikes of them), and all such like devices and resources.

In this vein, a really well-organised We're Not Gonna Take it: Give Rugby Back to Us movement could absolutely work, it's not too late to attempt it and I have often thought of putting some money up and starting it, such is my deep-seated detestation of and sadness towards what I see so shockingly committed (or omitted) in the negative by our so-called 'leaders'.

It would work right now as the code's alarming crisis and the utter incompetence (and obvious, total failure of the RUs and ARU to honour their pledge to oversight the code the rugby community and not themselves) has never been plainer or more in full public and media view.

It's factual that this world of ours has principally been formed by the three interrelated forces: the positive power of the human spirit, the massive impact of science and its vast application, and the successful (over time) protest movements that have ultimately led to positive social change that have benefitted most people.

So, we need our own rugby protest movement.

But I'm not sure we care just that little bit extra enough, with that required searing passion, effort and intensity, to ever make it happen.

We're probably the types that want someone else to do it, aren't we?

 

[RedsHappy]

Btw:

http://www.couriermail.com.au/sport...n/news-story/b68938fca3f87f18f102a0237a4c4f69

Simon Cron's words and ideas impress more and more.

Guy just oozes good sense and positive, thoughtful recommendations.

Blight light in a darkened sea.

 

[Quick Hands]

They're not.
This is not semantics either.
While NSW & QLD produce the bulk of players their pro offshoots routinely waste that advantage.
They are complacent. League will pick up the good ones and we'll chase them with $$$ then.
There is no real tie in, certainly in NSW, between the juniors of potential and the pro setup. They wait to see who the school associations pick in their rep sides and then rely on NSW Schools RU to pick the right ones and they basically go with them for u20s.
And on that note: how does Pat McCutcheon land the NSW U20s as his first coaching gig? The guy may be a genius for all I know but how can that role be your first gig?
That type of nepotism can just about explain how we got into this mess.

Even Daryl Gibson has worked in out.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sp...g/news-story/1909d127c8db78c6ce245b48016ffd47

 

[The Honey Badger]

Btw:

http://www.couriermail.com.au/sport...n/news-story/b68938fca3f87f18f102a0237a4c4f69

Simon Cron's words and ideas impress more and more.

Guy just oozes good sense and positive, thoughtful recommendations.

Blight light in a darkened sea.

Pay walled, can you cut and paste the good bits?

 

[KOB1987]

So, we need our own rugby protest movement.

But I'm not sure we care just that little bit extra enough, with that required searing passion, effort and intensity, to ever make it happen.

We're probably the types that want someone else to do it, aren't we?

Yes and no.

There are a lot of passionate people out there about this but not many of them have the time or the know how to get something like this going. I'm one of them, I'd gladly pay someone to do some of my grunt work so I could invest in something like this provided I was confident in the people behind it and had belief in achieving the objectives.

Great post BTW.

 

[kiap]

Pay walled, can you cut and paste the good bits?

Google: Will Miller’s Super Rugby debut shows club footy can be valuable

Or

… “My big thing is spread the net as wide as you can for as long as you can. It’s a good saying,” Cron said.

“If we have a narrow, thin net all the time, and we only focus on what other people have identified as talent, we are doing ourselves an injustice. From my point of view, we should spread the net wide, especially when it comes to forwards. Guys who are 22-25, they start to peak and start to become competitive with people who were good at a younger age.

“Keep the net as wide as possible for as long as possible, and we’ll have more success with our talent ID and finding more of the Will Millers and Hugh Sinclairs of this world. There are definitely more of those guys.”

… Developing players to a “level where they can slip seamlessly into Super Rugby” is the job of club coaches, says Cron, and establishing better connections between club and Super level is also important.

… “The reality of it is Gibbo is a busy man, he is preparing for games every week … And it’s not a uniform thing. Some club guys might get killed at Super level, and other guys like Will Miller can walk straight in. So as a coach we should know who those guys are, and be able to identify that to help out the Super boys.”

… Cron says development of Australia’s next-gen talent also needs big change, primarily through schedule changes allow for more camps and a Super 20s competition built around the Aussie team’s plans.

… “I am walking into a camp now and I will get three training runs before our first game. I am not a fan of that and I know the guys at the ARU are working on fixing that too. To be a coach, you actually have to coach, so that involves spending time with them.

“We have to work out what’s required to not only be a high performance program, but be the best team in the world. That’s the goal. It’s all fixable, we just have to sit down and fix them.”
​