Where to for Super Rugby?

[TOCC]

The ARU literally did the deal because the 5 teams were unsustainable for them

Cox didn't buy 5 teams though, he bought into 1 of them and as long as the cash flow promised by the ARU continues to flow (and I've seen no suggestion that it won't?) Then his investment is as "sustainable" as it's ever been.

Cox has them over a barrell, but it's cause he an asset that the ARU now want. Nothing to do with any comments

ARU doesn't own 5 teams, never has, what they have is a contractual obligation to SANZAAR to provide 5 teams, they also represent the body which distributes the broadcast rights for those 5 teams. If 5 teams was unsustainable they should never have engaged into a contract to sell the only one they owned.

The whole issue is that the ARU sold the Rebels to Andrew Cox in June 2015, less then 24 months ago, and only 12months before the first concerns were raised about the feasibility of the new tournament. The ARU didn't just sell a team, they sold a body which represents Rugby Union in the state of Victoria, if there any concerns about the ongoing feasibility of Australia hosting 5 teams then it should have been raised at the point of sale.

Lets say, the ARU were unaware that 5 teams were unsustainable, that as far as they knew it was a sustainable model. Well thats nothing more then wilful ignorance, as the governing body of the code they should be conducting their own due diligence, establishing a business case and having outside firms provide input to the feasibility. The ARU have let down the code through their own mismanagement.

Andrew Cox isn't the villain here, its the idiots who agreed to this new contract to start with.

 

[TOCC]

Maybe you mean you "expect no better" from me. That's okay by me. I have been insulted by experts.


I do enjoy a robust discussion. Although I would like to see a bit more fact, and a bit less imagination.

feel free to provide said facts Wamberal.... at the moment the best you can provide is an anecdote about a puppy pissing on the floor, sounds like a scene from Billy Maddison.

Il give you some fact's...

-the new structure has only been in existence 18months before it was agreed to be unsustainable
-SANZAAR have caused irreparable damage to the Super Rugby brand through mismanagement of competition(New Coke had a longer existence)
-Super Rugby 2017 ratings, crowds and sponsors have taken a hit due to the negative publicity generated by the competitions own governing body

 

[lou75]

The ARU have let down the code through their own mismanagement.

Andrew Cox isn't the villain here, its the idiots who agreed to this new contract to start with.

Can anyone explain to me the reason why Rob Clarke, a well educated, wealthy white male has a tattoo on his arm that tells the world he is gonna:"Fight the good fight" ?? Oh and then he left the room.

 

[kiap]

Lets say, the ARU were unaware that 5 teams were unsustainable, that as far as they knew it was a sustainable model. Well thats nothing more then wilful ignorance

Or worse.

We've heard Clyne claim they thought it was unsustainable in 2011. And yet they sold Cox a licence in 2015.

 

[Twoilms]

Can someone more knowledgeable explain the player contracting situation to me. I think i read someone say that no Australian Super sides are allowed to contract new players, including those not to be cut. Does this include renewing contracts for players already in the teams or is it simply for new players entirely? if not the latter how are the teams supposed to fill out a roster? Even Reds, Tahs etc presumably need to update contracts, sign a few new players etc.

 

[kiap]

if not the latter how are the teams supposed to fill out a roster? Even Reds, Tahs etc presumably need to update contracts, sign a few new players etc.

I only know what I've read (or think I remember reading). Which was the freeze applied to all non-wallaby players in all teams. However, it seems this is another ARU farce …

THE Super Rugby downsizing saga is dragging on and on, and accordingly, so is the ARU’s contract freeze.​

​

We hear clubs and players are now doing plenty of business, however.​

​

Most clubs are not only negotiating with players and their agents, they’re signing letters of intent and chucking them in the top drawer.​

​

It’s all happening with the ARU’s knowledge.​

​

As a cosignatory to every Super Rugby contract, the ARU’s freeze effectively boils down to them not rubberstamping contracts. When the freeze lifts, they can expect plenty in the mail.​

​

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sp...l/news-story/dfc0631da651221165ac9358e1020114​

​

It would seem the Tahs, Reds, … perhaps, are carrying on regardless with a nod and a wink from the ARU on their rubber stamp to come later. If others are being restrained from above then it could be more grist for the case against the ARU given, if their injunctions stand, the team will play on anyway.

 

[Inside Shoulder]

​

​

It would seem the Tahs, Reds, … perhaps, are carrying on regardless with a nod and a wink from the ARU on their rubber stamp to come later. If others are being restrained from above then it could be more grist for the case against the ARU given, if their injunctions stand, the team will play on anyway.

So the ARU is effectively propping up the traditional teams because neither of the other 2 are certain of a start.
That should provide a basis for a case brought by whichever of the Force or Rebels survive: they will say we're in the hole now because you let continuing teams sign but stopped us so we aren't going to do as well and won't be able to attract sponsors etc etc.
Brilliant.

 

[TOCC]

I only know what I've read (or think I remember reading). Which was the freeze applied to all non-wallaby players in all teams. However, it seems this is another ARU farce …

​

​

It would seem the Tahs, Reds, … perhaps, are carrying on regardless with a nod and a wink from the ARU on their rubber stamp to come later. If others are being restrained from above then it could be more grist for the case against the ARU given, if their injunctions stand, the team will play on anyway.

And from rumours, Henry Hutchinson has all but agreed to join the Rebels in 2018.. The whole scenario is ridiculous

 

[RedsHappy]

I only know what I've read (or think I remember reading). Which was the freeze applied to all non-wallaby players in all teams. However, it seems this is another ARU farce …

THE Super Rugby downsizing saga is dragging on and on, and accordingly, so is the ARU’s contract freeze.​

​

We hear clubs and players are now doing plenty of business, however.​

​

Most clubs are not only negotiating with players and their agents, they’re signing letters of intent and chucking them in the top drawer.​

​

It’s all happening with the ARU’s knowledge.​

​

As a cosignatory to every Super Rugby contract, the ARU’s freeze effectively boils down to them not rubberstamping contracts. When the freeze lifts, they can expect plenty in the mail.​

​

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sp...l/news-story/dfc0631da651221165ac9358e1020114​

​

It would seem the Tahs, Reds, … perhaps, are carrying on regardless with a nod and a wink from the ARU on their rubber stamp to come later. If others are being restrained from above then it could be more grist for the case against the ARU given, if their injunctions stand, the team will play on anyway.

And, if true, what does all this say about the ARU core group's integrity, their business ethics, their culture?

 

[James Pettifer]

And, if true, what does all this say about the ARU core group's integrity, their business ethics, their culture?

I know this is a sensitive issue for many people, but an ethical organisation with a good culture would reacted very differently to the Beale / Patston controversy. In most organisations, what Beale did would have resulted in immediate firing even if it was his first offence. And it definitely wasn't his first offence.

 

[Twoilms]

^^^
fuck me i'm tired of hearing about Beale/Patston.

 

[Micheal]

I know this is a sensitive issue for many people, but an ethical organisation with a good culture would reacted very differently to the Beale / Patston controversy. In most organisations, what Beale did would have resulted in immediate firing even if it was his first offence. And it definitely wasn't his first offence.

I know for a fact big bad Billy P wanted to sack KB (Kurtley Beale) but, as any astute leadership would do in a sensitive situation with accusations of partisan treatment being thrown around, the ARU hired an independent panel to review the situation and the rest in history.

The KB (Kurtley Beale) incident opened up a can of worms, and not everything they eventuated can be pinned upon him.

Remember, Ewen didn't have to resign. He chose to, for specific reasons, and the burden of that decision rests with him.

Now for fuck sake can we never talk about it again.

 

[half]

Some concern on my part for posting or sorry copying the next bit. Especially as I have effectively walked away from Super Rugby and as many have gone back to watch park teams.

Also my reasonably well know hhhhmmm cough cough dislike for the suits that decide how to the run the professional event product aspect of our sport.

Also the wife and other such things.

I would like to contrast a little FFA & the ARU, FFA are having their own battles over control and governesses issues with the stakeholders wanting more say, control and more money.

I post this to contrast the difference place the two codes find themselves in at the Professional Event / Product level. Which in many ways sets up how the sport is seen by the great unwashed.

Our issue is what team to cut. Read this and wonder the only difference is the performance of the suits. One set of suits seems better. As I said one of many articles on this matter BTW. ARU are you getting the Reds prepared or going to in time sell Ballymore..

Lion's roar: Ever since the Roar license left the control of the Lions Club nine years ago, there's been a pretence that the connection no longer exists. But it does, and always will. Photo: Getty Images
Finally Brisbane Roar are going to have to face their future. I mean really face their future. And in doing so, as has been written in this space before, they'll need to come to terms with their past.

Football Federation Australia may be trying to keep a lid on expansion, but clearly no one is listening. There are now at least 10 bids to join the A-League in the public domain, three of them from Brisbane. Which is why the Roar need to clarify their identity, and their geography. Being the only team in town, indeed the only team in Queensland, is an easy out. But now there are others invading their space.

The catalyst has arrived with the pre-grand final launch of the Brisbane City bid, a club which clearly intends to celebrate its history, rather than ignore it. More on that later.

Ever since the Roar license left the control of the Lions Club nine years ago, there's been a pretence that the connection no longer exists. But it does, and always will. Sixty years ago, the club was formed by Dutch migrants as Hollandia. No amount of spin can bury that DNA. It's why the club wear orange, why they're called the Roar. Hollandia became Lions, who became the Roar. Ethnicity has nothing to do with it, heritage does.

Thankfully, sensibly, both parties have committed to celebrating the occasion.

John Ribot, the former Roar chairman who now controls the Lions Social Club at Richlands, told Fairfax Media recently: "All I know is there's certainly going to be a celebration of the 60th year ... it's being looked at at board level because they want to do something special."

Roar managing director Mark Kingsman is also planning a dinner, telling us at the start of the year: "You can't ignore your heritage, can you?"

Rapprochement? You'd like to think it's finally arrived. Having two separate gala events to celebrate the same occasion is clearly madness. After nine frosty years, maybe sanity will finally prevail.

Nick Meredith, a former Lions player (he even married the coach's daughter), is these days better known as a Fox Sports pundit, and he's hoping it will. "It's a great history, one to be proud of. What the Lions have built up over the years at Richlands [three football fields, including a mini-stadium, as part of a social club with 22,000 members] is the sort of base every A-League club dreams of. It makes so much sense for the two sides to come together again. What Brisbane City have shown within their bid is a mature attitude to the game's history. The Roar and the Lions need to do the same."

The history will provide identity. So then there's the question of geography. Brisbane is the largest metropolitan council in the country. It covers a staggering 1367 square kilometres. If the Brisbane City bid gets up it will be based at Ballymore. That's just 4.5km away from the Roar's home ground, Suncorp Stadium. Having two clubs sitting on top of each other helps neither.

Geography provides distinction, and tribalism. Another reason for the Roar to start thinking seriously about Richlands, where plans for a 14,500-seat stadium have been gathering dust, or perhaps even Ipswich, where North Ipswich Reserve is also due a substantial makeover. One club north of the river (Brisbane City) and one club for the south-west (Brisbane Roar). Makes sense?

This pre-supposes, of course, Brisbane City will win the race for the second license – ahead of less formulated bids from two other NPL clubs, Brisbane Strikers and Ipswich-based Western Pride. But until those bids reveal themselves, we can only say the Brisbane City bid looks impressive. Playing out of a refurbished Ballymore, which will involve improving transport links and providing innovative food and drinking options around the ground, is a good move. Connecting with Brisbane City, whose tidy boutique Spencer Park stadium is only 500 metres away, provides an equally important foundation. Both these factors bring down the cost base, something which can only help sustainability.

The material benefits of having a ready-made training base and a ready-made junior development program are clear. And then there's the value of identity. Founded by Italian migrants as Azzurri in 1952, there's been no attempt to hide that heritage in 2017. In fact it's a source of great strength, and pride, to bid chairman Rob Cavallucci. Good on him.

If you're thinking the future of the A-League in Brisbane has suddenly become a very fluid situation, you're right. How it pans out may partly be influenced by where longtime football backers Luxury Paints (owned by the Baradel brothers, who grew up at the Lions site and whose mother still lives there), and the Coffee Club, eventually park their cash. Either way one thing should now be abundantly clear to the only A-League club currently in town. Who are the Roar, and what do they stand for? Create something, or should that be re-create something. It's time to find out.

http://www.smh.com.au/sport/soccer/brisbane-roar-must-evolve-as-ffa-looks-to-expand-football-in-queensland-20170514-gw4fi2.html

 

[James Pettifer]

I know for a fact big bad Billy P wanted to sack KB (Kurtley Beale) but, as any astute leadership would do in a sensitive situation with accusations of partisan treatment being thrown around, the ARU hired an independent panel to review the situation and the rest in history.

The KB (Kurtley Beale) incident opened up a can of worms, and not everything they eventuated can be pinned upon him.

Remember, Ewen didn't have to resign. He chose to, for specific reasons, and the burden of that decision rests with him.

Now for fuck sake can we never talk about it again.

I think everyone would agree that the ARU handled the situation very poorly. It was an issue which only really involved a few people and became a complete nightmare from a PR perspective.

Are we surprised that when something more complex and having deeper impacts on Australian rugby comes up that they have no clue what they are doing?

It is now 5 weeks since the 48-72 hour period was announced. The Rebels may only have 2 home games left in their existence (the Force may have 4) and we have no idea what on earth is going on.

Rugby in Australia has done significant damage to itself over the past 5 years with a lot of the issues being around poor management and extremely poor public relations.

Surely it can't have been a surprise to them that the Rebels, Force, VRU and WARU would fight them tooth and nail over the culling of a team? Surely, they could have worked out that if you needed to sit someone done and explain to them for 5 minutes how the 18 team conference system worked that there was a problem? Surely you would look at how other codes have ensured the continued success of expansion teams?

Let's just all hope that out of this chaos some change can come to the ARU.

And yes, I am seriously sick of waiting for this debacle to end. If you are going to cull the Rebels, then get on with it and then we can mourn, move on and find something else to do with our time instead of following Rugby.

 

[Dave Beat]

Yes I would like to remain at 5 and build from the grass roots so we have foundations and depth in each of the provances.

Force Fans - is there a reason why the grass roots Pindan Cup has almost no posts in it?
http://www.greenandgoldrugby.com/community/threads/wa-pindan-premier-grade-2017.17467/

Do kids and players see that as a compeitition /pathway to Soup Rugby?
Do Soup players not in the matchday 23 play in that comp and get followed?

Asking this question becuase i know nothing about the comp, and i thought the rugby supporters in the west would be posting?

 

[kiap]

Force Fans - is there a reason why the grass roots Pindan Cup has almost no posts in it?
http://www.greenandgoldrugby.com/community/threads/wa-pindan-premier-grade-2017.17467/

Western Australian rugby fans have their own website.

It has been up and running for 12 years, i.e. longer than "Green and Gold Rugby"

Something, I suspect, with no equivalent in other states.

http://twf.com.au

 

[Dave Beat]

Western Australian rugby fans have their own website.

It has been up and running for 12 years, i.e. longer than "Green and Gold Rugby"

Something, I suspect, with no equivalent in other states.

http://twf.com.au

Cool thanks for that, will definately check it out

 

[kiap]

Long article from this weekend's Australian as this saga keeps dragging on.

snippet 1:

SANZAAR is ruining people’s lives with its deafening silence

The Australian 12:00AM May 13, 2017
WAYNE SMITH

… Make no mistake, SANZAAR is ruining people’s lives, the Australian Rugby Union is ruining lives. For the past month now, it has been the Western Force family … And then, abruptly, the ARU has simply lost interest and is not hectoring them anymore. It was like having a heartless landlord hammering on the door every day demanding overdue rent and then, suddenly, he is nowhere to be seen.

Why? Because now the ARU has found a new and potentially easier tenant to evict, the Melbourne Rebels. For months now, the Rebels have been told that they were impregnable, that they had an airtight contract and, besides, the owner wouldn’t sell the franchise if it meant closing down the Melbourne team. But now someone has lifted the lid, broken the seal and they have woken to find themselves contaminated. Does the ARU think there is no cost attached to this? Grown men and women are in tears.

The ARU prefers to act in secrecy to avoid having to tell lies. In fact, it has been both secretive and untruthful. It stated after its board meeting in February that it had not chosen “a fall guy”, a team to be axed in the event that SANZAAR decided — as it actually did in time — to trim Super Rugby from 18 teams to 15.

But at the SANZAAR gathering in London — don’t you wonder, by the by, how SANZAAR always manages to meet in supercool cities? — Australia reassured its joint venturers that it could divest itself of a team without major dramas. That was either code for the Western Force, which the ARU owned, or it was implicitly inferred. So the ARU either lied after its board meeting or it lied after London, take your pick …
​

snippet 2:

… Everyone is saying that Australian rugby is dying. My experience is that it is just the opposite. There is tremendous energy flowing through the club system and observe how closely the Wallabies draw for the 2019 Rugby World Cup was followed so closely. People are looking for a reason to get excited.

Right now, the body that should be channelling this energy, the body that indeed exists for no other reason, is short-circuiting it.

… One official I contacted about the national summit told me when he took office a couple of years ago that 14 separate papers were being prepared as part of a blueprint for Australian rugby. There had been enough talkfests, he indicated to me. I was flabbergasted … 14 papers prepared on the quiet. And I knew nothing about any of them! So I asked him what he had made of them. “Oh, I haven’t seen any of them yet.”

… The ARU is like a stately old mansion, too long shut up. It needs fresh air and clear heads. In short, it needs a clean-out
​

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/spo...e/news-story/35674cdbd0b02e935c264ebf97382c07

 

[Mr Doug]

"Cooper Cronk is too small to succeed in Rugby"!

I thought by posting this quote, I might unearth a comment or two.
Our mate 'Richo' was so impressed with Cooper Cronk when he was playing schoolboy Rugby Union, (at St Laurence,s College, South Brisbane), that he suggested to the Queensland Reds management that they should get young Mr Cronk's signature on a contract. The Reds told Richo that they considered Cronk was "too small to succeed in Rugby"!

 

[joeyjohnz]

​

… One official I contacted about the national summit told me when he took office a couple of years ago that 14 separate papers were being prepared as part of a blueprint for Australian rugby. There had been enough talkfests, he indicated to me. I was flabbergasted … 14 papers prepared on the quiet. And I knew nothing about any of them! So I asked him what he had made of them. “Oh, I haven’t seen any of them yet.”​

​

Talkfests behind closed doors. For the sake of transparency the ARU could release publish all 14 for feedback.

Maybe for the sake of transparency they could release a simple pie chart indicating where the unbudgeted $28 million was spent.

Maybe, for the sake of transparency the ARU could publish their internal findings/$estimates on what would happen if we tried to go it alone.

Maybe the ARU could take a leaf from Ireland/Wales/Scotland who have their own National provincial comp in addition to the Pro 12