Monday’s Rugby News has details regarding Sanzaar’s corporate speak presser, RUPA’s presser, Matt Hodgson’s teary presser, as well as some good news from the Hong Kong Sevens.
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Sanzaar Sez
You possibly might have heard that Sanzaar have made a statement about what’s gonna be happening with Super. You can check out Rugby Reginald’s post on the issue over here, but for the shortsies, here’s the gist of it:
- There will be 15 teams
- 1 Australian team will go, 2 from South Africa
- 3 conferences x 5 teams
- Aus conference = 4 Aus teams + Sunwolves
- SA conference = 4 SA teams + Jaguares
- Back to having home & away domestic derbies (i.e. TWO Tahs v Reds games)
- Teams will play other conference teams twice, plus four each of the other confs.
- Thats 8x domestic + 8x inter-conf.
- Finals will be 8 teams; 3 conf winners + next best 5 teams overall
- Silver lining: Now Sunwolves in Aus conf., Aus teams will have 2 more wins every year.
If you want more early morning goss, Greg Growden has it for you over at ESPN.
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Hodgo Sad
Matt Hodgson has teared up in the post-match presser, after his side edge the Kings in a 12-try game 46-41.
You can check out the (unembeddable) video here.
“Being a parent myself, you don’t know where to put your kid now,” Hodgson said. “Do I put him in rugby or stay in Western Australia playing AFL?
“So it’s frustrating and I think the way it’s been done is probably the most annoying thing, it’s dragged on.
“I’ve done four press conferences this week and had one rugby question and that’s annoying.
“For kids to turn up here, it’s great but now they don’t know if Western Force is going to be their future.”
“My life’s here. It gave me my opportunity, I probably wouldn’t have played Super Rugby if the Force didn’t turn up.
“I’m lucky enough that they’ve given me 130-odd caps now and I’ve set up my life here.
“But, more important than that, I go back to when I first came over, doing rugby clinics for young kids — now I’m playing alongside them.
“Now they don’t have that opportunity if we’re gone. So it’s going to be disappointing.
“They’re either going to be going east coast or overseas earlier, or they’ll pick up another code.
“I think that’s the worst thing, like Dave (Wessels) said — if it’s not us (that is cut), we won’t be celebrating because it’s bad for Australian rugby, full stop.
“We call rugby the global game and if we can’t even get it throughout all of Australia, it becomes frustrating.”
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RUPA sez
Understandably, RUPA aren’t too happy about the impending loss of one Aussie team. You can check out Rugby Nicolas’ post on the issue over here.
“Having signed Australian Rugby up to a competition which reduced local content, diluted tribalism and disrespected fans with its lack of integrity, ARU have now agreed to a new model which has protected the expansion teams in Argentina and Japan at the cost of one of our own,” said the statement in part.
“Despite receiving $30 million of additional annual broadcast revenue from 2016, the financial challenges of Australian Rugby will likely be used to justify today’s short-sighted and ill-conceived decision which will limit the growth of Rugby in Australia for generations to come.”
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Honkers 7s
There’s some good news for Australian rugby, with the 7s lads winning bronze in Hong Kong last night. They overcame upstarts USA 26-19.
Andy Friend’s charges, uh, charged out of their pool, smashing Samoa, South Korea and England in the group stage, before rolling Argentina over in the quarter-final.
The quarter-finals is where they came unstuck, Fiji beating the Aussies 33-12. That was ok though, because Fiji went on to win the thing, beating South Africa 22-0.
Meanwhile, the Kiwis beat Argentina to 5th place, with England and Canada coming 7th and 8th, respectively. Scotland also pipped Japan in the Trophy Final (aka 9th-place playoff).
BUT WAIT that’s not all.
In the concurrent qualifying competition, which features nations as varied as Guyana, Uruguay, Uganda, and Papua New Guinea, Spain beat GAGR’s own Germany in the final. That means Spain will be a ‘core nation’ in next year’s World Sevens Series, giving them a place at every leg of the series next season.
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