Have to say though that if O’Neil has his way, ie if he returns to the fray that is fort fumble, he has always supported the idea of moving the Brumbies so it could very well be on the cards.

They would have to go by some other name however, ie totally dismantled and re invented which doesnt make alot of business sense given the huge brand the Brumbies have become both nationally and internationally.

You see the ACTRU own the intellectual property and the brand so the Brumbies will remain in the region even if that is only as a third tier player.

I reckon it is a sad indictment on the Australian rugby public and administrators that this sort of damaging inuendo continues to be touted. Sadly the fifth franchise is unlikely to come to fruition which does leave the ACT vulnerable. This was never going to happen to any of the other provinces and it is little wonder the best rugby province in the country has a seige mentality.

Melbourne should bugger off until they can truely show their worth in real terms. They would be lucky to attract a crowd of 12,000 and that in a pop of nearly 4 mill predominately PI or Kwi die hards as is seen at the Storm games.

The majority of Force members are from Saf or NZ as well. This says alot about the game in this country dont you think. The very strong rugby culture of this region would never recover from just being a feeder for AFL dominated Melbourne if they were superseeded by Vic. League and AFL would pounce given this opportunity.

Lets stop the rot once and for all and let the Brumbies and there very passionate faithful do what they do better than any other place in Australia. This sort of banter is extremely damaging to the game which has enough challenges without this sort of mischief making.

Just exactly which ‘bastards’ do you have on the run? Not this Nelly, you haven’t.

Having successfully stirred the pot, I have now lost interest in the topic.

When I read what’s happening at the ARU, & the neglect of the game at grassroots around the country, it doesn’t matter where the Brumbies are.

Some weeks ago, a workmate told me he was going to keep his sons (aged 9 & playing Rugby. He figured by the time they reached 20, so few people would be playing & following Rugby, that he sons stood a good chance of becoming Wallabies!!! Ha! Ha!

The game is in such a parlous state nationally, & let’s not kid ourselves otherwise, who knows, & while my workmate was being facetious, he could be just right on that!

Now we’ve got the b——s on the run.. let’s keep up the pressure. That’s what Rugby is all about., afterall..

By the way, I am an escapee from Sydney, became a Brumbies tragic in 1997, when I first got here, and saw how a place like Canberra embraced its team, and I just know that Melbourne would never do likewise. As I said in my first blog on this point, this should not happen, but could happen, because the current ARU administrators are dumb enough to do along with it.

Anyone who has been involved with Rugby at a grass roots level would probably wonder why we are even having this discussion.

I f the smiling faces were 2 cms from my eyes I would have missed them…..heavy night!

Changing the subject, ACT & Southern NSW Inland Rugby is a mouthful! If you had to come up with another name more inclusive of both areas, but shorter in title, what might it be?

Eastern Australia? Southern Cross? Monaro? Oxley? Riverina? Marlborough!!!?

Finally, I have an ally..,

Sheek you are basing your hypothesis on a false premise. It’s NOT WHAT’S GOOD FOR AUSTRALIAN RUGBY, at all.

The bottom line is that Victoria is a basket case, where Rugby is concerned. They have to find the way forward, and it is not in transplanting a successful franchise that has been successful for all of the right reasons

Nuff Said..

However, if I have raised a new line of discussion with my “Sheffield Shield” analogy, let’s get a new discussion thread going. What do you think, Zac and Zolton? If it’s a good idea, let’s elevate it to the main stream and get some of the journos onboard.

As for what’s best for Australian Rugby – that’s exactly my point. Fans that are committed to the best team, a province that has strong club culture (so strong that NSW won’t invite our clubs into their comps any more), highest per capita registration of players and attendance at games and business models that have served as the benchmark for all other provinces all adds up to deserving to be left alone.

Replication of the Brumbies (al la force) is what is good for Australian Rugby – not the pillaging of it.

that’s not sensitive – that’s just common sense!

cheers

Brumby Justin (Canberran born in NSW to NSW parents who live in QLD now

No need to be so sensitive. I’m merely looking at what might be best for AUSTRALIAN RUGBY. I don’t favour any one province over another.

I live in Sydney but support all provinces equally. If anything, having been born & raised in PNG, I usually adopt Queensland (although both parents are NSW born) as my home state because of its geographical, climate & lifestyle similarity to PNG.

If you read my previous email without being so sensitive, you might appreciate I’m trying to suggest what is best for Australian Rugby. Anyway, you should rest easy as it’s unlikely to happen (Brumbies moving to Melbourne).

If any franchise has to move to develop new markets if should clearly be one of the weakest and poorest performers (why move a good performer from an established market) – so feel free to commence the discussion about whether the Vic Reds or Vic Waratahs are the next new team …

The Brumbies are THE most successful Australian team in S12 and S14 history and their management fans and players should be treated with a bit more respect than just throw away lines about the team.

Can someone out there who’s good with numbers compare a Brumbies crowd of 18 – 20 000 in a town of 300 000 with a reds or Waratahs turn up of 25 000 in cities of millions and then tell me who had greater market penetration?

Also – the third party endorsement issue is a furphy – show me any player this season who has been lured to another province due to large dollar amounts who is single handedly taking his team to the top. It doesn’t happen because for every millionaire you need 14 others to win games. So rich provinces can keep doing these deals, but as they say in the classics – look at the scoreboard!

I sometimes think that what people call the Brumbies siege mentality is actually called teamwork – have a think about that

The sad part about all of this is that as the ARU is structured at Board level around supporting the QLD / NSW duopoly there is every chance that such a change could and will take place – and my prediction Victorian Brumbies will have even less soul and less success than the current Waratah and Reds squads (and that’s saying something).

Just some food for thought!

Why not move the Reds to Melbourne? The Brumbies get bigger crowds, even in years that they don’t make the finals.

Why not move the Force to Melbourne? The Brumbies get more coverage in their local media.

Why not move a Wallaby game to Canberra? The ACT has the largest number of registered players per capita in Australia.

Or

Why not just forget rugby union altogether if the ARU decides to ignore the ONLY place in Australia where Rugby is the number one sport. And it must be remembered that rugby has been the number one sport in Canberra since the start of the Super 12. Even before the Super 12 the ACT rugby comp had more registered senior players than the ACT league and Aussie rules combined. The Brumbies get more people to their trial games than the Raiders get to their regular season matches.

So lets stop this silly bantering every year about killing off rugby union by destroying the only Australian Super 14 franchise that is a proven success story. .

You mention a “Sheffield Shield” style national competition, which I would like to return to presently.

My support for the suggested moving of the Brumbies to Melbourne is based on the premise that there is unlikely to be any change in the current status quo structure of Australian Rugby for at least 10 years.

The way Australian Rugby is travelling at the moment, it’s impossible to envision a 5th Super Franchise within 10-15 years. The rapid acceleration of the game in the early 2000s, has plateaued, even stagnated. You could even say it’s hit a roadblock.

This being the case, it would make sense for the Brumbies to relocate to Melbourne, & have Australia’s 4 Super Franchises based in the country’s 4 largest cities/markets.

I have already given the reasons at the beginning (opening letter), but the advantage is that the ARU would have a ready made, successful brand with which to penetrate the difficult Melbourne/Victoria sports market.

So to summarise, I would only support the Brumbies going to Melbourne, in the unlikely event of no new franchise being created in the next 10-15 years.

This of course, would not mean Rugby being lost to Canberra. They would still be represented in the Australian Rugby Championships (ARC) & Australian Rugby Shield (ARS).

Now back to a Sheffield Shield style national competition. I have always believed this to be the way Australian Rugby should go. Structurally, it suits Rugby. NSW & Qld have engaged in inter-state competition since 1882. Victoria were a force in the 1930s. In recent times we have seen the emergence of ACT & WA.

Just because other sports have a national club based comp – AFL, NRL, NBL, FFA A-League, etc – doesn’t mean that Australian Rugby has to follow suit like sheep. Why not be unique, like Cricket?

I’ve often dreamed of a six team Australian Provincial championships (APC), comprising NSW, Qld, ACT, WA, Vic & SA. Down the track you could add Eastern Australia (Central Coast/Newcastle) & North Queensland (Townsville/Cairns).

Of course, I could say much more about this, but I will leave it here for the moment.

Getting back to victoria, I agrre they need to grow their own product, retain their own players, etc but like the South Melbourne Swans relocating to Sydney in 1982, homegrown talent needs a “beacon” at the top of the hill to aspire to.

In other words, a team established in a national comp, be it a Super Franchise, state/provincial, national club or otherwise. Then it’s sleeves up, & a lot of hardwork to develop the grassroots.

If any of you read the US or Canadian Rugby websites, you would see that they have finally got their administrative act together and are starting to grow the game faster.

Their secret, however, is that the penny finally dropped a few years ago and they have made a concerted effort to get into the schools, and win over the hearts and minds of the kids. The common theme is the “game for all shapes and sizes” aspect, as American football only wants huge athletic greyhound types at their upper levels. They also stress the camaraderie aspect and the community values – things that we seem to have forgotten about, since professionalism (unless, of course you are a pure amateur player or official in a suburban Rugby Club, or associated with Schoolboy Rugby).

Nobody in America would suggest that bringing in an established franchise Rugby team would suddenly be the panacea, and they have accepted that it is a long road, with much hard work to do, but you have to get in at the grassroots. Rugby League has been trying to crack that market for years, with zero success.

Rugby is not just about crowds at test matches.

Melbourne has had a strong and competent Rugby club competition for many years, (I have played in it), but it has largely been because expats from other states, or the islanders, or servicemen have been the mainstay of the system.

Good school boy players with any ambition have, understandably moved North, and the Victorian RU has done its absolute best in the AFL heartland, where “footy” is almost THE religion.

They would have been bitterly disappointed not to get the 4th Super Rugby franchise, but I was always convinced that that would go to Perth, because of their very strong expat English, South African and islander population, and the fact that it is a logical jumping off point for teams travelling to and from SA.

I reckon that the vote went WA’s way, in the end, because it was the safer bet, and the administrators were thinking – we can’t afford for this experiment to fail. Starting the Brumbies in Canberra was a fairly safe bet, comparatively speaking, but not so for the 4th side.

I have always said that we should have tried to establish a ‘Sheffield Shield” style competition with a team in every capital city and some of the larger regional centres. Yes, we would have had to move players around, but if it had been done years ago, we might now have a strong provincial competition, and not have to concern ourselves with that issue, but the two so-called strong Rugby states would not allow it to happen, because of the ridiculous notion that the Sydney grade competition was good enough.

It’s unfortunate for Victoria, but I think that it was the fact that it is the AFL heartland that worked against them – which just serves to reinforce the argument that you can’t solve this problem overnight, by transplanting a body that has happened to have succeeded somewhere else, probably for many reasons that don’t apply in the Victorian market.

The conclusion can only be that Victoria has to grow its own product, retain its own players, get Rugby into more schools, and junior clubs, have its own viable academy system, and win the hearts and minds of enough of the population to make it commercially viable.

I have run across the Victorian teams at the Junior levels, and they are great people who love their Rugby, their players are of a reasonable standard, and very committed, but they are the first ones to tell you how hard it is, and have no illusions about the job ahead.

I would suggest that Peter Jenkins or any other journalist, get down there and do some proper field research, before postulating theories that are shot full of holes.

The Brumbies currently have an average attendance of about 19000 people per game in a stadium that only has a capacity of 26000. A great record for a town that doesn’t have enough population.

Do any of you actually realise there are 300,000 people living in Canberra alone plus a township 10 minutes away in NSW called Queanbeyan with a further 60,000 people. Then within a 60 minute drive of Canberra you have another 60,000 to 70,000 people with the townships of Yass, Sutton, Gunning, Bungendore, Murrumbateman, Cooma, and Goulburn (takes you longer to drive from Parramatta to the Sydney Football stadium on Friday night). That is a population of 400,000.

How many rugby fans are there in Melbourne? Not many most of the international tests played there have 10,000 plus interstate visitors attend. Then there is another 10,000 people who would turn up to watch flies on a wall because Melbourne is so boring, 10,000 more who attend because its a test match, 10,000 because they haven’t seen a game of Rugby before and 10,000 actual rugby fans.

In actual fact you would struggle to get more than 10,000 people to Super 14 games each week in Melbourne that is half the number you get in Canberra.

Where are these current fans going to go to see a game of rugby if they move? To league that’s where.

Have any of you heard of the Canberra Raiders? They have been around for over 20 years and still have pleanty of money to pay player and coaches.

Instead of looking to plunder an existing franchise, why not just let the Melbourne team evolve into a franchise, that can then supply a team to Super Rugby competition in time?

That way you have the natural advantages of developing an academy, bringing on school programs, recruiting local talent, doing market research and getting a strong brand running, with merchandising set up and all that goes with it. I don’t believe that you can just transplant a team that easily.

Why should a strong and faithful region like the ACT be suddenly deprived of its franchise? As I said there are many reasons, not all of them to do with sponsorship of players at the top levels.

Many people would not realise that the Southern Inland Region of NSW (ie everywhere south of Canberra to the Victorian border is administered by the ACT Rugby Union and we have strong junior and senior participation from the region, with a first grade Premier competition team based in Wagga, who travel to and play in the Canberra competition

It is a very important area, that was historically, not being well looked after by NSWRU, and the presence of the Brumbies is very necessary to it.

Even the Junior representative competitions played every year in Sydney, now include a “Brumbies Provincial” side, made up of kids from the regions. They are not forgotten, and ACT Rugby takes a keen interest in them, at selection time, for the Academy and so on.

So, again, I make the point that it’s not all about sponsorship of top level players. There are many other valid reasons to have a strong franchise here, as well as in Melbourne, and developing the Melbourne APC franchise is the only way to go. Already, I am sure that the Victorian Rugby Union is moving down the path of establishing that franchise and doing what is commercially necessary. From there it is not a huge step to develop it into a Super Rugby franchise, once it begins to get some recognition from the locals

I would chip away at Melbourne with the APC then, in time, look for another team to come from here.

With all the bad press, Jnr player number actually went up last year. Surely in time we are looking for a 5th team?

I honestly think the lack of spark in Aussie Rugby at the moment is not to do with a 4th team spreading the players thin.

1.You mention QLD and NSW also missed the boat on Giteau, the point I was trying to make was at least they were in with a shot (at lease NSW anyway) the fact is, ACT cannot compete financially with the bigger franchises — my point is the Brumbies never had a chance of securing Gits unless he wanted to stay at home and take a massive pay cut. This will continue to happen: clubs with the most money (ie Tahs and Force currently) will continue to snatch up players.
It’s great you have a big sponser in CA but that pales in comparison to the third party deals that WA and NSW and potentially Victoria can conjure up (whether this is a good thing is debatable, I merely agrue ACT cannot compete financially).

2.You also mention there was nothing said in the papers about the Force midweek, if there is any news about the Force the West Australian reports it. On Mondays and Thursdays (both “midweek” days!) there are liftouts in the paper just on rugby. Also both the Sunday Times and The West have Force players/coaches writing columns. But if there is nothing to report WA has many other sporting teams/players to report on and there is limited space. The argument would be that ACT only has two sports sides (three if you occasionally count the Kangaroos) and there is much more opportunity to write many more articles to fill your papers back pages. Aside from that The Force has the biggest membership in Australia and also draws the biggest average crowds so there really is no point in bashing The Force.

3. Sure Victoria has a much more competetive sporting landscape, it also has over 10 times the population – surely developing the game in one of the strong sporting states would be beneficial longterm? Doesn’t it seem odd that the self-proclaimed “sporting capital of the world” have no provincial team? But I do agree on your point to see how it does in the APC, a luxury The Force did not have (and thankfully the risk has paid off!)

4. To say it is just some journo trying to get an edge is a little bitter, sure there are some biased journos (I would argue there is no real objectivity in journalism and never has been, but thats another point for another day) but the points made are relevant and not just anti-Brumbies.

Maybe the Brumbies should play a few games of S14 in Melbourne next season in conjunction with the new APC team forming and see if a parnership could be formed, that way the two unions can join forces and Victoria could act as a feeder union to ACT. There would also be more opportunity for sponsorship – that would be beneficial for both parties.

Feel free to argue these, just throwing it out there for some healthy debate!

But, the fact of the matter is the players coming out of Canberra over the last decade have grown thanks to the Brumbies. If the Burmbies up and leave I just worry that the ACT will return to a League dominated area. The Storm are doing nothing or very little in Vic to promote local comps and we will never get close to beating the AFL.

Look, I would love a team here but to me it makes more sense to keep winning over ACT kids and leave Melbourne to do what it can with the APC.

Every year about this time when the Waratahs are looking for some sort of edge over the Brumbies, some Sydney journo raises the spectre of the Brumbies moving to Melbourne.

I’m not saying it can’t happen, because ARU administrators are silly enough to go along with it, but I am saying it shouldn’t happen.

As Andrew Fagan (ACT Brumbies CEO) says we have a pretty good sponsorship base here in Canberra. Our major sponsor is a rather large international company CA.

We probably do as well in that arena as any of the other states. To sugges that we lost Giteau because of our financial ability is silly – Qld and NSW missed the boat on him, too!

David Campese in his column only today talked about the Brumbies siege mentality and questioned whether or not it is time to get over it. When you read articles like Jenkins’, is it any wonder that we all feel like that?

For those who have never been to Canberra Stadium and felt the atmosphere and the partisanship of the crowd, and the love that the population has for the Brumbies, come down and treat yourself to a great Rugby experience!! Who says we can’t attract crowds?

I was in WA last week and could not find one reference to Rugby, l(et alone the Western Force) in the local papers in the middle of the week. Everyone I spoke to the two days I was there had heard something about hte Western Force, but they couldnt really say what.

The bottom line is that if the Brumbies moved to Melbourne, they would suffer the same fate. They would be swallowed up and they would seriously be competing with the big boys of AFL for the sponsorship dollar. At least we don’t have that problem in Canberra.

Look what has happened with the Melbourne Force.

Let Victoria prove itself first, by seeing how it goes in the APC, for at least a couple of years and then start worrying about a Super 14 franchise. Walk before you crawl. Everything in Rugby is not about the almighty sponsorship dollar, you know.

My message to those journos – bugger off, leave the Brumbies alone and get on with writing something meaningful about your pathetic team, which is supposedly full of superstars., and ask yourself why a place like Canberra consistently breeds success, and also just how many Rugby stars have come out of Melbourne in recent years?

Rugby League State of Origin matches in melbourne have drawn good crowds as have the Bledisloe Tests but the Storm, despite good on-field performance, struggle to draw good crowds. Why would Brumbies S14 matches be any different?

Nothing I have read so far convinces me that a southern move would be a step in the right direction.