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The Crowd Says (20) | Page 1 of Comments

• Sam Taulelei said | November 26th 2007 @ 4:04pm | Report comment

  Makes good sense to me Sheek.

  All I would suggest is not to copy too closely what the NZRFU has done in restructuring the NPC comp this year. But your proposal is very similar to what the NPC resembled in the past as well as the Currie Cup competition.

  This may sound as heresy to some but I’ve always thought that at some stage in the future Australia and NZ should combine their provincial competitions as both countries face similar problems to varying degrees with player retention, crowd interest, sponsorship support, and television ratings.

  Australia has a larger market for businesses but a smaller market for rugby, NZ is the opposite and the annual diet of Super 14, Tri Nations, NPC and then end of season tours is leaving many fans overexposed to the same players, teams and style of rugby. The unhealthy focus on the top end of the game and enforced absence of All Blacks playing in the domestic competition is rendering the NPC to a second rate competition and rugby fans are voting with their feet.

  The prospect of playing different teams and in different conditions would inject some added bite to the proceedings for players on both sides of the Tasman as well as aid their development and experience in gaining a spot in a Super 14 side.

  With the number of teams that would be involved from Aus and NZ it could also be possible to run a comp with reduced teams and introduce a promotion relegation system after the first year of running. Those teams that finish outside the top (whatever magical number is decided upon) don’t participate in the main comp but in a parallel competition where the top two teams get to play off the bottom two teams for next years competition.

  I’m only shooting from the hip and there are many logistical, financial and prejudicial issues that would need to be discussed and resolved between both unions if an idea is ever to get off the ground. But of necessity is to establish an APC competition first.

  It provides the missing link in the ARU’s structure between the ARC and Super 14.

  Don’t know why this hasn’t been thought of before and raised for discussion, or maybe it has and I didn’t read it. Anyway I support your suggestion.

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• Sam Taulelei said | November 26th 2007 @ 4:07pm | Report comment

  Sorry my line should have read “larger market for businesses but currently a smaller section of the market for rugby”

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• Adam said | November 26th 2007 @ 5:31pm | Report comment

  I think its not a bad idea because having a one NSW team based in Eastern Sydney just wont work and having a Eastern Australian team based in Newcastle is a good idea. North Queensland is also a good idea because of similar reason why having one Queensland team wont work. A provincial competition is a great idea you can bring in new supporters for the simple fact they have a local team to support in South Australia we love all things South Australian hence the reason Rugby Union hasnt worked on a professional level cos there is no team to support and most people would rather drink battery acid than support a team from NSW etc.

  A great idea Bruce.

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• brad said | November 26th 2007 @ 6:23pm | Report comment

  Perhaps 8 teams is a bit much. In SA we have 8 teams and the team in 8th gets thrashed 90 points with crowds of only 3,000. Maybe a 6 team A section and 6 team B section would work better with promotion relegation. Most important for a provincial set up to work is that it needs to be an organisation from top to bottom with regular competition on an annual basis. In SA you have the opportunity to play provincial from Under 13 level. There are also established clubs and schools that feed the province so we all know the path to higher honours. The province is in charge of all rugby compettions and leagues. The Under 19 and Under 21 teams play a currie cup of their own avery year and this serves as an academy. Also some of the bigger clubs and universities have acadmies endorsed by SA rugby and the province. Basically each Province is its own union and money channeled form SA rugby is easier to distrubute.

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• Gatesy said | November 26th 2007 @ 7:16pm | Report comment

  Good on you, Sheek. We are finally getting some momentum into this discussion, and it dovetails into what I have been on about.

  However, just lately, if you look around at NZ and SA Rugby websites, there seem to be rumblings that the Air New Zealand Cup (NPC) and the Currie Cup are suffering. It seems to me that that is because of the superiority and the (unfortunate) timing of the Super 14 which, in fact, might be hurting the development of provincial Rugby.

  Thus, the solution is to keep forging ahead with provincial competitions, put the money there and use the Super 14 as a challenge tournament made up of, say the top 4 provinces in each years provincial comps, with maybe a presence from Argentina and Pacific Islands This allows it to retain its tribal flavour. Say a Super 16 or Super 20 played in a pool format so that it is a relatively short and sharp tournament, later in the year, progressing from the Provincial Comps, which then leads into Test season. SANZAR could then get into the running of the provincial side of things and maybe this is what saves provincial Rugby.

  So instead of having artificially created franchises, you have the State based sides (Waratahs, Brumbies, Reds, Force, Black Falcons, Kookaburras, Rebels, and Cane Cutters (!?)

  That way we are each following one team all the way through until the Test Season starts If the Super comp was much later in the year, this would give plenty of time for Club Rugby, so you might have something like: (only a raw suggestion and needs more thought)

  Clubs play a 12 week comp from mid Feb to mid May – Provincial kicks in in mid May to say late August, Super Rugby from late August to late September – break until Test Season in October. Players should still be able to get adequate downtime after Test Season, and those who don’t make the Test side are still playing regular football from late Jan (Club trials) through to late September. Seems pretty simple to me, and it means that the main grounds are not needed until late April, so no clashes with Cricket or AFL etc.

  It gets all the professionals back into their clubs for at least part of the club season, enables teams like the Barbarians to be able to plan fixtures and get players off, and hopefully gets that sense of identity back into the clubs.

  It is also a structure that fits with my earlier ramblings about structures.

  This is done in Europe with success and the spectre of promotion and relegation in the Super 12 ranks depending on your standing in the Provincial comp would ensure a keen contest in the provincial competitions.

  I agree with Sheek and his 8 team structure and wouldn’t see any difficulty in getting that going now, by simply transplanting two of the current ARc sides to Nth Qld and Adelaide.

  Vikings could be re-named the Brumbies if people felt strongly enough about that.

  Gatesy

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• westy said | November 26th 2007 @ 8:42pm | Report comment

  . Sam is right unless you get NZers you do not have enough quality players in Australia.Australian rugby has hardly enough quality players to cover 4 professional super 14 teams Their results this year spoke for themselves, Their depth is not good. They still could not compete with NZers resting their best players. Western forces players basically came from the previous 3 super 12 teams just ask the reds! To send a young guy to North Queensland or Melbourne for 16 weeks or more to live and pay for accomodation would require mimimum contracts of at least $70000 to get reasonable bottom rung players and compensate them for giving up employment .Several APC teams had discarded league players premier level not topliners. League’s new U/20′s competition will see some greater availability of over 20 NRL league players not picked up by NRL teams but even the Sydney based Jim Beam Cup will offer $50000 to$90000. and you do not have to move home. I am not saying your ideas have no merit but at this stage you would be looking at sponsor/s in the tens of million dollars. You need more than FREE and I mean free to air coverage on the ABC. PAY TV currently pays the ARU handsomely for the super 14 competition because of its international dimension. Despite protests to the contrary club rugby is poor athletically and a terrible tv spectacle.and the APC at the moment failed to attract ratings on the ABC. Did the ARU really pay the Abc’s production costs? I hope not.The ARU has enough problems with its own sponsor and channel 10 wont be back in a rush.

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• matty p said | November 27th 2007 @ 2:17am | Report comment

  You left out Tassie and NT. Maybe they don’t count much to you big state rah rahs but if you want to call yourself representative of the whole country, you need to a least indulge in some tokenism.

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• Scuub said | November 27th 2007 @ 6:18am | Report comment

  It is great to read some discussion on this issue guys. There has been so much media fan fare lately on the World Cup failures, ELV’s and the coaching saga’s the fact that professional domestic SH rugby is looking slightly terminal has been missed entirely!!

  Sheek, your comp idea has some great foundation points. We’ve both been singing off similar hymn sheets for a while now.
  Whether you call it APC or ARC is neither here nor there, the idea of more professional Aussie domestic teams and a more sustainable structure is the point that is most important.

  I guess my previous arguement against going with a ‘provincial comp’ was that I understood you to be suggesting one side from each state. However, the suggestion you’ve put forward is more how I envisaged it; operating teams with demand and population in mind. The NZ provincial teams include sides such as Tasman, North Harbour and Counties Manukau, which don’t represent a singular province. This is the same for a lot of the Currie Cup sides. Teams aren’t completely representative of a state defined boundary, but can include or disclude certain areas as best suits the competition.

  So now that you’ve clarified your posisiton on team distribution I realise that we were thinking the same think all along.
  Essentially you’re running a system similar to the ARC, but have leveraged off the goodwill from the Super14 sides.

  The Force, Brumbies, Reds and Waratahs are now household names with significant associative and commercial values. These should simply replace the existing ARC teams of the Spirit, Vikings, Tornadoes and Fleet respectively.

  The Rebels have given enough proof to justify remaining in existance. What they lack now is the presence that international level players bring to a teams exposure and media coverage.

  So there are 5 teams already. The question then remains, what do you do with the others? These could essentially be issues for another day. But the options are obvious enough to list:

  South Australia, Gold Coast, North Queensland, Central Coast, West Sydney, North Sydney, Newcastle.

  I agree that 8 teams seems like a good number to begin with so the viability of the available options could be determined at a later date. However, essentially you are still going to need to create some new team names etc like the ARC has tried to do.

  Now for the structure. Locally the ARC round robin with two local derby’s is a great setup. This could easily be adopted for any future comp. Globally the Super14 should be fundementally changed.

  The Super14 should become like the Heineken Cup in Europe and involve the same teams of each nations domestic competition. The Super games should be spread intermittently throughout the domestic season to provide variety to the fan and make the season really interesting. I think this would work better than setting the season into domestic blocks as the vaiation of competitions seems to work very well for the NH club comps.

  Fans then only have to follow the variosu exploits of one team and the players only have to play for one club. This would make for a much more tribal following and having more teams (than the current 4 Aussie Super sides) means more spread for rugby. Teams need to be more intimate with the fans than they currently are in the Super14, particularly in NZ and Sydney.

  I agree (just take a look at one of my previous posts) that the performance of sides in their respective domestic comp should determine who gets to play at each level of the global comp. This would add even more incentive to perform domestically. Plus it would add more drama to the season, thus increasing hype.

  The season would begin at the same time as current(mid-late Feb) with the opening rounds of the APC/ARC. After a few weeks of this we would have a couple of weekends of the international domestic comp (Super equivalent) before returning to regular APC games. This format would repeat through the season (split by the Tri-Nations and Pacific Nations Cup) before finishing in October with 2 sets of finals series, the APC finals and the Super finals. The rugby year would then conclude with the International test tour window in November.

  Ironically this would mean a switch back to the provincially named sides that used to grace the Super12.

  The South African Super14 teams would simply adopt their old Currie Cup identities.

  The Stormers = Western Province Stormers
  The Sharks = Natal Sharks
  The Cheetahs = Free State Cheetahs
  The Lions = Golden Lions
  The Bulls = The Blue Bulls

  Currently within the AirNZ Cup most provincial unions have already adopted teams names, like the Southland Stags, Hawkes Bay Magpies and Tasman Makos etc. However, 6 of the 14 Unions remain nameless. And 4 of these 6 are Super14 hosts. So the answer is simple! In the same sense as the Aussie Super14 names are retained by APC sides, the 5 NZ Super14 teams would be adopted by the 5 major unions who host them.

  The Blues and Auckland RFU = Auckland Blues
  The Chiefs and Waikato RFU = Waikato Chiefs
  The Crusaders and Canterbury RFU = Canterbury Crusaders
  The Highlanders and Otago RFU = Otago Highlanders

  The Wellington RFU are currently named the Wellington Lions, so have the choice to retain whichever identity they see as having the best brand awareness with their fanbase.

  Teams from the Japanese Top League and Pacific Rugby Cup could also take part in the new Super comp as the competitive level would be slightly lower, and the operaing cost would be also be lower.

  As you have said, each team would run an academy side and each player must be affiliated with a club. The only problem I see from having APC teams competing globally (and year round) is that this is when players who currently don’t make a Super team play for their local club. So essentially there would be no ARC players in the club grades, unless they are coming back from injury or are too young or old for the APC. But if a sustainable APC competition was created then more money could be channeled into club and grass roots rugby to help its growth and sustainability. But it would still be difficult to convince the fans of club rugby of this concept.

  To conclude, by having the same provincial sides taking part in the domestic comp and the Super comp, teams would attract more attention from the fans and media thus increasing sponsorship money. This would then reverse the trend of the Currie Cup and NPC where teams are becoming financially unsustainable. The household Super14 names would still be retained and the goodwill generated from the Super14 would not be lost. The season would also be refreshing (with new teams in the Super comp each year) and with teams having somehting new every few weeks.

  Finally, leading on from what Brad was saying regarding the Currie Cup, each domestic comp should install a salary cap to ensure that each team has equal chance of winning. Rather than the case of haves and have nots in the Currie Cup and old NPC. It works well in the NRL and in American sport and leads to an exciting competition for everyone involved.

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• brad said | November 27th 2007 @ 6:54pm | Report comment

  It was initially the NZRU who opted for regional franchises as opposed to provinces (Like it was in the Super 10). The reason was to ensure that all top players get to play in the major tournaments every year and also that they may return to their respective smalleer unions during the NPC thus keeping the domestic game strong. Christian Cullen did not always play for the Lions but still got to turn out for the hurricanes every year, were it not for the regional system he would have either not been noticed or just purchased by wellington much earlier thus robing the smaller unions of first class talent and diminishing the player base.

  If a super shake up is done then we would need a 2nd division competition as well, similar to the european cup. The teams can be divided into pools instead of one long round robin. What this would do is strejgthen local comps as teams will be fighting for “hemisphere compettion places” The SANZAR nations should also adopt a policy of allowing players that play in the southern hemisphere be eligible for their country. THat way Australia can stock up on some much needed key positions from NZ and SA.

  A major problem here is that the same teams end up winning all the time and they get to keep all the money. (wich is another reason the NZRU opted for regionalism) to combat this all the TV money and a large % of the gate takings should be pooled and evenly distributed amongst all the teams whether thaye came last in the currie cup or first in the NPC. THis would be very much like the NFL system where the league is bigger than individual clubs. Clubs are still free to procure their own sponsorship. The final should take place at an allocated venue every year (japan, buenos aries, melbourne etc). Australia NZ and SA should be allowed 4 teams each Argentina 2 teams and Japan 2 teams, divided into 4 pools of 4 thus the finalist will play 11 games (home and away pool games, quarters and semis and 1 final). In order to encourage people to watch the cup games they should be scheduled on alternate weekends. The cup should comprise 3 teams from NZ, AUS and Sa 2 teams from ARG, japan and 1 each from Fiji, Samoa and Tonga. Prize money should be distributed to the players that way the union does not get richer from prize money but players still have a huge incentive and passion. advertising money etc distributed as mentioned before.

  We all agree that the Super 14 is really boring but geting to see our team playing against oversees teams is still good. THe only thing stoping a heineken cup type structure is the money distribution and quality game time. does anybody have rupert murdochs e-mail?

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• Scuub said | November 28th 2007 @ 6:11am | Report comment

  Brad,

  I agree on the 2nd Div comp also. I actually outlined something very similar to what yo have talked about a couple of months ago and got some good feedback from Sheek, but not many others (I think I came too late to the thread).

  A few points of difference:

  6 teams per pool. 4 Pools. 24 Teams (so 48 team competing across the 2 levels of the comp).

  Teams play each other team in their pool home and away. Thats 5 home games and 5 away games. So 10 games minimum.

  With only 4 teams per pool you would only play 6 round robin games each. These international club games would be the big money earners (as they currently are with the Super14) so you want as many as possible, without overcrowding the season for players.

  If all domestic comps had realistic salary caps in place then the teams winning these comps (and thus the teams qualifying for the top international comp) would change each year. Each team would have its share or marquee players to attract fans and sponsors.

  I haven’t yet calculated Argentina into any comp, as they continue to reneg on the proposed plans for introducing professionalism (and continue to forfeit over 2million pounds designated by the IRB for this purpose!!).

  But I see the rest as follows:

  Australian Provincial Championship = 8 teams total

  Top 6 teams go into Super Cup (top level competition)
  Bottom 2 go into Super Shield (next level competition)

  Air New Zealand Cup = 14 teams

  Top 6 teams go into Super Cup (top level competition)
  Bottom 8 go into Super Shield (next level competition)

  Currie Cup = 14 teams

  Top 6 teams go into Super Cup (top level competition)
  Next 6 go into Super Shield (next level competition)
  Bottom 2 play exhibition matches against other African based club teams (Namibia, Zimbabwe, Kenya)

  Japanese Top League = 14 teams

  Top 3 teams go into Super Cup (top level competition)
  Next 6 go into Super Shield (next level competition)
  Bottom 6 play exhibition matches against other Asian based club teams (Korea, Hong Kong, China)

  Pacific Rugby Cup = 6 teams

  Top 3 teams go into Super Cup (top level competition)
  Bottom 3 go into Super Shield (next level competition)

  Pay TV is the largest revenue source for a pro team. If the total money for both the Super Cup and Super Shield were evenly distributed between all teams involved (and salary caps were in place) then a situation where the same teams win each year should not happen. Teams would then be more profitable if they could attract more sponsorship money and bigger gate takings. However, revenue sharing for gate takings could be another tool to keep the financial ledgers even.

  Teams from Argentinas top 16 team club comp ‘Union Argentina de Rugby’ could be added to the equation at a later date, depending if these sides could emerge as serious professional rugby entities. This would mean a reduction in representation for the 3 Sanzar nations.

  Also, it is likely that the 3 Pacific Island nations would not be able to field two financially viable teams each. This might see a reduction to one team from each Nation, making room for more Argentinean involvement.

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