Three simple facts say Australian rugby is on the up

 
gatesy Roar Guru

By gatesy, 19 Aug 2009 gatesy is a Roar Guru

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Three seemingly unrelated events have occurred recently. You might find this fanciful, but when I connect the dots, it becomes interesting.

First, the most apparently insignificant of the three, at first glance at least, was that the final of the Australian Schoolboys Championships was played recently between Queensland (nothing unusual there) and Combined States! Not NSW as is usually the case.

While Queensland won, Combined States put up a pretty good show.

What does this mean?

Maybe it means that rugby is beginning to even itself out around the states a little bit at the rookie level. There is no question that the strength of the game at schoolboy level still lies with the Brisbane and Sydney GPS schools. But perhaps the field is coming back a little.

Queensland can consistently win at that level, but then they lose those guys – a classic example is Matt Toomua, who I rate as the best young prospect in Australia.

How Queensland let him get away beggars belief!

The second thing? NZRU blocked Taranaki’s bid for inclusion in the Super 15.

No real surprise there, but to me, that says that NZRU is finally admitting that NZ Rugby has limitations in terms of player numbers and dollars.

The third? O’Regan Hoskins (chairman of SANZAR, but a South African official) proposes that the Southern Kings and the Victorian franchise merge.

Really? Is that a sign that the South African franchise is clinging to the wreckage?

The Victorians have only been trying to break into the main game for about a hundred years. They have some fairly heavyweight people on board, and if the three bidders do get together, then you would have to think that it’s a lay down misere that the bid will come first, with daylight a distant second.

And without any help from South Africa, which will be neither needed nor asked for.

You can just imagine how the Vic boys would welcome a merger with a bunch of South Africans after all that they have been trying to achieve, particularly when you see how poorly at least three of the five South African franchises have performed over the last few years.

What possible advantage would there be to Victoria to merge with the Southern Kings – does anyone even know where they are from?

I’m guessing that the Victorian ethos is “full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes!”

So what do my three seemingly unrelated facts have in common?

Well, I believe that, taken together, they show that Australian rugby is on the improve and that New Zealand South African rugby are “flat-lining”.

There are some that might say, “but look at how dominant the Boks currently are.”

But to them I say, Super Rugby is not Test standard rugby and it is hardly relevant – particularly when you consider that the re-vamped format of Super 15 (the conferences) will even out the challenges that are currently experienced with the demands of the travel that currently are in place with Super 14.

That the boys from the Combined States have brought competition to the ‘guns’ shows me that the standards are rising. Ergo, the available pool, in the next five to ten years will grow.

In Australia, we suffer from the malaise of “we need to get it perfect from the starting gun”. If that is the case, you will never get it right.

So what if we don’t always have all Australian teams in the finals. We may have none for a year or three (though I doubt it with the way the Brumbies are looking for next year). But even if we don’t, we need to see it as an investment in developing our game.

Every businessman understands investing in your business – there is always a bit of a penalty, but that doesn’t stop people from taking the gamble.

There is probably no question that from a sponsorship, media and professionalism standpoint, Melbourne (Victoria) can pull off what most other franchises could not.

No problems there.

So we jump across the precipice, we back ourselves and in a few years we see the rewards. Lots of winning teams (maybe even the Waratahs can fluke a title, eventually!)

What does everyone else think?

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