But to be brutally honest SA also have a hidden lack of depth in their ranks. Just look at the last SA ‘B’ teams performance last week when they were flogged by an English club team without their key players!

And another strong point to support this is that since 2002 there have always been 3 SA Super teams in the bottom five in the Super 14/12 table with the exception of one year, 2004. Another SA team would have just added to the wooden spoon comp.

The only reason their was such a push in SA is because their is a polital push to have an indiginous team in the fold, and without the 6th slot they now have to look at dropping the cheetahs or lions from the super comp.

Australia now have the 5th Super team. It is time to move on and for all Aussie rugby fans to support our new franchise.

Back to the point of this article, I long for an Aussie national comp. SA and NZ national comps have the tradition and support becasue they were started and they developed.

In short, you need to start a national comp to start tradition.

By the way, SA will lose to France this weekend!

February to September, with the hope of a final series involving 2 or more Australian teams would be fitting … yes I know our SA and NZ cousins will be wanting their teams to feature .. and I understand that maybe the SA bid was better in some respects BUT the bottom line with this competition is $$$ and the Melbourne bid brought a lot more dollars to SANZAR.

Junior Squads / Academies as “curtain-raiser’ don’t always bring in the punters but a mixture of competition teams do: see “NSW Suburban v NSW Country” for some great ‘grass-roots’ rugby at the SFS (I think it’s prior to the Hurricanes game in 2010).

It is the last of these that may prove interesting. Bring in outside money and you can expect that the teams will be pushed towards generating a return, or at least minimising losses. Investor interests will also come to the fore with respect to not risking their investment (ultimately, the players) in amateur matches that generate no return for the team. But the non-Wallaby players will require playing and development opportunities, so I’d expect to see an increase in the sort of sponsored tours that the Force and Brumbies have taken over the last couple of years. Another possibility is that, if it cheaper for others to tour here than the other way round, each Super team might sponsor a touring side that then plays the circuit and maybe a regional match against Aus A. If you got a good mix of club sides and developing international sides, it could prove quite watchable. It wouldn’t broaden the rugby base, but then neither would any competition between academy sides (especially when lists are being shrunk rather than grown). But if it generated money, or at least didn’t cost any, it would at least tick one of the boxes. One thing is certain – you don’t sell more tickets or generate any money at all from curtain raisers.

Now where are those smiley faces, & how do you get them up………………..

What people need to remember is, because of the large number of internationals the wallabies play every year, the ARC was a genuine 3rd grade national comp. No other ball code in Australia has national level comp….Sure the Saffers and the Kiwis do, but in those countries the national comp has tradition, no real competition and less travel.

Lets all be positive and believe in the talent that is coming through, it may take some time but for us to move forward as a rugby nation we need to establish lines of recruitment which at present are very limited.

If the reports are right and the ARU are talking about allowing up to 10 foriegn players to join the Melbourne team. The ARU then is really saying it is all too hard. It is also interesting the names that came up, the cost of signing these names would pay for a national comp easily.

It also reads that the ARU are going to be the ones to buy players for the new team and not the coach or the melborne organisation and also talks about raiding the ARL. Haven’t we been down that path, history would say that the ARU ability to negotiate contracts and players doesn’t get me too excited.