SANZAR finally gets it right on Melbourne

 
Spiro Zavos Columnist

By , 13 Nov 2009 Spiro Zavos is a Roar Expert

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AAP Image/Tracey Nearmy - Managing Director and CEO of Australian Rugby John O'Neill

AAP Image/Tracey Nearmy - Managing Director and CEO of Australian Rugby John O'Neill

The Expert Determination Panel, otherwise known as Barry Paterson QC, a former New Zealand High Court judge, and David Kirk, former All Black captain, lived up to its grandiose title in allocating the fifth Australian Super Rugby to Melbourne.

The decision was a determined one, in that the madcap South African bid was rejected, and it was expert in that the rejection was based on the economics and shape of the Super Rugby format.

The three SANZAR countries – Australia, South Africa and New Zealand – now have five franchises, which allows plenty of local derbies in the new Super 15 format that comes into play in 2011, and at least two home matches in each country each week.

The EDP calculated that there would be a direct loss to SANZAR of at least $500,000 with the Southern Kings in the Super 15. On top of this, it would be impossible to conduct the second round of home and away local matches with South Africa having six teams and Australia with only four teams.

The EDP tried to massage the bruised egos of the South African rugby authorities by pointing out the excellence of its business model. But the harsh fact is that the Southern Kings, playing out of Port Elizabeth, are a political entity.

The team played well enough against the British and Irish Lions. But it does not compete in the top tier of the Currie Cup.

With the dismal performance of the weaker South African sides in Super Rugby, it made no sense to put another very weak South African side into the tournament.

If the ANC is so determined to have a rainbow coalition team in Super Rugby, it should have coerced SARU to take, say, the poorly performing Lions out of the tournament and replace it with a politically correct, if rugby inept, side.

The argument will be made that Australian teams have, in general, performed as poorly as some of the South African sides. This is true, to a certain extent.

But there are 100 Australians playing professional rugby out of Australia. A number of these players should be enticed back to Australia.

Moreover, the current Super Rugby squads in Australia are larger than the ones in South Africa and New Zealand. If, say, squad numbers in Australia were reduced to 27, the New Zealand number, then Melbourne could pick up up to 10 Super Rugby players immediately.

There are, too, a number of good rugby players in the Sydney premiership who can’t make the current squads.

Some of these players would be great for Melbourne, a city that is handy to Sydney, so that players going to it from NSW or Queensland would not have to cope with the oppression of distance that is inflicted with a shift to Perth and the Western Force.

John O’Neill has also foreshadowed the possibility of relaxing the restrictions on imported players to allow for ten rather than two imports. The imports would come from Argentina, Fiji, Samoa and Tonga, to develop their players closer to home than Europe.

Providing the Melbourne franchise gets a good coach, and Rod Macqueen who is involved in one of the bids should be used to ensure this, I think that the team could be a strong one, like its rugby league counterparts.

There is a healthy rugby union culture in Melbourne, where the game has been played for 100 years. Rugby union is played in a number of the elite schools.

There is a keen senior competition.

In the 1930s, in fact, Victoria defeated NSW with the great ‘Weary’ Dunlop, later a Wallaby, leading the way in the forwards. A game between the Western Force and Canterbury Crusaders, the Force’s first outing, drew a crowd of 12,000 plus at Olympic Park on a wet night.

And when the new rectangular stadium is built for football, rugby league and rugby union, I would expect large crowds for the Super Rugby matches.

This has been an annus horribilis for Australian rugby. But bad things, like good things, tend to come to an end.

The Wallabies have defeated England, which is always something to be savoured. Now the new Super Rugby tournament is in place, which will give Australian players (and supporters) the season-long they need, with the first round-robin Super Rugby matches to form one section of the season, then the June/July Tests, followed by the home and away local Super Rugby derbies, then the finals, with six teams and at least one from each country, and finishing with the European tour, except in Rugby World Cup year.

More and more rugby, in other words.

Meanwhile the name of the new Melbourne franchise needs to be created. Some Roarers have suggested the Melbourne Barbarians, a name that might run into copyright problems.

I like the idea of a Melbourne Harlequins. It is has an English resonance (as in the Harlequins playing in London) that should appeal to Melbourians.

So bring on the Melbourne Harlequins!

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