How do we grow the mid-tier of rugby? We have this ARC discussion every couple of years. It’s dead and buried and best left where it lays, unfortunately.
I used to espouse the ‘build it and they will come’ idea, but now I think it is a lot simpler than that. It requires evolution. Or to put it another way, ‘back to the future.’
Take the existing structures and simplify them – as I have argued for years, let other countries worry about how they are going to get stronger. We can’t change the world, but we can change our patch.
The trouble with these grand ideas that we all have is that you need to have ten Clive Palmers to fund them, and that usually doesn’t last when they realise they’re getting nothing back for their investment. Look at football.
I’ve said it every year on this site. Cricket has the right structure – the Sheffield Shield with one team per state (every state without exception), one central body, everything filtering down from the top. Not a bunch of city- or state-based unions all trying to be the biggest gorilla in the zoo.
National competitions bring sponsors with a national focus, but it has to be a fair dinkum national competition.
There are just about enough quality players here and overseas, including recent schoolboys and under-20s , to form the requisite number of teams, even if you have to have a draft system.
OK, if Tassie doesn’t want to be in it, invite Australian Services in or an indigenous side, or have a President’s XV made up of promising players, or an Emerging XV or an AIS team, or a Barbarians side, coming from anywhere and everywhere (and I know that Johnno and the other Baa-Baa’s guys would love that concept).
State pride comes naturally to everyone, manufacturing teams with artificial names, doesn’t. So if you want Rams, have them as a sponsor.
Take the teams, give them novel names like New South Wales, The ACT, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania (OK, let them have their nicknames), then filter that down to the existing clubs, where there is ready-made loyalty.
Think about it, the Sydney clubs have names like Randwick and I bet that there are just as many people calling them Randwick as there are the Wicks or the Greens or the Galloping Greens.
Did someone manufacture the Rats for Warringah, or did it just kind of surface over time. Of course, West Harbour should really be called the Rats, after stealing the Pirates moniker from my beloved Norths, but that’s another story for the folklore archives. The Shoremen will do us for now.
So let’s make the Premier clubs pay for the privilege of being Premier clubs – force them to have academies, put the subbies structure under the Premier structure again, based on geographical lines. Top to bottom, no deviations.
Keep the schools rugby system apart from the junior clubs and give the kids a chance to play for their school on Saturday and their local club on a Sunday. I know that happens in some cities, but not all.
In my home town, Canberra, it’s rugby on Saturday and league on Sunday – lousy choice, if you ask me – and all the time, AFL is quietly making its inroads.
I don’t have a problem in keeping the clubs mostly amateur – intersperse the mid-tier (Sheffield Shield-like competition) throughout the regular club season.
The clubs should be happy to lose their rep players every now and then to the state team – just like it was in the good old days (and they were good old days).
We proudly went along to a State game, knowing that one or two of our club mates were running out for the New South Wales Waratahs (I don’t think we called them Tahs, back then). Then the next week we were having a beer with them back at the club, talking about the game.
Have ye weekends so that we can all go to the SCG (I know – I’m reminiscing) for a Saturday arvo like they used to be. Oh, those Moore Park pubs, arriving at the ground just in time for the kick off, back to the pub after the game, meeting your mates! Dinner in Paddo, pub crawl – The Clock, The Dolphin, et al (haven’t seen Al in years).
Every time we went to a Test you’d run into blokes from Brisbane that were mates of mates, and always lots of blokes in kilts with funny accents, probably lawyers from the eastern suburbs who didn’t get many chances to wear a dress outside the house.
Is there a better way to spend a Saturday in winter?
You could weight it so that many of the games were played after the Super Rugby season, so that you do have your non-Test stars playing – leave the Test level stuff to the elite guys and make sure that all games are able to be fitted in, together, in a co-ordinated way.
This is all about making the mid-tier stronger – we need to get used to the concept that this will be a tier that will produce a lot of good, but not good enough players – just like in the clubs, if you have depth right down through the grades, you make your top grades stronger.
Why did the Sydney clubs get rid of 5th and 6th grades – they weren’t hurting anyone, just adding to the fabric of the game, and the richness of the clubs’ figurative tapestries!
You would still have your Test Season. In Rugby World Cup years, dispense with the Tri-Nations and play invitational games (don’t like the term “friendlies”) and involve the Barbarians a lot more than they are. They’re being wasted!
The cricket clubs are used to the idea that they are not going to have their superstars around very much. Yes, admittedly a lot of Sheffield Shield Cricket is played mid-week in almost empty stadiums, but that doesn’t seem to bother anyone.
Wouldn’t happen in our game, anyway. Besides, if you play mid-week in an empty stadium the TV stations are bound to turn up, if only out of sheer curiousity.
Let’s try a few things, such as the odd mid-week game – I remember going to a mid-week Sydney versus All Blacks game at Penrith Panthers Stadium in the early 90s. Not a huge crowd, but a good game and a good night out, and a great venue.
The Sydney team was packed with future Wallabies, such as Tuynman, Farr-Jones and others (must have been a lead up to the ’91 World Cup, but my memory is hazy on that). Probably a valuable hit-out for both sides and if memory serves, it didn’t even make the late news.
So what?
It was a legitimate attempt to get rugby out into the western suburbs. These days we only pay lip service to that concept. I hope the re-birth of the SRU makes some more of those bold moves.
Professionalism is making our enjoyment of our game sterile. We go to games now as though it was a night out at the movies. The atmosphere is manufactured, you can’t have a beer with the players after the game like you used to.
There isn’t a rugby club within a bull’s roar of the bigger stadiums and the games are at night, when you can’t drive and drink, so by the time you get out of the stadium (we used to call it ‘the ground’) your only job is to get home without being breathalysed or getting mugged on the bus.
Even if we did half the things that I am espousing, it wouldn’t be a return to the bad old days, because they are, happily, behind us. TV does like us a lot more than it did twenty years ago.
Yes, of course professionalism has moved that along, but it has also moved so fast that it has left a vacuum for that mid-tier to flourish in.
So why not go back to the future?
Join The Roar rugby editor Christy Doran, former Wallaby Matt Toomua and a cast of regular and special guests as they look at the biggest issues in the game on The Roar Rugby Podcast. If you’re looking for great odds on the next game check out Aussie bookmaker PlayUp. Chances are you’re about to lose. Set a deposit limit.
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