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Rugby has been through two huge transition periods – television in 1956, and professionalism in 1996.
The advent of television in amateur rugby was massively beneficial, especially at grassroots level.
With ABCTV covering the club match-of-the-day and eventually Sydney, NSW, and Wallaby games, rugby started to make some inroads into rugby league which had the vast majority of press and radio coverage beforehand.
Commentators Norman May, Cyril Towers, and Trevor Allan became household names as rugby lifted its following, and image.
Club players, who were just names in print, or on radio, became recognised in the street, thanks to TV.
It was a whole new ball-game for rugby at grassroots level, especially when commercial television realised the code’s potential
Gordon Bray became the voice of rugby, calling the first of his 350-plus internationals on the ABC in 1976, before long stints on Channels 10 and 7.
I had a couple of years with Rex Mossop and Norman Tasker on 7. Club rugby was thriving, the passion was there and with only a dozen rep games a season for Sydney, NSW, and the Wallabies, where those selected had to get time off from work to play.
Then it all went wrong.
The advent of professionalism was so badly handled the elite players benefited, but grassroots rugby has been slaughtered in the process.
This is all about grassroots rugby, the lifeblood of the 15-man code. The breeding ground for tomorrow’s Wallabies.
The big mistake was allowing club rugby to go professional as well. Even the subbies are paying many of their players ridiculous sums, just to compete with no mileage to earn a return.
The upshot of that madness? Just about every first division club is on the brink of being broke, and the same applies to the subbies who made the fatal mistake to pay any player.
It’s a lot of chook raffles.
There’s no way out, unless the ARU bails them out.
And there are two ways to do that, only one workable. Either prop up the ailing clubs financially, which the ARU cannot afford, it’s only bandaging over the problem.
Or pay out current player contracts and return club and subbies rugby to amateur status forever.
That will work. But there’s no-one with the bottle to bite the bullet.
The ARU already pays the ABC to cover club rugby on a weekly basis. That in itself is a clear indication nobody in authority gives a stuff about the grassroots.
But they had better give a stuff, and swiftly, or tomorrow’s Super teams, and therefore the Wallabies, will have to look directly to the school system and that smacks of disaster.
What is lacking in the current Australian franchises and therefore the Wallabies is the discipline of being employed 9 to 5 five days a week as a club player, train on Tuesday and Thursday night, play on Saturday, and nurse a hangover on Sunday.
But it’s the work ethic that is so important – the discipline.
None of the current Wallabies have ever had a job. They sleep in, train, and eventually play. Just about every minute of their waking hours are organised for them. They are rugby robots, and often play just like that.
So bite the bullet ARU. Return club and subbie rugby to amateurism, and reap the return.
Either grassroots rugby will die, or the code wither on the vine.