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Super Rugby might be the most important competition to Australian rugby, but it’s not given the attention it deserves.
I love Test rugby; it’s amazing theatre, ferocious rugby and it’s the biggest time of year for rugby to spend time in the media and casual fan’s eye.
The recent Lions tour has netted the ARU a great haul of money because of the travelling rugby fans from Britain and Ireland and the strong home support snapping up every available ticket to the Tests and most of the tour matches too.
The headlines of television news and many newspaper back pages were focused on the tour, speculating, highlighting and covering 4am fast food trips.
Truly the Wallabies were in the national spotlight like they rarely have been for a long time, and in general it is the Wallabies that capture that attention for rugby in Australia.
Yet Super Rugby carries most of the rugby calendar and is the backbone of the ARU’s year-on-year revenue.
It’s almost like Super Rugby is buried away on Foxtel to churn and churn through the weeks of smaller crowds and television audiences in order to fund the business Wallabies’ few weeks in the spotlight each June and August now.
In Sydney, a story about Israel Folau is probably the only Waratahs news that cuts through the media noise in the last 12 months. On a national scale a Kurtley Beale beer, a Quade Cooper bout and a James O’Connor multivitamin are the only other things that get much of a ripple.
Why is this?
I’d argue its because not enough people see Super Rugby. Not enough of the public have the option to follow the teams and therefore don’t recognise many of them or know how their nearest team is doing.
For that reason it’s simple math when the media outlets focus on other things rather than the Super Rugby teams. The stories wouldn’t resonate.
It’s not enough for rugby to rely on Super Rugby as the revenue-making machine that underpins the regular expenditure to get us to the next Wallabies event.
The Wallabies play about 12-14 games per year and only six or seven of those will ever be in Australia.
In a crowded sports calendar where recognition, live scores and player movements dominate the casual fan’s self-curated news feeds and timelines it’s simply not enough to rely on the Wallabies to be the only time rugby sits in the national view – six times per year.
There are five Super Rugby teams and each of those play eight home games per year in the current competition format, plus finals if they do well. That’s 40 high quality games of rugby each season that barely get a glance outside the diehard rugby circles.
On top of that each team plays another two games in New Zealand, a very sensible time-zone for Australian consumption, especially on a Saturday.
Rugby is a game of passion, of contrasting style and a sense of romanticism – be daring and take risk, or safe and ensure parity is a question to be answered on almost every possession.
Every year at Test time my mates remember how much they love rugby. The week before the Lions tour they all tuned in to see which Wallabies names they remember and get excited to see the men in gold again.
After the first match they were astonished by how good Israel Folau is at rugby. Shocked. Because they just hadn’t seen him yet this year.
And that’s what I’m getting at.
For all its flaws, trying to adapt to the professional era, rugby’s biggest problem right now is probably the fact it isn’t shown on free-to-air television.
Many rugby followers are quick to remind us how thankful we should be for the sustenance Fox Sports cheques have provided, which enabled Super Rugby to get off the ground and begin to flourish to the point of expanding.
However, it’s time for a new era of rugby in Australia. An era in which every Australian has Super Rugby in their lounge rooms, not just the 30% who put up with the bloated Foxtel subscriptions.
For rugby to capitalise on the profile of its best players there needs to be a week-to-week presence in the national conversation.
I know the television contracts aren’t up for renewal for a couple of years but I would urge both trying to find a way to make this happen before 2016 (the Wallabies games were intelligently moved around) and ensure the next round of negotiations end in favour of rugby being presented to the entire Australian populace.
It became more apparent than ever again during this successful Lions tour that many people who like rugby just aren’t able to see it.
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.