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It’s fitting that one of the new super Rugby franchises comes from Japan, home of the renowned city-wrecking monster Godzilla.
With franchises covering an area equal to half the planet and awkwardly structured conferences, Super Rugby is fast becoming a monster movie all of its own making, with a big ‘don’t care’ factor (I am specifically talking from an Australian viewpoint here) for matches involving non-domestic teams.
Rugby in Australia operates in a crowded market, yet it is the only major sport in the country without a national competition. Unless of course you count the NRC, which is more of a mini-tournament for second-stringers using questionable rules.
My suggestion would do away with the need for the NRC.
Football Federation Australia got its act together about ten years ago and created the successful A-League, and Cricket Australia’s Big Bash League is going gangbusters, with crowds topping 25,000 per game.
My idea is for Australia to pull out of Super Rugby and create its own national competition.
There would be eight teams, with three full rounds of seven games for a 21-game season, with a one versus two, three versus four; preliminary final; grand final playoff system. Running from late February to October would give enough room for international rest weekends. For the article, I will call this competition the Australian Rugby Championship (ARC).
So where would Australian rugby get eight teams from? Well, five of them are alive and kicking already: Queensland Reds, NSW Waratahs, ACT Brumbies, Melbourne Rebels and the Western Force. So it’s only three clubs we need to find.
The NRC has shown that there are enough quality players going around for three new teams – but where to put them?
I would follow the example of the BBL and the A-League. Both competitions are set up similar to American sports, which have one-city teams with the exception of a few megacities such as New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, who have two teams in some sports.
The BBL and A-League both have two teams each in Melbourne and Sydney, their biggest markets.
The only difference I would see for the ARC is to have two teams in its heartland cities of Sydney and Brisbane, with all other cities having one each. One Sydney team would be based at Allianz stadium, the other at Parramatta. The third new team would be a franchise based in Adelaide.
This would be the makeup of my ARC: Brisbane, Reds (Queensland), Waratahs (NSW), West Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth.
Would we lose some tradition if New South Wales and Queensland were to be split? I don’t see that team nicknames would need to change, but what about team names? In American professional sports, teams such as Minnesota Vikings, Carolina Panthers, Utah Jazz and Florida Marlins are named after states rather than cities, so maybe even the old names could stay.
But isn’t Australian rugby broke? With all the years of Super Rugby it is still broke, so would having an Australian-only league make it any broker than it is already?
Could my concept backfire? Yes, of course. Could it backfire so spectacularly that it would wreck the sport of rugby in Australia? Hardly. Considering the slings and arrows that have been fired at the code over the past 140-odd years, Australian rugby has proven to have a very tough hide.
The French Top 14 is an interesting case study. Featuring teams from all over the country, and with playoffs and a sold-out finale at the Stade de France, it gets my vote for the best rugby competition in the world. Who knows, if the Australian Rugby Championship could even in some small way emulate the Top 14, local sponsors might jump on board, especially if a free-to-air TV deal could be snared.
Rugby in Australia is at a crossroads. There is, as there always has been, a solid pool of playing talent. A strong week-in/week-out competition is vital for rugby’s future, and I no longer see the diluted, convoluted monstrosity of Super Rugby as being an essential part of it.
Now is the time for Australian rugby to go it alone.
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.