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Rugby’s pecking order goes like this: players, sponsors, media – especially television – with administrators a distant last.
So when are administrators going to stop driving players into early retirement by cramming more elite games and air-travel time into the calendar year?
Stuff the players, the feed for greed is paramount.
From a southern hemisphere perspective, the best players have 17 Super Rugby games from February to August, which involve travel to South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Argentina, plus a finals series.
In between, there’s a three-Test window in June.
At the completion of the Super Rugby campaign there’s the Rugby Championship, with six internationals for each nation, home and away in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and Argentina – more long flights to already visited countries through Super Rugby.
And the year ends with another long flight for a five-Test tour of the northern hemisphere.
What the?
Barring injury or suspension, that’s a minimum of 31 mighty tough and high-quality games a year against the best in the code, plus all the air travel necessary to compete.
For spectators and live television viewers it’s a bonanza, a smorgasbord of rugby – but for the players it’s a physical and mental battle to survive and keep playing to expected elite standards.
The players are only human, and don’t deserve to be treated like exported cattle. They need the newly set up Brisbane Global Tens like a hole in the head.
There are no problems with the 15-man game and sevens living together in harmony, both are separate, with different squads.
But the totally unnecessary Brisbane Tens on February 11-12 at Suncorp adds to the 15-man code’s already demanding schedule.
Some coaches are treating the gimmick as an ideal way to prepare for Super Rugby, but most coaches are leaving key players out.
And it won’t be a level playing field, with four teams in Pools A and B, but only three in C and D, with Pool winners to qualify for the semis.
The Tens is a waste of space.