Yesterday legendary rugby writer Spiro Zavos joined the “five into four” debate in respect to the future of Australian involvement in the Super Rugby competition.
I thought long and hard about the article’s premise – the title, the drifting into what is wrong with the rules, Steve Larkham’s coaching, before he concluded that the Brumbies no longer deserve a place at the Super Rugby table.
How to back up this claim? Cite Greg Growden and it appeared we were on a 1990s Sydney Fairfax crusade to make the NSW Waratahs great again.
While Zavos noted (as many have) the parlous administrative rumblings that are eroding rugby Down Under, the article missed one fundamental problem with the state of the game – rugby participation has collapsed in less than a generation.
Last week’s Roy Morgan release revealed how dramatically the figures have dropped, from 148,000 regular participants in 2001 to 55,000 in 2016.
All those squash courts and ten-pin bowling centres you see in the burbs closing as vestiges of a bygone era? Those sports still have more participants.
In those 15 years, we have also added two new provincial rugby teams to the Super Rugby mix.
Neither the Force or the Rebels has made the finals or ever looked like doing so.
They have sucked peripheral talent from the Waratahs, Reds, and Brumbies. We don’t have depth across the board.
But I am not going to randomly pick a side to give the flick for future formats of the competition.
In fact, my argument would be a three-state solution (but that is one for another day).
The first ‘team’ to go should be the administrators who have led us into this bumbling mess at ARU headquarters.
Club rugby has collapsed, the traditional GPS nurseries are losing out to AFL and soccer – and while that may not be surprising in the day and age of contact sports, what has been appalling is the lack of any sense of progress to combat these movements.
We butchered the money from Rugby World Cup 2003 into a disastrous NPC-style tournament, are losing thousands of juniors that support club rugby, and clearly have mollycoddled talented juniors into elite pathway programs where they simply seem to do semi-contact drills five times a week against each other. But hey, they are all winners.
Spiro’s answer? Get rid of the most successful Aussie team, so that when we are ready we can have a Polynesian-laden side in Western Sydney.
Penrith Emus and Parramatta Two-Blues are testament to the depth of western rugby in Sydney. The Two Blues last tasted success in fourth grade in 2000.
Such is the state of the game, rugby is now fighting in terms of participation levels with ballroom dancing, which also took a hit in the popularity stakes.
Unfortunately for rah rah, it cannot call upon Paul Mercurio to don the dancing shoes for Strictly Ballroom 2 and reboot another dying sport.
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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