The wallabies and Australian teams in general have just been so hard to watch this year… it’s gotten to the point where I’m beginning to think their performance in last year’s world cup was really just an aberration. In truth the Wallabies have been pretty awful for a while after all.

To be honest though I think it’s a symptom of where Australian rugby is at in general. Rugby League is going great in its heartlands, but Union seems to have retracted whilst AFL has grown, and I actually know a fair few Union fans who seem to now be supporting the victorian game and attend more Swans games than Tahs now, whilst guys I used to know who watched both League and Union have just completely gone off Union altogether and just watch League.

Why or how this has happened I don’t really know, but I suspect it’s partly the ARU’s insular north-shore private-school boy pedigree that is partly to blame. Taking the quick cash from Murdoch during the game’s boom era of the late 90s-early 00s and not getting Super Rugby on FTA when there was a demand for it was the first big blunder, but the failure to grow the game’s grass roots more in places like Western Sydney, instead just allowing the game to remain the preserve of the east and north is a serious problem for our depth – let alone the troubles in Qld.

In short, in New Zealand rugby appears Darwinian, but in Australia the management of the game and even the selection of teams appears more nepotistic at times, and with nepotism comes weakness and incompetence.
That is, apart from women’s 7s 😉 .

Indeed they don’t, and frankly whether we like it or not the British interest in the rights have illustrated just how important that African time slot is now…

With that in mind, I think Argentina is a region SANZAR ought to be angling to expand up to 3 teams over the course of the next decade. Creating a few local darbies there would put a lot more local interest and mean that premier rugby was on in prime time for the increasingly large American Rugby audience.

@Bondy

Of course soccer people insist on calling it football themselves. That’s quite alright and they have every right to, they just don’t get to tell others what to call it. But my point was that it’s rather naïve to say the habit of calling it “soccer” by large chunks of the English world is irrelevant, as it’s clearly not, as demonstrated by my point on how the Japanese word for association football is simply a transliterated form of “soccer.”

If you talk to people in Japan about “futtobo-ru” (the transliteration of “Football”) they’ll discuss the NFL with you, and frankly it’s not dissimilar in a lot of Asian countries. That’s very much what I’m trying to illustrate; that scoffing at the Americans, whilst fun and all, doesn’t alter the fact their version of the language is pretty dominant in plenty of very populous places and in Asia especially.

My other point of course was that the history of the word football helps to illustrate why so many sports use it, and makes the ownership demands of it by any one sport (which in this country tends to be a fight between Australian Football and Association Football fans) a little ridiculous, particularly given it just means we’re essentially aping British feelings of emasculation at the hands of a rising tide of American culture.

As for Gallop et al, well sure they call it football, but going overseas most people don’t think of Australia as a football/soccer country. Indeed, our complex sporting landscape goes over most people’s heads and they’re generally only aware that we tend to play with an oval ball in our big competitions.

Rather amusingly, in my years in Japan and time in China and Korea, the general assumption from the locals I continued to come across was that we were like New Zealand; a “Rugby” nation. As primarily a rugby fan, I find that kinda funny, as I’m under no illusions as to the place of the sport here.

But from a foreigner’s standpoint it’s understandable; most people around the world know what rugby is (and the All Blacks specifically it seems), but have no clue about Australian Football or Rugby League, so when they see an oval ball in relation to Australia they just think “ah! Rugby!” And let’s not kid ourselves, Australia’s “football” media is overwhelmingly oval ball based by sheer numbers.

@FUIL,

Do you really doubt that anyone pays attention to the Australian and American versions of English?

You clearly haven’t traveled much… I hate to break it to you, but North America is actually home to the majority of the world’s population where English is the first language and their influence is pretty strong internationally.

Indeed, the whole reason people got so uppity about calling it “football” instead of soccer is because the British were terribly terribly upset at their declining cultural influence in the decades following WWII, all whilst they watched America effectively become a bigger influence than they ever were to the point that all their popular culture and even linguistic habits were starting to seep into Britain.
For an old world power this was very vexing, particularly in the realm of sport, where the British simply couldn’t wrap their head around the fact that Americans only called their own version of football “football”

Apparently no one infomred these poorly educated and deeply emasculated brits that the word “football” comes from the 19th century and originally referred to all field ball team sports played “on foot” and was meant to differentiate them from the games played by the rich, which were generally on horseback, like Polo.

Getting back to people paying attention to what Americans think, head to China, Japan or Korea and tell me which version of English they teach in their schools. I’ll give you a hint: it’s not British English. In fact, in Japan the Japanese word for Association Football is transliterated from the word soccer as “sakka-”

But sure, no one in the world pays attention to America’s version of English 😀

The point is they wouldn’t pay for the worst 4 games – they’d pay for all 8 and possibly 9 (if the expansion talk is true) with a simulcast deal like they have with the AFL.

Fox could offer to just buy the last 4 games, but if either BeIN Sport or ESPN are serious about the NRL TV rights (and from what I’ve heard from industry contacts ESPN are becoming increasingly interested and see the stoush with Fox as an opportunity) it would make more sense to sell those games to them because they’re more widely available than Foxsports. ESPN is on Fetch AND Foxtel and so is BeIN. So they’d provide the NRL with Pay TV platforms that would increase its exposure beyond Fox’s 30% reach.

To me, given the NRL already have close to $1bn in the bank, I think Fox is the party that needs to be the most careful here. They’ve actively and viciously attempted to smear a game that people love all because they were outmaneuvered in a business deal, and with two years for sports networks to bid (and the Hayne factor raising awareness of the NRL among ESPN watchers in the states) I’d think Foxtel will have to offer something above and beyond what its competitors do for Smith not to show them the door.

Given the declining importance of Newspapers, any “blanket ban” on Rugby League by Murdoch would be both pointless and self-defeating. Murdoch is great at bagging pollies and taking sides in election campaigns, but bashing a guy like Shorten is a lot easier than telling a Rugby League loving reader base you hate their game and that they can all go get f—ed unless they start watching Aussie Rules (and let’s face it, that’s basically what Murdoch was saying).

The cold hard truth is that most telegraph readers aren’t terribly interested in the general news as much as they want to see what’s happening with their favourite team. Murdoch will know this – his business model is famously to focus on the 3 Ss – Sex, Scandal and SPORT. The idea that the Telegraph and Courier Mail will suddenly stop reporting on the one thing that many of its readers buy it for is fanciful… Murdoch may be happy to run the Australian at a $10 million loss for political influence, but I to try and do the same with sport would diminish his political influence because it’d decimate the readership of two of his biggest dailies in the country, both of which have overheads and circulation are far greater than the Aus and thus would cost him more in such a war.

Love Japan, but this team and their involvement in Rugby in general is just very amateur and not up to standard. I will be very surprised if this new team – if it even manages to form – wins a single game next year and won’t be surprised to see it fold completely.

Good write up.

Just curious, but what are your issues with ESPN?

From a strategic standpoint, if they’re serious I think they’re the smarter option not only because they’re already on Fox, but because they’re also on Fetch TV.

That means that if you only have Fox for the NRL you can just migrate your service to the much cheaper Fetch and then keep all the games. It would be very viewer friendly AND would be a nice bit of pay back for Smith on News ltd for their vicious campaign against him.

I doubt it’ll change much to be frank – if Fox bought simulcast rights they could have all games and put them in HD. Heck they could even do what they do with Rugby test matches and put in their own panel and commentators. That would preserve the value for all those people that hate 9’s SD coverage and commentators, which means their ratings would remain largely unchanged.

The other thing I’d point out is the supposedly “poor quality games” also tend to rate pretty highly for fox and generally outrate a lot of their bigger live AFL coverage. So I reckon that’s a bit of red herring.

“Maybe i’m wrong but the 49 high rating NRL games on FOX will no longer be there. Channel 9 will reap the benefits of these games.”

Well, in most years the NRL gets closer to 70 of the top 100 viewed Fox programs – the Asian Championship and the CWC affected this year’s numbers.

In terms of quality of coverage – Foxsports is ok, but if ESPN are serious quality won’t be an issue. They’re worth $50bn and a $1bn on NRL rights wouldn’t be an issue for them if they wanted to make a serious play for our market.

In my view Fox only has one play, and that’s to bid for simulcast rights at a premium. Because with the insanely over the top, vitriolic and personal smear campaign News ltd have launched in Smith, you can bet your bottom dollar that if either ESPN or BeIN put in solid bids then Fox will have to be pretty generous to get a look in.

If Fox do that, then frankly the NRL would be mad not to go with ESPN or BeIN Sports instead. If Fox are going to low-ball the NRL despite it dominating Fox ratings, then why should the NRL help prop them up?

Paul Kent? I thought that he and the other lackies at News ltd like Hooper and Rothfield were too bust shrieking about that new “rebel league” which apparently will involve the Waratahs lol

Very good article – thank god for Fairfax is all I can say. They’ve done a great job this week exposing how trumped up all the crap in the News Ltd press and Tripl M’s Grill Team have been about the NRL

Pretty sure that yes, “Smith isn’t have (sic) job interviews.”

And if he is, then he’ll want to get as good a deal as possible, because it won’t be great for his resume if he doesn’t.

Bingo. If the ARU could have traded a few dollars for comprehensive Super Rugby FTA coverage after the 2003 RWC, Rugby’s position in the Australian sporting landscape would be many times stronger than it is now.

Big bucks aren’t everything and the NRL won’t be short too much with the 9 deal alone.

Not only that, but the AFL deal isn’t quite as good as has been stated. Malcolm Maiden in yesterday’s SMH Business shows that the terms of the deal and calculating it’s net present value with the conventional discount rates put it closer to $1.8bn. http://www.smh.com.au/business/comment-and-analysis/when-is-a-25-billion-deal-not-really-a-25-billion-deal-20150819-gj2rth.html

Good stuff Steve – we need a bit of balance with all the News Ltd drones out there running propaganda.

I like to listen to the Grill Team boys occasionally, but I’ve had to turn them off this week when they’re talking about this deal – Matty Johns in particular just sounds so panicked and afraid that it’s down right embarrassing listening to him.

Here’s a tip “champ” – THERE’S MORE THAN TWO YEARS LEFT TO NEGOTIATE.

Word in the SMH this morning (where you actually find some cool headed analysis on this) is that Smith hasn’t been phased by Murdoch’s aggressive move; he totally expected it. This is a guy who used to handle assets in excess of $50bn let’s not forget, so maybe we should just see how it all plays out before we start to worry about the future of a game that has already secured almost $1bn with just the FTA rights.

PNG needs a team, but not now. As others have pointed out, they need another 10-20 years of economic development and infrastructure advancement before they’d be really ready for one.

Perth must be the next side, follow by Brisbane 2. After that we need a 2nd (and eventually 3rd) NZ side and then Adelaide.

I reckon having two Argentinian sides makes more sense anyway – means they have a local derby and visiting sides can get more out of the trip.

Good stuff Bob,

I spoke with a friend of mine about the challenges facing Japan only two weeks ago and he outlined precisely these problems and a few more.

It’s worth noting that the two players they’ve signed are from their college system too, and that the JRFU have missed every single deadline set by SANZAR so far.

He remained confident that the prospect of the loss of face for Japanese rugby more generally would see the company teams come to the table, but I’m not so sure…

To be frank, I love Japan and used to live there, but I always thought a Japanese side in Super Rugby made no sense and would be happy to see the team axed in a favour of a second Argentinian side.

Sheek,

Seriously mate, so you’re allowed to accuse Cheika of max fixing but if I call you out on that because it’s insulting, hysterical and plainly false, it’s suddenly a police state is it?

You’re allowed to have your opinions, and I’m very much within my rights to say they read like those of a man with a tin foil hat on.

You can doubt that Cheika thought that his team on Saturday might be his best if you like, but you can’t accuse him of throwing the game just because you didn’t like the team without a few people thinking you’re being more than a bit unreasonable and histrionic.

No, what it is is true. As Kiwi Mark Reason demonstrates in his latest article (http://www.smh.com.au/rugby-union/rugby-world-cup/rugby-world-cup-2015-why-all-blacks-fans-shouldnt-get-carried-away-20150818-gj1knn.html) Owens was very much refereeing one side more than the other.

Again though, do you have anything of value to add?

You clearly didn’t read the comment past the first 10 words. Either that or you’re intentionally trying to misrepresent me because you have nothing of substance to counter me with.

John,

Sorry, but that’s just nonsense. There was no mind games in Cheika’s approach to this test, only a desire to find who were his best starters after the bench had to save the team in the last 20 minutes of all three games prior.

You said it yourself, the All Blacks were in a menacing mood on Saturday, so how much more quickly do you think they’d have got on top if we had another display of errant passing missing the mark and sending the Wallabies yet further backwards as we did with Phipps in Sydney?

Honestly, a lot of people here seem to think the Wallabies starting XV was some how a settled affair. Those people either didn’t watch the Wallabies RC games or they if they did they don’t remember the first hour in any of them. All three games were won in the final 20 minutes.

What does that tell you? It tells you that our starters failed to dominate the opposition starters.

Think about that for a moment before you start berating Cheilka for “mind games,” because in that context changing the starting line up isn’t purely logical. The only thing people really have to complain about was dropping Pocock to the Bench, but Palu was back and he has had a couple strong years at the Waratahs and deserved a shot.

Thank you Biltongbek – hit the nail on the head.

It’s our fair weather fans and their uninformed excitability that has been responsible for this immediate hype. Cheika himself said nothing to hype the team up. Indeed, he actively played it down and even said the win in Sydney didn’t mean they’d achieved anything yet.

Aussie Rugby fans can come across like petulant children, who seem to have no appreciation for the context of Australian rugby and the challenge that is facing the All Blacks at home.