- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
Following on from the Gold Coast Titans Rugby League franchise, the Gold Coast United football A-League team starting in a couple of months and the AFL’s plans to start up another AFL team on the Gold Coast in 2011, comes the news that the next Super 15 Rugby team should come from the Gold Coast.
Pardon me, but are we missing something?
Are the Gold Coast streets paved with gold and is the Gold Coast the disposable income capital of the world?
Terry Jackman, a good friend of ARU supremo John O’Neill argues that the Gold Coast is the only legitimate challenger to Melbourne’s hopes of entering an expanded Super 15 Rugby competition and has demanded the Australian Rugby Union prevent a bidding war by making an immediate choice of the Gold Coast based on “rugby reasons”.
AFL-mad Melbourne, a far bigger sporting market, is the overwhelming favourite for the 15th licence, but Jackman says the Gold Coast, which has one powerful Queensland Premier Rugby side plus its own club competition, deserved to get the nod because it was a rugby heartland.
Rugby “heartland”?
Heartland is becoming a very quickly over-abused term for all codes lately. Heartland for the schoolies maybe, but a rugby heartland?
With time running out for the Coast to put forward a bid to rival Melbourne, which narrowly lost out to the Western Force in 2005, Jackman said the national body needed to make an immediate decision for “the good of the code”.
“I sympathise with the ARU, it’s not an easy decision,” said the former ARU director.
“But I don’t think you can get into a bidding race, I think the ARU has to decide which way to go for the good of the game.
“We’re the third biggest city in rugby heartland and you’ve got to be careful we don’t lose it to the other three codes with AFL, NRL and A-League teams all set up here by 2011.
“If we don’t get a Super 15 side it will be hard to stop the kids going elsewhere.”
It’s already prompted concerns from Queensland coach Phil Mooney who doesn’t believe Australia has the depth of playing talent to host five sides. Mooney’s Reds were the hardest hit by the establishment of the Western Force, which kicked off in 2006, and have spent six straight seasons in the bottom three of the competition.
O’Neill is wary of the same damage to the existing teams and is supporting the idea of a “hybrid” team including a healthy amount of Pacific Islanders and foreign-based Australians to combine with local players.
Both the Gold Coast and Melbourne are planning on signing more than half their squad from Fiji, Tonga and Samoa and the Gold Coast is the nearest destination for the pacific islanders.
Victorian Rugby Union president Gary Gray wants none of the “hybrid” talk – it’s a “Victorian” rugby team.
However, like Perth, they just don’t have enough of their own local talent and have to import most of their players.
But the Gold Coast as the Super 15 Rugby franchise?
How could the Gold Coast possibly successfully support a top-flight team from all four major football codes plus all the other sports and the motor racing circus every year?
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.