Packer's 70s vision for football applies to rugby

The old ARC is not out of the question. My feeling is that it will be properly delt with by the ARU, when they see what the bottom line is with broadcasters re Super Rugby

Westy & Lefty Westy the W-League on the ABC averaged just over 124, 500 ... both shown at the same time by the ABC ... Even the Swans in Sydney get more than 70, 000 .. Lefty ... I cannot understand why many RU folk so often mock RL... I played both as a half at a reasonable level... I still have a lot to do with my local park RU club... for all the sins RL may have carried out in the past in Australia I am sure in France and England the shoe may be on the other foot ... moreover if RL was not around the AFL would totally dominate NSW & OLD sport ... meaning RU in NSW & OLD would be in a similar state to RU in the southern states... Also recently the press has been talking of MV taking the second Melbourne spot ... when I looked at the MV fans forum .. it ran about 70 % were either in favour or not hostile 10% did not care one way or the other and about 20% where hostile.. How do you think RU folk would feel if the Tahs had purchased SFC last year from Frank Lowy ... I think the cries would have been heard from far and wide... http://www.melbournevictory.net/forum/showthread.php?t=53809 What does it mean ... not sure except to say RU folk well many on this forum at least seem very attached to recreating a past that never really existed and seem unwilling to accept many basic givens... and Sheek's post about how stupid the Australian Soccer Federation was back then could be replaced by the management of RU today .. all I can say is you are lucky to have JON and Matt back... Power to you Sheek ... you may get the budget wrong at times but the tenor of what you want is essential...

Leftarmspinner I am with you on most things but you are i fear a little to harsh on the NRL. If the NRL is third tier what is the AFL.? I like you go to some Shute Shield games or watch the match of the day on ABC 1 ( the audience has built from 50000 to over 70000).. The games on ABC1 are matches of the day. Our best six teams are quite good but then there is a very material drop. Last Sunday week I went out to see Parramatta v Penrith at CUA before 17000 and watched St George v Manly on TV at the Gong with acrowd of 17500. Flags flying suburban and proud . I have learned not to denigrate or mock what we do not have. I would love to have a "third tier "like this.

you kill it every time you mention it as third tier. NRL is also third tier, but never referred to as such.

sheek, I agree with your feeling. But the dynamic now is different. Leading up to 2003 JON has a Wallabies teram that had a full trophy cupboard most years, and a World Cup to host. He had plenty of excuses to get in the media, blow the sports trumpet, and the news was usually good. Similarly when he went to soccer, he was there to set up the A League, and take the sport to a new level. With his return to rugby he has a sport that has plateaued, and the national team was not performing as well (where the Wallabies are the strength and bread winner for the code). He is dealing with bread and butter issues that aren't sexy or in the media as much, or aren't always good news. E.g. the S15 and TV deal. I may be wrong, but my gut feeling is JON may be a "projects" or "big picture" man. He's great at setting stuff up, and getting things running, but the daily grind of administering a sport may not be his favourite thing. Gallop at the NRL seems for more used to year after year of the grind, and similar Buckley at the A League. Perhaps this is the reason he had to turn the new TV deal into a project to expand the comp (although there seemed a generall feeling the comp had to change and refresh). Having said that, he'll probably turn around and show me up. No matter what anyone says he is clearly one of the best sports administrators around, and rugby has been getting better since he came back. Except the ARC going ... gah!!!

BTW, Does anyone else feel/notice O'Neill hasn't brought the same energy to his ARU post that he had the first time around? O'Neill has every right to feel a bitter man, being dumped at the height of his success in 2003, then watching from afar as the game's fortunes were squandered in just under 4 years that he was away. But he hasn't given off the same vibes the same since he returned. Second comings generally don't work out, even for messiahs! And the Lote Tuqiri saga gets curiouser & curiouser. Maybe those suggesting O'Neill has more to hide might be right. It's intriguing, to say the least.

I actually like the provincial style set-up, as I've argued in the past. However, I acknowledge two things. Firstly, I have failed to convince a majority of Roar readers of the benefit of a Sheffield Shield style national comp. Secondly, the world has changed from being broad regionally minded to super-city minded. A national comp would obviously be based on cities, or metropolitan regions. This then makes the S14/15 an oddity, since it began as a broad provincial style comp. However, the teams are changing from provincial to metro/city by stealth. Rather than refer to Northern Transvaal, it's simply the Bulls. Instead of Canterbury, we have the Crusaders. Instead of ACT, we simply call them the Brumbies. Of course, none of this solves the national comp problem for Australia.

Billo/Andrew/Greg, Thanks guys. Yes, that part of it is true - that you almost certainly can't have the S15 & ARC together. At least not with the current small pool of quality players. I'm not an expert on financing. I always hope in these exercises that someone more geared in that direction - finances - would show how it could work. It is pretty sad that Australian rugby can only provide 5 fully professional top tier domestic teams, or 10 semi-pro teams, if it were to change to that. I still wonder how serious Australian rugby is about being a big-time player?

Sheek The full details of the Packer offer was as follows... Kerry Packer had shaken hand with Sir Aurthur George on a TV / Radio national broadcast deal.. the deal was in part sponsored by News limited via ..”The Australian”… The Australian was to have the naming rights to the new league.. essentially Kerry Packer & Rupert Murdock backing football…Packer via TV / Radio Murdock via the Australian. (The Australia was also in start up mode as well) Now it must be understood the media at this point in time… 2UE had John Laws .. who is without doubt the most influential media person in Australia over the last 40 or so years.. 2UE broadcast over all of regional Australia and Laws had a daily audience of close to two million people.. Four things that where present then that are not present now...1) AM radio was still the king of radio, 2) TV had a much bigger viewership& influence than today, 3) No one else had established a national competition..4) there is no John Laws out there anymore in radio land. Part of what excited Kerry was the broad spread of the player base ... RU does not have this .. as we have often discussed Sheek RU is more areas and towns of influence not nationally broadbased. Sheek you are right in your endeavors as without a broad based national domestic competition .. it is difficult to see RU competing at the same level it does today in another 20 years..

Andrew, where have you been? You've summed up the situation beautifully. Besides, as Wayne Smith made clear in The Australian two days ago ("O'Neill plays out warmonger role"), a provincial championship will be the last thing on JON's mind at the moment. I loved this bit from Smith's article: "It is doubtful whether the Tuqiri case, for which the papers were filed yesterday, will ever see the inside of a courtroom. The last thing the ARU needs is for former Wallabies coach John Connolly or any of the other numerous former employees sacked by O'Neill to take the stand, swear to tell the truth and then be asked: did John O'Neill ever say or do anything to cause you to believe he was looking for an excuse to sack Lote Tuqiri?" And it was interesting that when Smith wrote of "an indefensible action", he was referring to O'Neill, not Tuqiri. Some of us have been saying that from the beginning ...

Can we have an email for JON and we can all email and pester him to start one.

Sheek...I gotta say, if nothing else, you're persistent. But having read most of your posts on this issue (I know! It's a LOT of reading!), I think you're a little premature in that most of the time you seem to discuss potential structures. I feel certain that if the money was there, the structure would get worked out in short order, so perhaps the focus point should be how to make it financially viable. Someone will no doubt say "That's the job of the ARU", but that's the easy answer. If we're really so passionate about a third tier of pro rugby in Australia (bearing in mind that we compete with 3 other codes of football for sponsorship dollars), then that's the topic to be debating. If it is viable financially, you can bet the ARU will pick it up. Why wouldn't they? Unfortunately I suspect Billo is right. Cheers.....

The big issue with a National Competition being introduced is Super Rugby. The same concept that helped bring Professionalism in Rugby to Australia is the same entity that is holding a National Comp back. If the Competition started up directly after Super rugby it will be competing against the 3N in the first month so no Wallabies. The second month the Wallabies will return but only for 5 or 6 games before the European Tour. And once they return they will be unavailable due Super rugby commitments for Wallabies starting in January after a rest period. If it runs parrellel to Super rugby then your missing all the Wallaby and Provincial players. But that would be the appropriate time. If a 10 team National Competition is established it needs to include Perth, Adelaide and Melbourne ( Canberra is a given). And the Competition should be open to importing foriegn players from the USA, Canada, Argentina, Pacific Islands and parts of Asia. This may help the public to overlook the lack of Wallaby stars in the competition.

The structure Sheek puts forward looks great, but you won't get another level of professional rugby below the Super 14. That means you either have to abandon the Super 14 in its current form, replacing it with a national competition, or you have to expand rugby in Australia by putting more teams into the Super 14 structure. That would be a lot easier if South African weren't in the Super 14 - if the comp was based purely in Australia and NZ. I had hoped this might happen, but it now looks unlikely.

I have always been in favour of another teir in Australian Rugby. My concern is that we will be asking (if we have a 10 team comp) roughly 300 more players in the country becoming "professional" footballers. I am making an assumption based on limited understanding that the vast, vast majority of players in the club comps are still completely amataur players. I know that is the case here in Canberra, and would we expect this teir of players to train and play outside of their work hours. Dont get me wrong i still want this extra level. What I would suggest is an under 19's format that precedes the Super 14 games. with 5 teams in an Australian conference, it would offer a semi professional comp for about 150 of Australia's best junior players. it would mean 8 games a year for each team, exposure to super rugby, a talent pool for super teams and extra value for membership holders, hopefully attracting more members. Having a comp for this level has worked for league and is what the NSL used to do with the national league. Talent scouts are able to offer training contracts from a younger age and would also help in preventing player drain to other codes. I think it is the best way of developing the junior talent and gives them the best possible pathway to super rugby. I dont know how to address the shortage of players with experience outside of super 14 and what we would do with the talent that is over 19?????

Pablo, We're all mostly agreed why we should have an ARC. But how to deliver the comp, well, I'm not the expert here. Obviously, 2007 showed us how NOT to do things. Teams not representative of their area (Central Coast); teams playing outside their area East Sydney at North Sydney oval; expensive stadia; (30) World Cup players warehoused. You could almost be excused for thinking some people didn't want the comp to succeed, with such blinkered thinking. I've always been in favour of selling a "mixed bag" of goodies to the broadcasters - Wallaby tests; 3N; S15 (or whatever); ARC; premier rugby; cross-feed from other countries (SA CC, NZ NPC, Europe 6N, Argentina, etc). As for costing, it would depend on what the game can afford, obviously.

Pablo, Whatever the ARU does (re national comp), if/when it does it, will have to fit in with current structures, unless of course, the world turns upside down in the meantime. This means the ARC would follow the S15 or whatever, running partly con-currently with the 3N before getting its own space. This would also bring it line with SA's Currie Cup & NZ's NPC. When we've discussed this before, some have raised their concerns that its a bit back to front, that actually the ARC should precede the S15. However, as I said at the beginning, while this might be desirable (ARC before S15), we have to work with the structures already in place. I'm a bit fatalistic, as opposed to pessimistic, about rugby's future, but more particularly, their desire to do something about it. Does rugby really want to be a big-time player? Or are they just happy meandering along as the 4th most popular footy code?? It's about time the people running the game told us where they stand, & I don't just mean the ARU. The Sydney & Brisbane premier rugby clubs appear most resistant to change. Many of these clubs have had 50-100 years to establish themselves at the forefront of the game. If they haven't done so, then they only have themselves largely to blame. I really do question rugby's desire to be collectively better than they presently are.

Packer obviously saw money in soccer to make that offer, and had it been done right (which Packer had the people and money to do) we could now be in the 4th decade of a proper professional soccer comp. Yaarrgghh!!! Why couldn't Packer offer some money to rugby then, so we could have the WRC kick start to professional rugby 20 years early!?!?!?! We absolutely need a level to rugby beneath Super rugby. However, it appears to be able to be done in one of 2 ways: 1. The comp starts after the S15 comp finishes in August, so the teams get their Super players back, thus making the comp better and more attractive. I.e. like the NPC and Curry Cup are now. As such, it does not compete with Super rugby, but you end up with it providing the extra rugby after the Super comp, presumably as a backup to the Wallabies. This also allows the current club comp to continue, although it either ends when Super rugby does, or gets gutted of players just as it runs into the finals. I.e. the ARC, but longer. 2. The comp is run while Super rugby is, and probably longer. This means they don't have the Super players until after it is over (in the run into the finals), and is essentially a premier club comp. This will kill/replace club rugby, and essentially relegate it to the top level of subbies. I.e. a premier club comp with a long season. Of the 2 the first is probably my preference to fit with the current structure. However, whatever is done must be able to cope with the S15 becoming a bigger and longer comp in due course,, which might make the 2nd option the preferable one in the long run. The decision made now could limit options in due course. Keep in mind JON's desire in the S15, to have rugby going longer during the season and not leave after July to the NRL and AFL. However, to my mind the aim is to provide depth, what structure provides the depth we want? Profesionalism without the Wallabies/Super players around, or exposure to Wallabies/Super players, or both? Personally, I want to see the professionalism extended to a wider number of teams. Currently there are only about 120-150 professional rugby players in Australia. That will increase with the 5th S15 side (assuming it is Australian sourced). This is a fraction of the AFL or NRL/Toyota Cup. It drives me nuts that the NRL U-20s comp can get TV coverage and professionalism when rugby can't get a pro club level!!!! However, it is easier to watch and a decent quality. But to my mind the ARC (with the then ELVs) provided this!!! Of course, the money has to come from somewhere. The ARU found that out to their cost, but they started it the wrong year (i.e. a WRC year), with no TV deal, little advertising, no Wallabies players, and with 2 costs they probably should have started without one of - travel for Perth and starting a team from scratch in Melbourne. I'd be interested to see how it would have gone if done right. Which one do you want sheek? And what do you see as the aims, and how to deliver them?

Sheek, it's fair to say that we don't talk about it as much any more, but that doesn't make it any less relevant or important. I'm still waiting to read John O'Neill responses to our questions, becuase the ARC (and even TT talks) was a definite topic we wanted answers. I understand he's a little preoccupied currently with some minor legal matter, but I'm sure he'll get back to us eventually!!

Thanks Sheek - yeah I thought did a good job of mangling few different sayings, Rex Mossop lives on! Like you I just cannot understand why the ARU does not address this.