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Will Melbourne really embrace the Rebels?

Roar Guru
12th January, 2010
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Roar Guru
12th January, 2010
289
7101 Reads

Australian rugby did not have its finest year in 2009. It was a year that will not want to be remembered and celebrated like 1984 or 1999.

There was though one great announcement for rugby in Australia last year: the imminent introduction of the fifth Australian Super rugby team – the Melbourne Rebels.

Naturally with any announcement of a new sporting venture comes speculation as to the success that it may expect.

Predictions for the Rebels fortunes can not be based on the standard of the international game. Rugby is light years ahead of rugby league in representation overseas but this has never had a flow on effect here at home.

And nor can you predict that league will dominate rugby in Melbourne just because it has done so in Queensland and NSW.

It would seem the opinion of your average St George or Waratahs fan as to which rugby code is exciting and which is boring is redundant when discussing the Rebels.

We are talking about Melbourne here – the AFL capital of Australia, a giant fishbowl where AFL is a religion and the other codes exist only on the peripheral.

Well not quite = football does come in at a distant second. Then there is a further gap and you will find the rugby codes languishing at the bottom of the barrel.

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Perhaps the Rebels will be able to learn from the experiences of the Storm when it comes to trying to crack the tough Melbourne sporting nutshell.

Swiping Storm CEO Brian Waldron is a great first step.

Waldron will not be able to give the Rebels the magic secret to profitability in Melbourne – unless he has kept this to himself during his time at the Storm – but he will be able to give a realistic idea of the monumental challenge facing the Rebels in AFL land.

It will be fascinating to see how the rugby codes go head to head on the relatively clean slate that is Melbourne, competing on an even playing field.

But one question is, is it an even playing field?

The Storm had to start from nothing; the Rebels will have the advantage of having the opportunity to build on the existing rugby community in Melbourne that has been in existence for a century.

However, this community is modest when compared to rugby communities in NSW and QLD. Victorians as a whole were not exactly crying out for their own rugby team.

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The VRU was not even deemed strong enough by the ARU to run their own Super franchise and consequently the Rebels are the first Australian Super franchise to have private ownership.

Private ownership may be new to Super rugby in Australia but the NRL currently has six privately owned clubs. (Ironically it will soon be seven as the Melbourne Storm are in the process of changing hands from News Ltd to private owners).

Is reliance on private ownership of major consequence to the Rebels?

To answer this, we can look at the two main ingredients needed with a new team or franchise: time and money.

It will take time for the Rebels to take hold in Victoria, to form the own nice little niche.

The Storm are still considered quite young having been in existence for 11 years (although they were born out of adversary – the Super league war – and have been for the most part neglected by the NRL).

Importantly the NRL views the Storm as a long term work in process, in the same way that the AFL will view Western Sydney and the Gold Coast. The ARU will be no different with the Rebels.

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The real challenge for the Rebels will be money.

Simply put, the ARU is not in the same league (excuse the pun) as the NRL and AFL in terms of popularity and therefore finances to support new teams.

The AFL wants $1 billion for their next TV broadcast deal and the NRL having slightly superior accumulative TV viewing figures this year means they will be asking for something similar.

The ARU are still fighting to get Super Rugby on to FTA.

A smaller ARU bank balance places more pressure on the Rebels to become profitable in the short term than will be placed on the Storm or Western Sydney.

And the Rebels private owners are not concerned with administering the game of rugby. They are investors and like any other investors their primary goal is to make money, pure and simple.

Another factor was the state of the games in 2009.

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The two referee system in the NRL has cleaned up the ruck allowing a faster flowing game and the viewers have tuned in.

Rugby is unfortunately currently on an opposing trend with heated discussions between fans in regards to the game becoming too defensive, having too much kicking and too much power in the hands of the referee.

Where has the beautiful running game they play in heaven gone?

If these suggested problems facing the state of play in modern rugby are valid they will affect the Rebels fortunes as much as any other Australian Super rugby team.

In fact, they will hurt the Rebels more as the Rebels will be relying on converting new fans, not testing the patience of the faithful.

The average rugby fan would feel far more confident in their predictions for the fate of the Rebels if rugby could be the running game again and the ARU had just signed a lucrative FTA TV contract.

This will most likely not be the case in the Rebels immediate future.

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This is not a scenario that the ARU – or more importantly the private owners – can afford to imagine in the medium to long term.

Will Melbourne embrace the Rebels? The reality is that the future of the Rebels is not in the hands of your average rugby fan.

Its future lies in the hands of the good people of Melbourne and the patience of the private owners.

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