CAMPO: Let's look to the past to kickstart the future

Hi AndyS, sorry for delay in reply to your post above about a national rugby competition – we were in Queensland watching the Wallabies defend Lithuania's record. 1. Yes, if a national comp is to work, the national teams must be closely linked with the existing amateur clubs. What I really like is your practical ways of encouraging that to happen, instead of just sitting back and wishing it would happen. 2. Eight teams to start with sounds good. I would add in Newcastle as a contender for one of the private sides. They are a proud and aspirational bunch up there, and ready to support rugby. ARU have recognized that by awarding them one of the Lions games. 3. Re Adelaide, I cautiously agree with this. If I were the ARU I would be conducting a very careful feasibility study into that one, given AFL's dominance of a small market for 150 years. But then, the counter-argument says a team should be established there regardless – Rugby's appeal to the public has to be as "a truly national game which is part of a truly international game", and "national" means including South Australia. 4. Your idea of two comps is interesting. I am personally more inclined to one comp running the whole season (because I think Australians have shown they relate to that concept), but your idea has the advantage of enabling better co-ordination with S15 in the first half of the year, so that both comps complement each other in the minds of the fans, yet giving us national rugby comp games which potentially run from March through to October. This is important so as to challenge NRL and AFL for TV viewers throughout the season. 5. You've obviously thought long and hard about the financials, in a way that the originators of the original ARC didn't. Placing financial incentives on the state unions and clubs to run a successful team is a great idea. I don't doubt that sponsorship would be found for every team. 6. Re TV, I don’t think there would be any problem getting on TV; the real problem would be in getting comparable money to the AFL and NRL. Rugby would have to accept that there would be no offers for the outrageous 8 figures sums that the other codes get, but as long as rugby is realistic from the start this could be a strength for it. What rugby needs is national comp games broadcast on FTA TV two or three times a week, at reasonable hours, with some sort of equivalent to the Footie Show. This will build interest among the general public. Telecasts of the other games can be sold to Pay TV and to overseas TV – they will pay something for them, and as long as we are not greedy then its all a plus for rugby. 7. Siphoning off a small amount of money from S15 for each player they get from a national comp team, and awarding it to the national comp team as an incentive – good idea. It would encourage the teams to pull together with the rest of the ARU. 8. "And, very importantly, as a competition that would mix PE and the state unions, I would run the comp by commission. Each team has a rep, the ARU perhaps chairs, but the competition gets run by the people with skin in the game and they also profit from making it work." Yes!!!!

AndyS, see my response at the end of the thread.

Just read a few other sporting codes scoial sites and we must be the biggest whingers in history - bloody sad! Plenty of big game ideas etc and from plenty of folk that I am sure love the game and probably have volunteered, played etc. To be a fan is to be constructive and create debate, but if you want this game to be brilliant you too need to make a differnce and attend games, publicly support your team. That's the big differnce between our codes, AFL - mad avid fans for their Clubs (and it is expensive to support and attend games) NRL, passionate, tv watching fans who will protect their code at all costs, Rugby, ear bashing, negative, living in the past, political dour supporters who golf clap at games - c'mon sure the game needs to pull it socks up, but are we as supporters?????

Wish Campo read more than he wrote.

Who knows? Maybe he's speaking with hindsight etc.

Sorry, this runs on a bit. It's been brewing for a bit... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mike, what I would truthfully like would be an ARC. But the more I've thought on it, the more I've concluded the previous version failed. The teams have to be more closely linked to the clubs than the professional level, as they are the next development step for club players but merely shopping outlets for the professional teams. So, broad brush, I'd start with eight teams. Five are obvious - Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, ACT and Perth, run by state unions as the representative of the clubs. As an aside, this to me was the flaw in separating the NSWRU from the 'Tahs - it might have worked had the clubs essentially built up to the semi-pro showcase for prospective professionals, while the 'Tahs took players on from there. Instead what they got was a total disconnect between the near amateur clubs and the fully professional 'Tahs. Anyway, so that's five. The sixth and seventh would be West Sydney and the Gold Coast. The approach I'd take with them would be private equity. They want to be in the frame for being a future Super rugby expansion team: well, show us you know what you're doing and give yourself a starting point to work from. And the eighth would be Adelaide. It is unlikely they'll get a Super team soon, but they could certainly play at this level and you never know what they might turn up. A Liam Gill perhaps. I would then like them to play two competitions. One would be played during Super Rugby and be very much a development comp. You would try to align the schedule with Super rugby such that the ARC team was home on the weekends the Super team was away and vice versa - it would be a bit like following your team across Aviva and Heineken Cup. I would also consider only playing every second week too, allowing the players to share time between semi-pro and club. I'd look at making membership an option along with Super membership, such that you could get either one or both. I'd look to afternoon games and make it as family friendly as possible...the kids are members and going to the rugby with dad, just it is the Spirit on Sunday afternoon rather than the Force on Friday night. But it gives you a genuine chance to play your Super players back to match fitness and you have a pool of players that might actually make 33 man squads work. The second comp would be post-Super rugby. All your non-Test players return, and maybe even a few of them if they have injuries to recover from or form to refind. They play along with the pick of the players from the first comp, with the rest moving back to their clubs. But you are only paying the semi-pros...the Super players are already being paid by their teams. All the way through both competitions, you are looking to engage your Super Rugby fanbase in the comp, not go looking for a whole new demographic. The three non-aligned teams are different - they supposedly have untapped demographics. As for financials: 1. No loans. 2. Premier rugby funding goes to this competition, at least until it develops a following and breaks even. The premier clubs can still make money, they just have to ensure their state body runs a successful team. 3. Sponsorship obviously, also PE as noted. I had an interesting conversation with a senior South Aus rugby official a while back where I suggested each team might need to find $600k (i.e $4.8M across the comp). His opinion was they wouldn't find that too hard for a genuinely national domestic competition...I suppose they've got vineyards that would see rugby as a pretty useful demographic, not to mention a couple of breweries. 4. TV, assuming you can get it. Target the HD channels, but even then it might take some time. And 5....this is where it gets interesting. What I would like to see is teams rewarded for running successful talent identification and development programs. So: Super rugby pays $10k for each player on their list each year (~$300K). Within the context of Super rugby that is not that onerous; they were recently told they could relax the cap $800k and they'd need to find half themselves. That money would be initially evenly split, but after that the money for each new player signed to Super rugby goes proportionately to the team/s that developed them. Do a good job, get loads of players into Super rugby, get more funding. Overall, $1.8M initial ARU funding, $1.5M from the Super teams, plus merchandising, memberships, tickets, sponsorship and (hopefully, eventually) TV. And, very importantly, as a competition that would mix PE and the state unions, I would run the comp by commission. Each team has a rep, the ARU perhaps chairs, but the competition gets run by the people with skin in the game and they also profit from making it work.

The 2004 Springboks wore proper Rugby jerseys.

Well said True Fan, Campese is getting tiresome. He is a commentator for Supersport in South Africa, and as an Aussie, listening to his negative opinions about the Wallabies, Robbie Deans etc, really irks me. You may have read it but here is some more of his drivel. http://www.walesonline.co.uk/rugbynation/rugby-news/2012/09/26/david-campese-warns-warren-gatland-against-showing-welsh-bias-in-lions-selection-91466-31912107/

Onside, me too. Please don't think I am dismissing any idea. I am trying to understand what the best solution is, and its complex. Every contribution is helpful. I am signing off now, flying up to Brissie in the morning and may be out of internet contact for a while. But we will be in the stands for kick off on Saturday. Go Wallabies.

AndyS and Mike Gotta agree there's a fair amount of sentiment,in my suggestions. What I am struggling to learn from somebody who actually knows,is why it cannot work. Why dont the ARU grants work. Perhaps I am suggesting using steel wool somebody invented the dishwasher.

Australia rugby history has a story to tell ,we all pick players of the past and compare them to the present players and its great too give them recognition even if years go by, as a new zealander we still give admiration to these great all blacks Colin Meads. Brian Lahore,Waka Nathan Ian Kirkpatrick SId Going ,Don Clark Andy Hayden,and the list go on bloggers on the here aren't even born when these giants took no prisoner. Rugby Museum in new zealand has a statue of Campo Barry Johns (wales) and few other rugby greats and too blogs here Campo memorized the nation when he first came on the scene in New Zealand with the Goose step he had every kid at collage trying it,

AndyS, good points, many thanks. What do you think might be a workable solution going forward (and realistically, taking into account that we are in the modern professional era whether we think its a good thing or not)?

I don't disagree with the sentiment Onside, but I think half the problem is that we are expecting club rugby to be something it simply isn't. Right now Premiership rugby is our ARC and it loses $1.8M, year after year with no hope that it might ever stop. Instead, the money is spread so thin it becomes ineffective and everyone starts looking for more. But the operating loss of a flawed ARC was only $2.5M and it was highly effective within the year, so we are already at the point where it needs to be asked whether we are actually getting the appropriate return on the investment from the Premier Rugby Grants. We all look back on the the way club rugby was - it is the topic of this article. Well, what club rugby was was the pinnacle of the AMATEUR game. To me, club rugby should be all about the traditions and camaraderie of rugby, where players on their way up rub shoulders and learn from people on their way back down, surrounded by people who love the game for its own sake and detest their neighbour teams with all the passion that tribalism can generate. It should not be about blow-in mercenaries and buying results to achieve financial objectives. My preferred model would have all that sort of professionalism concentrated in a semi-professional team, acting as the immediate next destination for the players on their way up. You wrote earlier about the conversation you'd like to hear. Expanding on it, what I would like is: Scrot: "Hey dad, who's the bloke standing alongside you in the photo at the club” A: “That's the Australian Captain who scored the winning try in the Bledisloe. He was just a kid out of colts back then, but knuckled down, stepped up and got himself picked up by the Sydney Doodads the following year along with a couple of our other lads. Remember watching them all develop their game over the next couple of years, even played alongside them a few more times during their off weeks and returns from injury. Then he picked up a contract with the Rebels, broke big and made the Wallabies end of year tour. Never looked back from then, although apparently he still keeps in touch with a few of the younger lads." Sadly, at the moment, it is more likely to run: Scrot: "Hey dad, who's the bloke standing alongside you in the photo at the club” A: "That's a young lad straight out of school. Came down, showed a bit, but then picked up a Toyota Cup contract. Eventually became a pretty big noise with the Bulldogs and played both State of Origin and Kangaroos - always wondered how he would have gone if he had stuck with Union..."

No different to 1998, after NZ lost Fitzpatrick, Zinzan Brooke & a few others - very hard to maintain standards when you lose players of experience and (world) class. It took NZ a few years to really bounce back from that.

"The Robbie Deans who is the only coach in the last couple of years to have tasted success against the All Blacks?" I'm pretty sure the Boks have won at least one game - 2011 in Sth Africa. That said, I think the Wallabies - and Deans - are harshly judged given the huge injury toll. The question for me is, why does Australia have a large number of injured players compared to NZ and, a lesser degree, Sth Africa. Had to laugh at the news tonight that Ben Alexander was ruled out - the "23rd first-choice player" - not bad when a team only has 15 first choice players (or 22 if you want to count squads).

"Why makes trillions when we can make ... billions?" As Dr Evil might say... :)

Andy S. What I am saying is if the club scene becomes terminal,what do we have. Re your 'black hole',it needs fixing ,along with all rugby around the Nation I have not the foggiest idea how that can be achieved other that believing it is pivotal to the future of the game. Test rugby is less important than club rugby. Test rugby is transitory ,win some, lose some, chat chat chat, good coach bad coach, all that,but club rugby, like ol' man river, just keeps rollin' along. We must nurture Club Rugby.We must fix black holes like NSW.We must invest in ACT and VIC ,and other states.I dont know how ,but I recognise how easy it is to ignore. Allow me to be oversimplistic.There's an old saying that really dates me , 'look after the pennies, and the pounds will look after themselves" I reckon Club rugby represents Australian pennies.

I know plenty. Rugby this year is a joke

Lack of penetration? I doubt they could find us with a map, compass and gps

With a butter knife and pet crocodile