Folau's rugby education to evolve

KPM a good post, and i look forwad to your article. Precisley right about Bill Pulver. The acid test will come, this year, we'll see if he is reveloutinory in rugby sense, or same old, same old conservative rubbish, that will only see rugby go backwards and lose market share, even more. And rugby will become a sport , like the next tier below, Water Polo, Volley Ball, field hockey. Global sports, bit only moderately popular in OZ, outside of the Olympics, once every 4 years, but zero market traction week to week KPM. Hopoate's dad I think will push the league concept too much , and be tough on him to leave league, which is a shame as he has a lot of talent, be a classy rugby union player, Mark Gerrard type standard and style. Barba has so much talent, be an asset. Rugby had it's chance 15 years ago when rugby league was down on the ropes, ready for the knockout punch, with the super league war, but rugby lacked courage and didn't expand, and here we are today, rugby union is way behind AFL and NRL, and has a mountain to climb to get more market share geographically and within OZ 22 million approximate population. Bill Pulver I hope the man has , ice man courage, and steps up as rugby has so many factions and problems in OZ. Good luck Bill Pulver i hope he has the courage to make the tough designs, time will tell.

Johnno I have written a reply which is being moderated so it may appear sometime!

Johnno it all depends on whether Pulver is a revolutionary or conservative-will he just be satisfied to plough on with the one-team-every-blue-moon model or will he realise the whole thing needs shaking up? I'm fearful, because it's difficult to imagine the ARU board appointing a bomb-throwing bearded anarchist to the throne. Who knows how big rugby could have been in Australia? Who knows how many teams the fan base would have been large enough to support? We'll never know because they hamstrung the game with the limit of 3-5. Now it is devilishly difficult to get out of the self-imposed trap. The NRL might not exist now if rugby had begun with 10-15 teams in 1996. We shall see. My slow-burning series of article to Bill Pulver should continue this week so watch out ;-) Hayne train is indeed a high-speed engine and I suspect his decline is not injury but more weariness and he has achieved all he can in league, while rugby offers a miasma of new challenges. Ditto Idris. They have both had their moment in the brief glow of the NRL sun. They look jaded. Few stars shine brightest in the NRL because a newer dazzler appears and they lose interest and momentum. In rugby however, it is such a wonderland of varied and ever-developing obstacles that they are left at the end wanting more and more motivated than ever. This could be the redemption of Hayne and Idris. I mention them because they are young and I only think it's worth the money required in stars under 25, because they succeed at the conversion better and have more years to give as return for the investment. Over 25s are fine as regular Super rugby players, the non-stars, but for stars they must be young to succeed and justify the investment. So that means, Hayne train, Idris, Barba and Hopoate should be the only considerations. Barba is foolisly intoxicated but the NRL's illusory spotlight at the moment but the repetitive nature of the weekly matches without the shine of the spotlight will make him jaded, while Hopoate has unnecessarily signed away his life at a young age to league when he could have avoided the whole thing altogether (though if he's anything like his sociopathic father, we might be better off without him). This comment appears to be being moderated so it may not be printed for a long time, and therefore I might not be able to look at your reply immediately but I will eventually!

KPM, I agree Hayne Train would make an awesome rugby union player. He is top class, one of the most talented backs league or union in the world. I'm talking top 5, he really has so much natural ability, as much as Folau if not more as he has better hand-eye co ordination than Folau., and creates more for the people around him, a good I'C Hayne would be. Like Karmicheal Hunt, who is very talented and had a good rugby stint in French rugby. Jamal Idris would be a very powerful outside centre. And has a rugby union background, lost to league due to no opportunities. Agree they should immediately move, Hayne is off contract at end of season, and has left no options off the table, and has played rugby union before too. Would be a good asset in any team in the world. Put it this way, if Sean Maitland can play test rugby, for scotland and be decent, he is a good player, but is no Hayne or Idris or Folau, then Hayne certainly could play test rugby. For those that forget, Chris Ashton in England was a rugby league player who switched codes, with success, he didn't have a rugby background. And on thursday night on the rugby club, Bill Pulver is being interviewed, I hope he has some vision. More super rugby teams, I say and an ARC too i say, and if depth is an issue short term, just allow unlimited imports, and spend big on junior pathways in area. Like you have said KPM rightly, you don't need a team to be good, to develop a rugby culture, or high local junior numbers. Just look at the force. Never made a semi finals, yet WA rugby junior levels are booming. Heck I was thinking the other day, why not saturate Australian areas with rugby teams like England or France. Why not hav 3 division, promotion relegation. 50 teams in the ARC. Or have 2 division 25 teams each , promotion relegation bottom 3 go down. More teams the better. In England they have 4 elite soccer division all competing promotion -relegation . That's 20 teams in each division, 80 teams KPM. Scotland soccer and Wales soccer also have 4 divisions, as do France ,ITaly, and Spain. South Africa rugby now has 5 divisions all professional or semi proffesional, NZ has 4 division or tier's too. And I am only saying 50. And tv rights can be sold globally, to Asia where rugby is booming 4 billion people. And USA/Canada grubby is booming to, and Argentina. ANd allow a lot fo imports in the 2nd, 3rd , or 4th division. And Australia's popualtion is growing. Heck you could go 80 teams KPM in OZ rugby. National 4 division comp, promotion relegation. All those battling city and country and regional clubs, would get more exposure, and money via tv , and comps like 7even's and a knockout comp like the FA cup style, big 1st winning prizes. Have to be ambitious if OZ rugby wants to build the base, and more market share. AFL and NRL without here billion dollars, have state comps now, AFL has an east coast comp now, and Tasmania play in on of there victorian comps. Expanding the ARU needs to do.

Johnno when's Hayne Train going to cut his losses in league and follow his friend Folau to rugby. He is under-appreciated there clearly and the steam has been taken out of his engine. While he's at it he can bring another young player in Jamal Idris. Both seem to have lost their way there but are still young enough to have big future's in rugby. Given Folau's success it would make sense for Hayne train and Idris both to move over immediately, while they're still young enough.

Thanks mate, the dragon's working quite well it takes a bit of time to get used too, but it's faster no doubt about it.

Johnno, voice recognition programs work quite well up to a point. But you still need to go through your posts afterwards, correcting with a keyboard what the VR program gets wrong i.e. 'fine' instead of 'find' and 'effecting' instead of 'affecting'. Good luck with Dragon Nuance.

KPM on a side note to that, one way to speed up writing if you ever get the chance to write articles, is speech recognition, by Dragon Nuance. I have recently purchased it and it speeds up the time when writing in general. But so many topics to discuss, be good if you fine the time to do an article KPM, always good ideas and discussions,, and major issues effecting Australian rugby.

Kane that was a list of potentially the best players, but as I said not necessarily in that combination. JOC would be more of a natural 12, but is too lightweight. Maybe Tomane.

Ioane at 2nd 5?

Markus Your point is well made, & taken !!. Still i don't see the Force knocking back any of these players, you have named !

If you look closely at the depth of the Brumbies and even Reds backs, what they each have is some truly class players, and some other solid ones playing to their full potential alongside the class players. When you look at it like that, taking just a couple of players from each team isn't really that simple. The Rebels and Force will not want a Harris or Zac Holmes, they will want a Lealiifano or Quade. They won't want an Andrew Smith or Anthony Faingaa, they will want a Rathbone or Ioane. Move 1 or 2 of those sort of players to another team, and the Brumbies/Reds backlines will have the exact same lack of potency that the Rebels, Force and Waratahs backlines have had for years.

Wine diamond I hope to put out an article in the next days in a series eventually examining such issues. But it's a lot of effort to write them!

KPM You are as bold as Ned Kelly!!!. Defending anything of , & from the NZRFU. OtOH i don't disagree about the draft. You have advocated it convincingly.

winediamond I don't mean for much of the squads. So if the Brumbies had in general to give up 3 or 4 players, it wouldn't make that much difference to them, not least because there isn't that much difference between the worse 3 or 4 players on the edge of a squad and the best 3 or 4 on the outside edge in the larger playing squads. The NZ draft is not a normal draft. Each franchise is allowed to keep 22 players, ensuring they can take the homegrown cream, while the rest are distributed to the weaker franchises. Even they can return after their first contracts, but it nonetheless has the effect of strengthening the weaker teams without much weakening the stronger ones: the mega clubs such as the Crusaders and Blues still end up with more talent than they can use, but the difference is that the weaker teams are not short of talent either. So it's not a draft, but a 'partial' draft, only in a small degree to strengthen the weaker teams. If that happened in Australia the Force and Rebels would at least be competitive, while I doubt it would actually make any difference to the big three.

JN Grenoble eh!!. Shame. Still you can't blame him for wanting the lucre...

KPM Yes. We are in furious agreement. You are quite right about re-distribution of player resources. However the accusation of "player hoarding' is going to far. The three major franchises giving contracts to players located in , & wanting to live in a major city, close to family , & friends ????. Cmmmooonnn mate !!!!. If you are proposing a draft system like NZ That is yet another issue !!!

winediamond when you look at some of the depth in the Brumbies/Reds backs, the Waratahs forwards, take just one or two players from the reserves of each and you wouldn't damage them at all, and with more imports too you could get a decent team. But player hoarding in the main 3 franchises and the lack of imports is unnecessarily cripping the Force.

KPM Indeed. You raise yet another issue. The Force. We simply must exempt them from all (foreign) player restrictions. The Force cannot otherwise go anywhere. It is urgent. We all look at SA & the Spears - jeez!!!. Yet Really what is the point of having the Force equally un competitive??

A shame though that they are all concentrated in the Waratahs/Reds/Brumbies, with one or two big ones at the Rebels. Give the Force the Brumbies bench and things would be different.