I’ll begin with three home truths for all Australian rugby fans.

First, unless a miracle happens, putting the third tier right is going to take a generation to achieve.

Union is so far behind the AFL, NRL, A-League in terms of having a viable and respected domestic competition that even a well-funded, glitzy television campaign that ran for a decade wouldn’t help.

It has to be a competition built from the grass roots up, not one manufactured out of thin air and imposed from the top down.

It must be one which uses and exploits rugby’s existing strengths and supporter base in Australia.

The last thing that’s needed is for the ARU to make a huge pile of cash from this years’ Lions’ Tour, and then pump it into a monstrosity like the ARC, with manufactured teams in areas where there is little or no support for the game, in some futile attempt to have a national footprint.

History and common sense demand that the third tier competition must be based on the Sydney club competition.

The second home truth is that the third tier is not going to be a money spinner for some time.

In fact it will lose money. The key is to control costs, which means geographical concentration in a country the size of Australia is vital.

The third home truth is that no Wallabies will play in it due to the existing demands of professional rugby.

The competition won’t have any star power. Each week of the National Provincial Championship in New Zealand there are hundreds of thousands of empty seats in stadiums all over the country, an emphatic signal from the rugby-loving New Zealand public of what they think about its starless third tier.

This is further reason to concentrate the competition geographically, because gate revenues will be small for many years ahead.

Some will point to the huge crowds and television audiences for the Currie Cup as proof the third tier can be a financial success.

But there’s a number of factors why the Currie Cup is like that, and these factors don’t exist in Australia.

The Currie Cup has a long and hugely passionate history. Rugby is ingrained into the mentality of the average Afrikaner.

For them, there is no other sport apart from rugby.

But if God were to conjure up the average Australian bloke, he wouldn’t even support rugby.

In fact if God were to conjure up the average Australian town, it probably wouldn’t have a rugby club.

The history and passion required to financially sustain a third tier in Australia is simply not available in large enough numbers for a new ‘top down’ competition.

But all is definitely not lost.

Starting with the Sydney competition may be a small beginning, but at least it will be financially sustainable. And I’m certain that over time, big things will come from it.

Just look at the NRL. Twenty years ago all it had was a few clubs dotted throughout Sydney.

Now it’s a billion dollar business with a string of vibrant, highly respected professional clubs spread far and wide. The same thing could be said of the AFL.

The NRL and AFL are perfect examples of how to create and run a successful domestic competition.

If you have two shining examples of how to do it, why on earth would you even think to do it differently?

One of the big advantages the ARU has, as it considers the third tier solution, are the lessons it can learn not just from the NRL and AFL, but also from rugby’s own history.

Following rugby’s professionalisation in 1995, the code globally was faced with the vexed issue of the second tier.

In the Southern Hemisphere the Super 12 was created out of nothing. The jury is still out on whether Super Rugby is the way forward in this part of the world.

Compared to AFL and NRL, you would have to say it’s been a failure in Australia.

Were it not for the Reds, the competition would be in danger of slipping behind the A-League (it may have already done so), and even the ANBL in terms of television ratings, crowd figures, interest and most important of all, passion.

When rugby in England went professional, there was talk initially of the RFU establishing it’s own Super 12 by creating ‘super clubs’ teams out of nothing and planting them in Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Sheffield, Leeds and other major cities.

But the RFU was smart. It played to its existing strengths, namely the existing club competition and turned it into the premiership we have today.

It hasn’t even countenanced the idea of an aggressive expansion into league territory.

Some of the clubs in the first premiership seasons were tiny, such as Orrell RFC.

In the heady days of 1995 when cash was flooding into the game for the first time, it would have been easy for the RFU to remove clubs like Orrell and replace them with a manufactured ‘super club’, but it did not.

They left Orrell there. As it turned out, the club was demoted, but only as a result of a natural, lawful process, and not some manufactured reason.

Leaving the small clubs alone showed that authenticity is vital to the credibility of any professional sports competition.

Orrell and the other smalls clubs eventually dropped down through natural attrition or demotion, but it’s important to understand their removal from the top flight was not forced on the people and the supporters in a manufactured, unauthentic way.

From those humble beginnings when clubs like Saracens, Irish, Wasps and Harlequins were lucky to get a crowd of 200 through the gate, now the premiership boasts annual television ratings and attendances in the millions.

The same situation prevailed in France. Rugby union is now the second most popular sport there, but when it first went professional that support was confined to it’s heartland in the south.

The FFR could have planted manufactured teams in large population centres that were not traditionally rugby towns, like Lyon, Marseille, Nice and Lille, but they didn’t.

They understood the importance of history and authenticity when it came to sport.

For French rugby, its history lay in the towns and villages of the south and when the Top 14 went professional, big city teams from Paris and Toulouse rubbed shoulders with those from small towns like Brive and Pau.

In some ways the resounding success of the Wallabies in the period 1997-2003, and the hosting of the 2003 Rugby World Cup were the worst things that could happen to rugby in Australia.

These successes created an unprecedented boom of popularity for the sport, and gave the administrators, and many fans, the erroneous belief that passionate, enduring support for rugby union could be built from the top down.

If the powerful English and French Unions stick to their heartlands and existing clubs, what makes the ARU think it doesn’t have to?

Is it arrogance? I think so. If the ARU goes for an ARC or quasi-ARC option, or a manufactured competition with teams dreamed up out of thin air, then the organisation is no longer fit to run the game.

It would show it was interested more with retaining its power base, and with grandiose plans in the quest for unattainable riches, than in doing what is right for rugby.

The ARU board is stacked with Old Boys of the elite rugby schools. They want to maintain control of rugby in Australia, and the money to be made from it, within this social group.

If the clubs became seats of power it would open up rugby’s corridors of power to the masses, and heaven forbid, the working classes, and to people who didn’t go to the right school.

The third tier question in Australia is Marx’s class struggle in action.

Think about it. Do you honestly think the ARU could stomach the thought of the Southern Districts Rugby Club contracting three or four Wallabies, and being owned by Nick Politis? But isn’t that the answer right there to the third tier question?

In fact, isn’t that the answer to all of rugby’s problems in Australia?

When the rugby unions of New Zealand, Australia, Wales and Scotland make up new teams like the Crusaders, the Dragons, the Glasgow Warriors and the Sydney Fleet, these new teams are nothing but desperate attempts by the unions (and the Old Boys’ networks who run them) to retain power and control over rugby assets.

It doesn’t matter to these unions whether it works or not, or whether the fans want it, or whether it’s going to be a success. It’s simply about retaining control, and making sure men like Owen Glenn, Nick Politis and Eric Watson don’t get their hands on it.

The Pro 12 also provides an interesting example because that is a competition which started from scratch in 2001 and which had a mix of brand new and old teams.

The manufactured teams were Glasgow, Edinburgh and the four (originally five) Welsh regions, while all four of the Irish provinces Munster (1879), Leinster (1879), Ulster (1879) and Connacht (1885) have all been around for nearly 130 years.

After 12 years of the celtic competition, Glasgow, which is home to the most passionate sports fans in the world (think Rangers, Celtic and Partick Thistle), still can’t get more than 2000 people to a game, while there’s so few people at Murrayfield to watch Edinburgh that I wonder if I’m watching a professional sports event when I see it on TV.

The Welsh regions are in constant disarray and domestically in Wales, the game is rapidly losing ground and credibility to football. Contrast that with the Irish provinces, who are long-standing institutions.

They are booming. Their success is outstanding, and their supporters legion and passionate.

The Irish, English and French clubs are institutions, part of the history and fabric of their local communities.

As a consequence, from humble beginnings when a few hundred people turned up to watch, the popularity of rugby union has grown dramatically in those countries.

Contrast that with the fortunes of the manufactured clubs in Scotland and Wales, where after 12 years, support is almost non-existent, and the exact future direction of rugby is still not clear.

Sound familiar?

Support for Super Rugby in Melbourne and Perth is in decline, and not even five years has passed since these teams were created to much fanfare.

Doesn’t anyone remember what happened to Super League and the ARC, or the Central Vikings?

And if a manufactured, well-funded competition like Super Rugby can’t crack the Australian market, how is a third tier competition without money and star players going to?

The lesson for the ARU from history is that manufacturing teams and competitions where none existed before would be sheer folly.

All that will come from it are tears, debts and more egg on the face.

Talk of two teams in Brisbane, and splitting Sydney into four or five new teams with other teams from Perth, Adelaide and Melbourne would be totally wrong.

It completely ignores the lessons from history, not only those from Europe, but also from Australia’s own backyard in union and league.

The beauty with the Sydney club championship option is that Super Rugby remains in place, untouched.

Super Rugby receives a lot of flak from all quarters, most of it rightly deserved, but the competition has potential if things are done right.

Its weakness is the weakness of rugby union in Australia, but a successful third tier in Australia would have positive benefits for the Super Rugby competition as a whole.

Randwick, Gordon, Sydney University, Eastern Suburbs, Manly, Warringah, Eastwood, Northern Suburbs.

Just saying their names puts a shiver down my spine, and I’m a kiwi.

These are famous names, and famous clubs in rugby union.

Down the ages, these are the institutions that have carried rugby in Australia, and always will.

In a sea of change, this handful of clubs are the bulwark, the final bastions capable of halting Australian rugby’s retreat into oblivion.

They hold the key to the future of rugby in Australia.

But is the ARU prepared to relinquish the power to the clubs?

Only time will tell.

Maybe it’s time for these great Sydney clubs to be bold, and take matters into their own hands, much like the trail-blazing 22 northern clubs did in 1895.