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The ARU has made moves towards club rugby becoming a wholly amateur competition again in order to pave the way for a strong third tier in Australian rugby.
While our knickers were in a knot over Will Genia being benched and lamenting the lack of depth in Australian rugby on Wednesday, Bill Pulver quietly detailed the reforms of club rugby through the Sydney Morning Herald’s rugby scoop, Georgina Robinson.
The key proposals are these:
– Ask clubs to stop paying players or the ARU will reduce funding to them – those player payments “can be up to $10,000 a season”.
– Super Rugby squad players will be required to turn out for club rugby in the city of their Super Rugby team.
– A national club competition could be formed using a number of elite premier rugby clubs and amalgamations of others to run between August and October.
Yes, the ARU finally has the bullet in its mouth and the jaw is tightening.
As you can imagine, this news is causing a bit of a ruckus in the world of conflicted interests and traditions dating back 100 years that is club rugby.
What the reform for clubs to stop paying players achieves is carving a proper niche in the rugby spectrum for a real deal third tier competition in Australia that is desperately needed.
Club rugby, as it stands, encroaches just enough on the territory of a third tier professional competition to cloud the waters but without actually being able to properly serve that purpose.
For that reason some of the upper reaches of club rugby must be trimmed to set a clear starting point for the third tier to build upon.
There will obviously be questions about how exactly this will work that can’t be answered in anything short of an operations meeting, like how the rest of the field will compete with Sydney University’s ability to offer scholarships instead of payment etc.
What I will say is this move is needed and worth pursuing to the point of putting a few people offside in order to secure rugby’s long term future in this country.
Clubs do have an important place in the context of rugby in this country. They are a social organisation, a place for home-made burgers, focus on the lower leagues and introducing youngsters to the game and its ethos.
Renewed focus on this type of rugby club will serve the grassroots of rugby well.
To put all this in context; this transformation is the next step in the excrutiatingly slow process of rugby turning into a modern, professional sport in Australia that started when the international level talent was deemed worth paying by Rupert Murdoch.
Recently that process was developed further with the governance review of the sport enabling a leadership structure that has some real power to guide the game and comply with modern conflict of interest standards.
Now that is beginning to trickle down. It’s like slogging through mud, but there’s progress.
Today, Pulver has emphatically endorsed my own favourite soapbox proposal (sarcasm font) rugby needs a stronger presence on free-to-air television and intimated the time for complete reliance on Fox Sport has come to an end.
Another schloppy foot pulled from the quagmire and placed in front of the other. Small steps.
Many Super Rugby traditionalists – if you can call early followers of such a young competition that – are loathe to leave the safety of pay-TV.
It may cost something up front but, again, this is about long-term security over the short term gain.
Governance structure in place, or not, the murky political waters of Australian rugby are a muddy marsh for Pulver to traverse.
We all need to hope some clear changes emerge from the swamp that enable rugby to properly leave behind the amateur era and plan for success in the 21st century.
Bill Pulver’s name might not be up in lights as much as his predecessor’s, but the quiet noises he is making indicates there’s a desire to enact real change.
This keyboard basher has lamented the state of rugby often enough but is willing to give his vision some time to be put in place.
People whose workmates always have the radio on at work, like myself, would already have heeded the words of dubstep-rockers Imagine Dragons in their latest single – “welcome to the new age”.
Join The Roar rugby editor Christy Doran, former Wallaby Matt Toomua and a cast of regular and special guests as they look at the biggest issues in the game on The Roar Rugby Podcast. If you’re looking for great odds on the next game check out Aussie bookmaker PlayUp. Chances are you’re about to lose. Set a deposit limit.