Worth the wait but more NRC patience required

From the moment then-ARU CEO John O’Neill cut the financial umbilical cord of the Australian Rugby Championship after its inaugural season, the calls for a re-establishment of third tier competition have been as loud as they’ve been persistent.

And given how hard he’s been pushing for its rebirth from the moment he took up residence in the big office in St Leonards, Bill Pulver was an understandably happy man as he fronted the hordes to deliver the announcement Australian rugby fans had been waiting for since late 2007.

Nine teams, playing four home and four away games plus a bye, with the top four teams progressing to a finals series. The entire NRC will be done in 11 weeks, running from the third weekend in August through to the first weekend in November.

It ticks so many boxes: yes, it’s that crucial step in the increasing gap between club and Super Rugby, but it’s also putting high-quality rugby back on the agenda in that time of year traditionally dominated by The Rugby Championship, not to mention the NRL and AFL finals series.

Hearing Pulver speak at yesterday afternoon’s ARU announcement, it was clear plenty of work has been done in a pretty short timeframe to get where we are. But Pulver also unapologetically suggested with all the hard work that has been done for the strategic importance of this missing third tier of Australian rugby, and with all the new money already on the table for the NRC, “why wait?”

“We are really looking at this competition as a wonderful way to re-engage with the rugby community and our fan-base,” Pulver said. The NRC Commission is said to be working on any number of new “innovative things around matchday”, and on new ways of interaction with existing and new rugby fans via this competition.

However, patience will be needed from the viewing public. Clearly, not all these details have been worked out yet.

Broadcast arrangements at this point in time centre on Fox Sports, and their previous commitment to broadcast at least one live NRC game per week. “But we’re hoping we might twist their arm and maybe make it another game or two,” Pulver said.

While a free-to-air presence is certainly on the wish list, the TV rights sit with Fox Sports. Anything beyond one live NRC game per week in the television space will need to be worked out in consultation with Fox Sports and Foxtel.

That said, I’ve been made aware that numerous ideas around streaming the ‘other’ games via digital platforms is definitely on the table.

More patience will be needed around the details of the nine clubs, too. Newly-appointed General Manager of National Teams and Competitions, former Brumbies CEO Andrew Fagan, told me late yesterday that now the nine teams have been advised they will be part of the competition, they can begin locking down details and making their announcements.

With multiple clubs coming from Sydney and Brisbane, it will take time for the information to come out.

Some clubs are more advanced than others, obviously. As I write this very paragraph, the Sydney Stars, Greater Sydney Rams, Perth Spirit, and Melbourne Rising already exist on Twitter. Melbourne, Perth, and the University of Canberra Vikings had press releases out within hours, detailing what they already know.

On that front, Perth will “play in black and gold jerseys, the traditional state colours of Western Australia”. Melbourne will “represent all of Victorian Rugby” and play out of the Rebels’ AAMI Park home, while the ‘UC Vikings’ side will play out of Vikings Park in southern Canberra and will “provide a clear pathway” to the Brumbies for ACT players.

I can also clear up something that was quickly misinterpreted and criticised during yesterday’s live update session. Many a Roarer took “to be based at Moore Park” to mean the NSW Country side will also play their games in Sydney, thus ignoring the very geographical definition within their name.

As I suspected might have been the case when it was first mentioned, Fagan told me the partnership between Country, Waratahs, Randwick and Easts will be “looking to play each of their four home games throughout the [NSW] Country region,” and that they will be using the Waratahs’ high performance facilities at Moore Park in Sydney as their training base.

“They’ve got a really exciting philosophy around taking rugby to the country regions, and have already had discussions with a number of potential locations,” Fagan said.

NRC Commission chair, John Boultbee, suggested in the ARU presser that the issue for Country might not be working out where they will play, but rather working out “which towns they won’t play in”. Like a number of things we still don’t know, the devil was always going to be in the detail on that particular point. Patience was always, and still will be, required.

Queensland Country look set to be based, and even play, on the Gold Coast, with Fagan suggesting the Queensland Rugby Union may well look at taking some games into regional areas as well.

Boultbee said at the ARU announcement each NRC side’s 33-man squad would be limited to 16 Super Rugby-contracted players, clarifying the concern the one-team cities would have the advantage of being able to call on their entire Super Rugby squads

Just focussing on Perth, Melbourne and Canberra again, that means that some pretty handy current Super Rugby bench players will be playing for teams other their ‘local’ side. For many, that will mean a return home to Sydney or Brisbane, and that’s not a bad thing at all. Local players will help with local support.

Boultbee said the distribution of players would be “an iterative process”, whose first step is the naming of the Wallabies squads, and that the broader player movement workings would commence in May.

Patience will be required around the draw, too, but on that front, you’d like to hope there’s some logical thinking, and the four home Tests in the NRC timeframe are utilised, with games played as curtain-raisers.

The first Bledisloe in Sydney on August 16, the match against South Africa in Perth on 6 September, the match against Argentina on the Gold Coast the following week, and the third Bledisloe in Brisbane on 18 October should all feature National Rugby Championship matches on the undercard.

“It presents an opportunity that we wouldn’t dismiss out of hand,” Fagan said of the prospect, while also acknowledging some of the sides might be looking to grow their brands in their local areas.

Pulver made an interesting point in terms of expected crowds. “We actually don’t need massive crowds for [the NRC] to be a financial success,” he said.

“There have been very modest assumptions made around the crowd. Having said that, there are some terrific strategies in place to drive crowds behind this, and you’re going to see fabulous rugby played in this competition with the best young talent we have in Australia.

“So the financial model doesn’t require [massive crowds] but I think there’s a fantastic opportunity to generate a very good crowd from this.”

Yesterday’s announcements – both the initial announcement on Fox Sports News and the NRC announcement proper – represent a major milestone for Australian rugby, and for that there is much to celebrate.

There is still much to be patient about, though, and that will remain the case for some time.

And that patience is clearly a two-way street. Yesterday’s announcement was big for Australian rugby, yet it didn’t rate a mention on the Sydney news broadcasts on Channels Seven, Nine, or even the Wallabies’ free-to-air home, Ten.