Rugby administrators need some Cheika passion

Thanks for sharing your thoughts Gerry. Its takes more than passion to get things going.

Yes in your region. Why? Because the clubs have means to subsidize the actual cost.

Well all the codes have spent millions too. AFL and NRL have spent many millions more than rugby has. Where I'd disagree is that I don't think our closed (or close enough) conference has to be purely domestic, I think it can and should be Trans-Tasman. Super Rugby matches featuring Australian teams vs Kiwi teams actually do as well and for some teams (like the Force and Rebels) better in terms of crowds than Australian teams playing each other. At a stretch you could include the Japanese team (or maybe 2 Asian teams by then) in our part of Super Rugby as well. Japan is in the same time zone so all matches would stay at a good time.

Eddard, after 20 yrs of professionalism and millions $ spent, trumping that rugby is bigger than ever is hardly an achievement. And we could argue tit for tat, what should have happened, but i will say that the definition of stupid is doing the same thing but expecting a different result. I do agree that the future is through Super rugby, closed conference we must set up a domestic league, we can still play teams from wherever, but the basis has to be a domestic league first. And if i have to explain why then i give up. Now that league could even start at 6 or 8 teams. The next broadcast deal starts in 2021, what i would like to see is the ARU actively heading in that direction, however what i fear is a headless chook that will flog the crap out of the Wallabies in the next 5 years, and then wonder why nothing ever changes. And it is not about competing with the AFL/NRL it is about rugby being the best it can be in Australia.

hog, rugby has never really competed with rugby league and aussie rules. They have had market dominance for a very long time - the money has just followed that more recently. Rugby is actually in a stronger position now than it's ever been, with the exception of a 5 or so year period in the late 90's/early 00's. If rugby had created a national club competition 20 years ago there may have been some chance of competing and becoming a big national sport. But even that's very doubtful given historical factors. And there's no way it could happen now. The salaries, crowds and tv ratings would all be too low and all the good players would leave. You might bring up the A League, but there are a lot more people with an interest in soccer in Australia than rugby - and still only a small % of those people regularly support the A League. That's because it's seen as an inferior competition. A domestic only rugby comp, with say 10 or 12 teams would be about as big as the NBL. The only way it could do better is if someone very rich decided they wanted to give up tens of millions of dollars to the cause. Even then there'd be very little chance of challenging the NRL and AFL. It's like trying to challenge Coke and Pepsi in the cola business. Rugby needs to have a different strategy to AFL and NRL.

Yet strangely, those provo national comps with the other codes are all attracting far more income & interest than rugby which has had Super rugby for 20 years now and has had access to the 3 top nations in the world and access to the best players in the world, yet the game cannot even compete with the other codes now. Maybe we have to live in the past a bit.

Interesting discussion gents. To pick up on the point about Gregan's comments, I have a different view. Success of the Wallabies, although seemingly top heavy, is the pretty much the only thing that drives media coverage of Rugby in this country. And it's media coverage which generates interest, which in turn translates into player numbers, and hence builds growth in the game. You need your shopfront to be successful, which is what he's on about, I believe. As for other aspects of ARU management, I am in total agreement.

In our region soccer, AFL and RL are all 20% cheaper than rugby so the club has to subsidise the difference. Hockey is a non-event and cricket is a summer sport. The point is its hard enough to get kids interested in a game they cant watch. Throw in significantly higher subs and we're pushing shit uphill. Might not be a worry in Sydney but its an issue in regional areas.

Well the English Premiership now has over 70% english eligible players. The French league is the most international. That might not be the most beneficial thing for their national team but it's helped make rugby a lot bigger in France and it won't change any time soon. So yes, it is about money. Players are professional and will go overseas if they can earn 2 or 3 times more than they can at home. With a domestic only league it might even be more than that. Everyone would go overseas and the ARU would have no choice but to completely remove any restrictions on Wallabies eligibility for overseas players. So the domestic league would not contain world class players. At best the playing strength would be about the same as the existing NRC, and it might be lower because a lot of those fringe international players would move to where the money is. I can't see a competition with lower level players ever getting close to competing with the other codes. Honestly Sheek, the best thing that could happen would be for Super Rugby expansion to go amazingly well. Then within a decade or so there'd be separate conferences, perhaps even closed conferences in each of South Africa, South America, Asia and Oceania. Then we'd have our own Trans Tasman conference followed by a global playoff series featuring only the best teams from each conference. That solves a lot of problems in terms of structure and it would bring a lot more money into the game. That would allow us to eventually have more than 5 teams in Australia.

Rugby Union fees are less than Soccer, Hockey and Cricket. Perhaps that's just the cost of sport?

Eddard/Battered Slav, I know there are better answers than the one I can give now, which is, "there's more than one way to skin a cat". I keep hearing how everything is about money. Is it? Look at how dysfunctional the French & English national teams are. They are the same ones with the most valuable domestic comps in the world. In they quest to become more & more wealthy they strip the best players from everywhere else. Makes their comps great in terms of revenue raising, but suffocates the ability to develop home-grown talent.

What Ned Stark said. Totally agree. You're living in the past Sheek, we need to compete with o/s not just on the field, but on the balance sheets. A povo national comp with no big names will not do this.

Good read, Twas. Agree. The problem is a lot more complex than what's being made out.

What you're really saying is that the ARU runs a business model with a high cost structure and poor revenue stream. And in your opinion the "sound financial practice" is to slug the customer a bit harder which makes your product 20% more expensive than the competitor's product (AFL, soccer and RL). But this isn't an issue with the ARU business model, its those tight arse juniors and seniors that wont pay more and instead drift off to other sports.

Spoken by somebody with absolutely no idea what's occurring on the other side of the fence. Junior fees were "hiked" because the ARU had subsidised them for decades, which was part of their financial losses. They didn't "hike" the fees. The dropped the subsidisation of costs which they had previously provided. When you have no profits, I consider this sound financial practice.

The problem Sheek, is that a national competition wouldn't be able to compete with the salaries on offer from European rugby, Japan, or for that matter the NRL. So the best players would play elsewhere. People don't show up in droves to watch lower quality competitions. I don't think an APC/ARC that was effectively a feeder league to European rugby, featuring next to no Wallabies (or other internationals), would do any good for making rugby more popular in Australia. It might have been possible 20 years ago, but I don't see how it could work now. Give me the Waratahs vs Crusaders, featuring top players over West Sydney vs Newcastle any day of the week. I think the ARU has to focus on making super rugby better than it is. Australian rugby needs 6 successful, well supported and financially strong professional teams (including the Wallabies), and then it could consider expanding.

And we don't need passion. We need intelligent thinkers making prudent and objective calls that are in the best interest of the game's long term health.

It's a complex matter. Anybody discussing simple issues or simple solutions doesn't comprehend the complexity of it. RU will never gain maximum reach in Australia without more FTA exposure. The ARU will never get more FTA exposure with 2/3 of the provincial competition being in bad time zones against teams nobody in Australia cares about. The ARU will never get enough money to stay solvent immediately from a fully domestic competition right now. The SANZAR partners will not let the ARU take less money for super rugby to be on FTA in Australia. In order to step into professionalism in 1996 the ARU needed the Pay TV money. People blaming the ARU for this and that are missing the point. Who are you blaming? Most of the people that have lead Australian rugby to where it is now are long gone. Somewhere along the line, they needed to take the financial hit and transition from PayTV to FTA for domestic product. This point was over a decade ago though. Since about the 2007 the ARU has not had the financial resources to do this and have needed to focus on stopping the bleeding. Now they need to develop a new product that will be ready when they step away from super rugby, because they cannot afford a lull in revenue. Is this Pulver's fault? The ARU was a basket case when he took over. We can hardly blame the woes of Australia. Rugby on him.

The exact opposite. You can always import players. You cannot import supporters.

Sydneysider, you are not a "casual rugby fan" if you don't like the Waratahs or Reds. People who like Wallabies and their Super Rugby state team could probably be classified as casual rugby fans. People who like Wallabies, Super Rugby team AND club rugby are the hardcore rugby fans. People who only watch Wallabies are, I think, just sports/Australian sporting team fans. AFL certainly has tribalism, I'm not so sure about NRL any more though, some teams yes but many no. A-League only has tribalism with a couple of teams. As you have said, the NRC tribalism feels too manufactured to pick up new fans, Well, what's your alternative? There isn't one. Super Rugby is it in Australia. I think the best we can hope for is viable teams (one day) in every state in the country. As a rugby fan though, wouldn't you much rather see Waratahs v Crusaders? There's history behind that. Tahs v Western Force is rarely interesting! The reasons League, AFL etc have tribalism is because their club comps have been going with many of the same teams playing each other on a regular basis for a century!