Has Australian rugby reached a tipping point?

A few years ago I wrote a book on Pontypool RFC with my good friend Alun Carter.

A book which started as a colourful history of one of the greatest names of the amateur era in Welsh club rugby, finished with three chapters in which I investigated the impact of regionalisation on the game in Wales.

Wales had always been founded on the strength of its clubs, but in 2003-2004 a decision was taken to introduce five regional teams to compete in the two European club tournaments, based on club mergers. Four were concentrated around the traditional power bases of Llanelli (Scarlets), Swansea (Ospreys), Cardiff (Blues) and Newport (Dragons), while a fifth (the Celtic Warriors) represented the Valleys of South Wales and included successful sides such as Pontypridd and Bridgend.

Within one full season the Warriors had disappeared permanently in a fog of mismanagement. The other four regions pressed on. Privately-owned and backed by wealthy local benefactors at the outset, the regional game achieved its peak around 2007-2009, attracting global stars like Justin Marshall, Jerry Collins and Marty Holah to its ranks and with the Ospreys and Blues advancing to the knockout stages of the Heineken Cup regularly.

To cut a long story short, the benefactors soon started to drift away when they found their projects could not come close to breaking even as a business. Their emigration from the game brought all of the regions close to financial collapse, and only the support of the Welsh Rugby Union staved off the spectre of bankruptcy.

Since 2009, the regions have all had to cut their cloth far more modestly, to the point where there is now a general, if grudging acceptance that they cannot, and probably never will compete with the spending budgets available to the bigger English and French clubs.

Since 2009, only one Welsh region (the Blues in 2011) has reached the knockout stages of the Heineken/European Champions Cup, and every Welsh region in the tournament has been knocked out at the group stage for the past five years.

At the same time, the internal financial collapse ensured that many of the top Welsh players were poached by the English and French clubs who could offer both far better remuneration and the prospect of winning silverware, and played their football outside their home country.

Welsh rugby at the regional level has already reached a crossroads – a position in which it is struggling to emerge from a vicious death-spiral of losing seasons, dwindling attendances and the migration of top talent to wealthier leagues.

It is here that Australian supporters may recognise what Welsh and Australian rugby have in common. The registered playing base of the two countries is not too dissimilar in size (52,000 players in Wales, 86,000 in Australia) and far short of the other country, South Africa which exports much of its rugby manhood overseas. The Republic boasts well over half a million registered rugby union players and is able to replenish its stocks at the top level far quicker as a result.

Wales currently have 14 players of approximate international standard plying their trade in England and France, with another 21 supplying significant depth in those countries.

Now let’s look at the pattern of migration from Australia:

In 2016-17, there will be 24 players of recent Wallaby standard playing outside Australia. The 2015-16 vintage consisted of 15 – Drew Mitchell, James O’Connor, Jesse Mogg, Matt Giteau, Will Genia, Quade Cooper, Adam Ashley-Cooper, Nic White, Ben Mowen and Sitaleki Timani in France; James Horwill and Lachie Turner in England, and Nick Cummins and Scott Higginbotham in Japan.

Next season, Joe Tomane, Mike Harris, Luke Jones and Liam Gill will move to France; Matt Toomua, Greg Holmes, Dave Dennis and Kurtley Beale to England; David Pocock and Anthony Fainga’a to Japan.

That’s a 60% increase from one year to the next. 24 players of recent Wallaby standard, plus 32 extras including ‘significant others’ like Paul Alo-Emile, Hugh Pyle and Peter Kimlin represents a huge loss of playing strength to the Australian Super rugby franchises.

From a very different starting place, Australian rugby has now approximated a very similar situation to Welsh rugby, with the same proportion of top players playing outside their home country.

Too many of the Welsh/Australian playing ‘assets’ are now the employees of another company, with their clubs having primacy of contract. Those companies dictate the player’s career development, from their nutrition and conditioning regimes to the number of games they play in the course of a season.

Player-release is another major bone of contention. To the best of my knowledge, Michael Cheika would require 18 weeks per annum for the Wallabies’ matches and preparatory camps. Under IRB regulation 9, the clubs are not obliged to provide more than approximately 13 weeks. How can consistency of selection be achieved from that situation?

Like Wales, Australian rugby union is under pressure from competing sports (AFL and NRL). Wales reached the semi-final of the European Championship for the first time last week. Its major club Swansea AFC are English Premiership regulars, and 18,000 of their 22,000 seats at the Liberty stadium are in the hands of season ticket holders. Every home game is sold out – a scenario the rugby regions can only dream about.

Like Wales, Australia has been left domestically with too many franchises and not enough playing quality to fill all the roster spots. Graham Henry told me privately that he did not consider there were enough quality players in Wales to create more than two (or three at the outside) regional squads with genuine winning potential back in 2002 – but Wales has been reluctant to reduce to less than four regions nonetheless.

Since its inception in 2006, the Western Force franchise in Australia has had two winning seasons out of ten (2008 and 2014), an overall win ratio of 35% and has never reached the knockout stages of the Super rugby tournament. Since its inception in 2011, the Melbourne Rebels franchise has yet to enjoy a winning season, has an overall win ratio of 29%, and has never reached the knockout stages of the Super rugby tournament.

While I do not pretend to know the intricacies of the political or developmental landscape of Australian rugby union, which probably dictated the need for franchises in Melbourne and Perth to spread the gospel of the sport, the similarity of their results with the least successful region in Wales – the Newport-Gwent Dragons with their 41% win ratio in the Celtic League/Pro 12 and 21% in the Heineken Cup since 2003, is too hard to ignore.

The top Australian side thus far in 2016 is the Brumbies, with their record of 39 points comfortably surpassed by all the New Zealand sides except the Blues, to whom the Brumbies lost 40-15 on Saturday. The average score-line between Australian teams and their opponents this weekend was 13-45, and three out of those five matches were played at home.

So at what point do you consider:

1. Implementing a ban on overseas players representing the Wallabies?
2. Concentrating the available local talent into fewer representative sides?

Let’s take a look at what might happen if one of the Australian franchises was disbanded in order to create a superior talent pool in the other four. At home I have a computer program which is designed to find the right ‘fits’ for clubs looking for overseas players.

I adjusted it to hold a mock NFL-style draft of Western Force players into the ranks of the other three franchises. There were four rounds of the ‘Draft’ plus a round or two of Free Agent signings. The Reds picked first in each round, followed by the Rebels, Waratahs and finally the Brumbies.

These were the results of the fantasy draft!

Team-by-team: Reds
The Reds used their overall first pick to take the best player in the entire Draft, full-back Dane Haylett-Petty. This consolidated their backfield and allowed Karmichael Hunt to shift up to 12. Later choices Faulkner and Tessmann bolstered their front row resources with Greg Holmes departure.

Reds starting 23 for 2016-17:

Team-by-team: Rebels
The Rebels needed a genuine lock forward and a prime young hooker, and they got both in Adam Coleman and Harry Scoble. second rounder Jono Lance gave them a valuable extra 10 or 15 in a move which could potentially transform their back play:

Team-by-team: Waratahs
The Tahs addressed the departure of Kurtley Beale by selecting Kyle Godwin with their first pick, then buttressed their stocks in the forwards with Pek Cowan at loose-head and Ross Haylett-Petty and Angus Cottrell in the back five:

Team-by-team: Brumbies
The Brumbies picked up three of the robust type of forwards which suit them down to the ground – literally in Matt Hodgson’s case! Peter Grant would add a mature influence behind youngster Jordan Jackson-Hope at 10:

Even the dissolution of one franchise would be enough to give more hope for the 2016-17 season. The Rebels and Reds would be able to field far stronger and more balanced back divisions, while the drafting of Force forwards could regenerate the Brumbies threat up front. Kyle Godwin could provide the missing link at 12 to replace the absent Kurtley Beale for the Tahs.

Of course, it’s all fantasy – but the realities which prompted me to write the article, based on my experience in Wales, are not. Australian rugby may well be at a tipping point where something must be given up in order for the game to move forward meaningfully at the top professional level.