Where to for Australian rugby at the midnight crossroads?

It is not quite midnight yet at the crossroads for Australian rugby, but that hour is approaching.

The road ahead and to the East is the chosen and bloody path of four Australian teams in a revamped Super Rugby competition, dimly lit and uncertain after 2020.

Behind and to the West smokes the carnage, anger and sorrow from the destruction of the Force.

To the north, the winding road leads to Asia and the prospect of an Indo-Pacific Championship – an illusory ribbon.

The final, mountainous road, to the south, is guarded by the New Zealand Rugby Union, a bastion committed to defending its South African alliance and the impressive rugby edifice it has built.

Every crossroad holds the twin terrors of uncertainty and change.

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The crossroads are remote, lying in a featureless and desolate shadowland, the hollows and barrios of which are inhabited by TV and media executives, bankers, brokers, lawyers and market researchers. It is a desperate land, way beyond where the beating heart and soul of rugby dwell in the clubs, schools and green playing fields of Australia.

The heart and soul bitterly resents the preoccupation of its royalty with these dark hinterlands, and how they spurn their local communities except to raise taxes to fund the next ill-planned foray into the shadowlands.

The new queen needs to address this lingering distrust and fix the broken relationship between the rugby community and its leadership. Removing the Rugby AU levy on junior clubs and implementing grassroots funding as promised would be an important start.

The grassroots have survived despite a lack of attention, and the commoners have sought refuge in their tribal traditions and rivalries. They have turned up in droves to support their clubs and schools, while in turn spurning the elite brands of rugby so beloved of the royalty.

The royalty are not inherently evil or malevolent, but they are aloof and out of touch with the commoners. Their obsession with gold and treasure has not been moderated to include the interests of the smaller rugby.

In constantly chasing the best corporate deal, they have lost sight of why the deal was so important in the first place, and in the process become the very people in the shadowlands they are chasing.

The royalty’s moral compass has swung onto a war footing, where the ends justify the means to meet specific terrors emerging from the dark hinterlands. Thus, they have decided they must mobilise all resources in order for the kingdom to survive, but lost its direction along the way and the faith of the people in why they are doing so, because for the most part the shadowland wars are invisible to the commoners.

A mobilisation without the support of the common people, without their voice, and without their common will to sustain it, is doomed to failure.

This is actually the critical decision that lies buried beneath the crossroads. The direction is meaningless unless it represents progress. Without unity, there can be no progress, just different tribes moving in different directions looking after their own interests.

Meanwhile, the royalty counts its coffers and wonders how it will pay its chosen knights to keep them in the kingdom and competing at the next tournament so they can win. Apparently to win is all that is required to appease the commoners and the forces that inhabit the shadowlands.

The payment of some of these knights is emblematic of the royalty’s failure to develop its own professional class of warriors. The kingdom lacks effective development and training systems, and the foresight to produce enough quality knights itself, so it spends vast amounts of treasure to poach more athletic knights and instructors from nearby fiefdoms.

This is a short-term and expensive patchwork solution to securing the realm that the commoners view with suspicion. Why not invest more treasure in the tribes to produce better knights of your own than employ famous mercenaries whose loyalties are uncertain?

The queen must convince the royalty that the commoners and their views matter, almost as much as financial capital does. The royalty does not own rugby and it is not theirs to sell; they are custodians with a responsibility both moral and fiduciary to nurture and strengthen the code. Neither do they own the heart and soul of the game.

The tribal oxygen and bellows that breathes life into rugby is produced every weekend and weeknight across thousands of fields, hearths and clubhouses. As a child of the crossroads, royalty and the commoners, there are signs the queen understands this, whether she can convince her royal council and demonstrate positive actions towards the grassroots tribes remains to be seen.

No road is wrong at the crossroads, if the choice be unified then the path forward will be lit and the common armour of mutual trust will see off the challenges arising from uncertainty and change. The Queen would do well to bear this in mind as rugby approaches that dark crossroads in 2019 and 2020.

Then all the running you can do should indeed be enough to get somewhere else. Hopefully, that somewhere else is better than where we are right now.