Reflections on the way forward for Australian rugby

In his excellent article on September 3, ‘The Wrap: A way forward for Australian rugby – how hard can it be?’, Geoff Parkes astutely sketched the rugby landscape in Australia.

He outlined changes that could be made to engage fans, build on traditions, safeguard revenues and coordinate programs to strengthen the development of and pathways for Australian players

The current SANZAAR broadcast agreement concludes at the end of 2020. Rugby Australia and its counterparts in New Zealand, South Africa and Argentina will now be developing proposals for Southern Hemisphere-based test matches and provincial competitions and the associated television rights for 2021 and beyond. A shakeup of Super Rugby and the Rugby Championship is surely on the cards.

We rusted-on supporters of rugby in Australia need to contribute our ideas as well. What formats and programs would we want to see adopted after 2020?

Building on Geoff’s base, I’ll throw some proposals into the mix for consideration by the rugby devotees who inhabit this site – and, desirably too, by some of the elite players who grace the game.

Firstly we need to acknowledge that rugby is a major global sport and Australian rugby’s key source of revenue is international competition. We could draw back from that involvement and focus on grassroots rugby, but we inevitably would lose our elite players and our world standing.

For now collaboration with New Zealand, South Africa and, to a lesser extent, Argentina and Japan is our best vehicle for earning substantial revenue and building international competitiveness. That’s not to accept that Super Rugby and the Rugby Championship need to continue as is.

However, to sustain revenue streams we do need to provide or participate in roughly the same amount and value of ‘product’ each year, including around 14 test matches as well as matches involving Australian provincial teams that attract domestic and international viewers.

While there is no set of arrangements that will provide a perfect solution, it seems to me that four main levels of competition – test, Super Rugby, National Rugby Championship and club rugby – is one too many in the relatively small Australian rugby market.

(Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)

A tighter focus of interest around three main levels of competition has the potential to yield a strengthened and more sustainable market. But don’t stop reading – I’m not one of those advocating that the NRC be scrapped and in its stead matches among clubs be elevated.

First, some key givens. Participation in rugby in Australia is at healthy levels, with sevens rugby and women’s rugby great recent success stories. Support at club level, where traditional rivalries generate interest, is strong. Attendance at and TV viewership of the NRC is as yet weak, and for Super Rugby and test matches it is declining.

What, then, of the contests that can grow the game and its support base in Australia?

At the Super Rugby level rugby fans in Australia are most interested in local derbies, somewhat interested in matches between Australian and New Zealand sides and scarcely interested in matches between Australian and South African, Argentinean or Japanese sides.

A similar favouring of local match-ups exists in New Zealand and South Africa. In those two countries domestic appetites are well supplemented by the Mitre 10 and Currie Cup tournaments respectively.

Rather than run a diffuse, partitioned, confusing and expensive Super Rugby competition, SANZAAR and any commercial partners it chooses to engage after 2020 would be better served, and supporters more engaged, by strengthened domestic, provincial competitions in each country followed by a short knockout championship featuring each nation’s best provincial teams.

Business modelling would surely suggest at least as much combined interest and therefore revenue generating potential would result, especially when factoring in the slashing of the enormous Super Rugby travel budgets.

A rejigged Australian Championship (in lieu of both Super Rugby and the NRC) could be established. Featuring, say, ten teams competing on a home-and-away basis, it could be run over 18 weeks and followed by a two-week semi-finals and finals period from around February to the end of June. One or two teams from the Pacific might be invited to be among the ten participating teams.

Were other SANZAAR nations to be persuaded to follow suit, the two top teams from each of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, plus one from Argentina and perhaps an eighth from Japan, could subsequently compete in an elimination tournament run over three consecutive weekends from the fourth week of July to the second week of August (for reasons illustrated below). A cross-national provincial champion for that year would be crowned.

(Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)

Building on its strong base and traditions, the premier club rugby competitions in each Australian state and territory should be given greater prominence and support. Those competitions also could be run home and away over roughly 20 weeks (with local variations) from around mid-April to mid-September.

There would be a deliberate overlapping of club competitions and the Australian Championship with permeability for players both ways. Perhaps a limited number of development contracts could be offered to any club players by any Australian Championship team.

Standout club players could be brought into Australian Championship teams at any time during the season and, similarly, underperforming or reserve Australian Championship team members could be asked to play at club level to gain form or fitness.

Club rugby representation could be invited on Australian Championship team boards, with Australian Championship teams free to forge whatever relationships they wish with club teams anywhere in Australia.

With the SANZAAR partners again owning their rugby product after 2020, Rugby Australia would need to ensure that a minimum number of Australian Championship and club rugby matches are televised free to air.

To prevent player burnout and reduce injuries players should not be obliged to play more than around 30 matches in total at any level across a calendar year.

All professional players should have their contracts centrally registered and codified, with the teams they are to represent at both the provincial and club level specified and an obligation for them to play at the lower level whenever they are available subject to the 30-match rule. Australian Championship players unwanted for the test series would return to club competitions, providing an enormous fillip.

The above measures would do much to unify the club and provincial competitions and alleviate the discord that currently exists. As importantly, supporters would see the connection between the two levels and be encouraged to follow the fortunes of players from club to province.

(Chris Hyde/Getty Images)

What, then, of the third level of competition, test matches?

Fifty years ago, when I was a boy, the Wallabies were far from being the best team in the world. Then, for a period in the 1980s and 1990s, the Wallabies dominated the world scene as a new, professional way of playing evolved in the Southern Hemisphere.

The All Blacks inevitably upped the ante on that exceptional new standard, the Springboks re-entered the fray and the Northern Hemisphere’s tier-one nations also discovered total team rugby. Today expectations that the Wallabies can and must regularly dominate international rugby are unrealistic.

While the Bledisloe Cup and the World Cup will remain the pinnacles of rugby achievement for Australian fans, the perception that those contests are the only ones at the international level that matter must be broken. If we continue to invest too heavily in those contests, disappointment will be a constant companion.

At present, regular drubbings by the All Blacks sap the hopes and spirits of followers, prematurely kill interest in the Rugby Championship and, crucially, erode support for the Wallabies.

Test series against a range of nations must be invested with more importance. As the recent three-test series against Ireland and 12-yearly series against the British and Irish Lions show, other international contests also have potential to excite local supporters.

(AAP Image/Craig Golding)

Part of the international program will remain set for the foreseeable future. International test windows have been agreed for the first three weeks of July and for the first three weeks of November other than in Rugby World Cup years.

Using that first test window and based on recent experience an annual three-test series against one or other of the top European teams should be scheduled in Australia each July.

Presently, the four-team home-and-away Rugby Championship kicks in from August to September followed by an oddly positioned and generally fairly irrelevant third Bledisloe Cup match in October. But it’s a tired format with familiarity breeding disinterest.

It seems to me that there is an opportunity to vary the test program across this period, to revitalise interest and to recognise that fewer matches against the All Blacks would both add value to the Bledisloe contests and raise our national self-esteem.

From the second half of August to the first half of October it would be possible to run two further three-test series, the first away and the second at home. Those would need to be against Southern Hemisphere opponents.

If Rugby Australia were to work with the World Rugby and the national rugby boards of selected Pacific nations – most obviously Fiji, Samoa and Tonga, but possibly also Papua New Guinea and others – it ought to be possible to arrange for a combined Pacific team to participate in a multi-year Southern Hemisphere test program. A combined Pacific Islanders team in fact played test matches between 2004 and 2008.

(AAP Image/Dave Hunt)

With Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Argentina and the Pacific Islands competing, it would be possible for each of these nations to play a three-test series against each of the others every two years – at home and away on alternating two-year cycles.

Thus, for example, the Wallabies might play the All Blacks in New Zealand in, say, 2020 and next at home in, say, 2022. A typical year for the Wallabies might feature a three-test series away against the Springboks and another at home against the Pacific Islands.

Finally, each year, as at present, an end-of-season tour could be undertaken by the Wallabies from the third week of October to the third week of November. However, more overtly, this tour would be substantially developmental in nature, with a deliberate orientation to blooding new players and presenting fans with the opportunity to anticipate the future contributions of emerging talent.

This would also be consistent with the proposed 30 games per year contractual limit for professional players, leading to the curtailed involvement of certain players.

Four or five test matches could be played, but the traditional Euro-centric program might be reworked to help promote rugby globally. The tour might commence in countries such as Japan, Fiji, Canada or the USA before leading on to Europe.

The sequencing of all of the above competitions is shown in the time chart below.

Finally, I offer some quick complementary observations about the running of rugby in Australia.

There is a widely recognised and debilitating lack of coordination and articulation in rugby programs at different levels throughout Australia. While blame is most often sheeted home to Rugby Australia, separate traditional and entrenched administrations, from school to state rugby, militate against a genuine national system and the benefits that would bring to performance and support at all levels.

The administration of rugby in Australia needs to be centrally coordinated but with appropriate channels for grassroots voices to inform and guide actions at the top. It is no longer tenable that club and school rugby remains so disconnected from the elite levels of the game. Each must support and nurture the other.

School competitions for boys and girls that encourage the involvement of all secondary schools and which break the stranglehold of the elite GPS schools need to be established.

If genuine and capable of being sustained, Twiggy Forrest’s commitment to rugby and his millions must be brought into the mainstream Australian rugby fold.

A separate Indo-Pacific competition just doesn’t seem to fit. But there are countless opportunities within the tent for Twiggy to contribute – for example, by promoting the spread of rugby in Asia and the Pacific, by shoring up the salaries of professional players (bearing in mind the proposed expansion from four to ten provincial teams in Australia) or by underpinning a new national schools competition.

As SANZAAR ponders its vision for rugby in the Southern Hemisphere, 2020 looms as one of the most important ever for the game in Australia. All Australian rugby lovers should aim to influence the outcomes.