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Opinion

A new path for Australian rugby

Roar Guru
1st April, 2020
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Roar Guru
1st April, 2020
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By 2018, the new Super Rugby format still stumbled along, but the real tragedy was becoming apparent.

Super Rugby was then a shadow of the old Super 12 days. The fun, the expectation and the excitement was gone. Only a shell on life support remained.

And then came COVID-19.

No international air travel, no close contact allowed, no crowds, a locked-down economy, no TV content, no rugby matches, no revenue, and pretty much no business. While the almost demented optimism of having an Australian domestic competition as a replacement fairly quickly faded, the management of Rugby Australia and to a lesser extent the Australian Super Rugby franchises have still not come to grips with the new reality for international sport generally and rugby in particular.

How can RA and Super Rugby franchises continue at all at the moment? Because there is no revenue. They will be insolvent traders. There is no money for player payments. RA is ready for the receivers to march in. Super Rugby had dwindled beyond salvation in Australia, particularly prior to COVID-19, so the chances of being able to revive it are very low. There is no new TV deal. New Zealand would probably prefer to just play their domestic competitions, and perhaps South Africa as well.

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If Super Rugby died, is rugby dead in Australia? No, it can happily survive via the existing strong Sydney and Brisbane competitions as it always did prior to Super Rugby. The strength of these competitions has gained momentum in recent years to fill the void of excitement, fun and tribalism that used to be delivered by Super 12 to rugby fans in Australia.

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The 2016 Northern Suburbs versus Sydney University Shute Shield grand final at North Sydney Oval was a sight to be seen. A full ground of 20,000 rabid supporters. The rugby-loving atmosphere hadn’t been seen in years in Sydney. Probably the 2003 World Cup in Australia was the last time, and the 2001 Lions Tour before that. The Wallabies strutted at the top of the world stage in those days, but alas no more. Australia are ranked seventh in the world today.

So Australian rugby audiences are still there watching suburban matches.

Sydney University and Warringah in the Shute Shield

(AAP Image/Joel Carrett)

If Super Rugby did die, the Rugby Championship would not die with it. They are separate entities. But what could replace Super Rugby as the professional tier in Australia and propel the game’s popularity in a positive direction?

Currently Super Rugby has too many previously overlooked logistical problems. In 2020 it started in January! I adapted to the third week in February as a start date, but before then I enjoy the more stately pace of cricket at that time of the year. Summer for cricket, winter for rugby. I know that doesn’t fully hold anymore with overseas matches but January was a step too far.

So no build-up, no anticipation, just Round 1 is on next Friday 5.30pm from NZ. The June Test portal stopping Super Rugby has always been a problem too, because when it restarts the interest level has generally dropped a lot.

Another problem for Super Rugby is that it is not on free-to-air TV in Australia. This greatly limits the chances of winning a new and larger audience.

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After COVID-19 Rugby Australia will survive in some form, but the player and senior executive salaries will be greatly reduced. This may mean a player exodus overseas, but it will take some recovery over there as well. The tribalism element of rugby, still strong at the grassroots level, must be redeveloped at a higher level if rugby wants to move forward.

The Super Rugby franchises of the ACT Brumbies, Melbourne Rebels and the mothballed Western Force are already used as a model for the single-city teams playing the late-season NRC competition. Tribalism for those teams should not be hard to further nurture and develop. Seven teams in total could fill out a NRC-style competition.

Such a competition could commence in the third week of February just as Super Rugby used to, giving the competition a chance to build resonance prior to the traditional start of the Sydney and Brisbane competitions in the first week of April. That would make 12 rounds plus three finals rounds for 15 weeks in total, finishing prior to the June Test window. The remaining four teams could be Sydney, NSW Country, Brisbane, and Queensland Country. The current NRC would no longer be run.

NRC

(Photo by Darrian Traynor/Getty Images)

Back in 2001, when Sydney played the Lions at North Sydney Oval, the crowd of 23,000 was larger than the ground could take. Sydney as a team had cachet, had a tribal following, and the raucous crowd urged Sydney on to an almost certain victory until after the bell when the Lions scored.

The chopping and changing of Sydney’s NRC teams has killed the development of any tribal-style support, but Sydney as a single team can overcome that. The rivalries between Shute Shield teams doesn’t make the transition to the NRC either, but those rivalries would merge for a greater strength in the common support of one team in Sydney. The same could probably apply to Brisbane. The NSW and Queensland Country teams are also farming the traditional city/bush divide, so tribal support has a good head-start there.

This new-format NRC must be on free-to-air TV. It should be on Foxtel and a streaming service as well. With seven teams, there would be three matches and one bye each round. That means Friday, Saturday and Sunday can have one match each per week, at 7pm.

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Free-to-air has two matches and other services one, but given that Foxtel has been the only TV source from the inception of Super Rugby, perhaps Foxtel has two of the three. Sharing is the key here, in that the replay availability should be for all matches per week on all formats.

The devil is in the detail, and these ideas do not purport to be a finished product by any means.

Most clearly, the TV revenue would be a fraction of that paid up until now. There would be less content with no NZ or SA matches. Timing of SA matches in particular meant that they were pretty well only watched on replay anyway, and even then only if an Australian team was involved.

NZ versus Aussie matches are more popular because of the 5.30pm time slot serving as a warm-up for the 7.30pm main course of a local match. NZ versus NZ matches also have that benefit, though not as popular.

Less revenue means greatly less rugby admin staff and lower salaries overall, particularly players. $800,000 salaries are out the window. Maybe a quarter of that tops. Realistic decisions must be made in these areas, but adaption is possible.

This is clearly a major upheaval for SANZAAR and Australian rugby particularly, but it has a path to greater audiences and new TV deals down the track via free-to-air TV, and so to further prosperity over time. The Super Rugby excitement has gone. It is lost forever. We just have to face up to that, and take a path for the longer-term future, rather than continuing to try to tinker with a diminishing product.

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