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.
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.
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.
(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.
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.
(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.
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.
Sterling
Guest
How the hell do you guys get paragraph breaks to stay in your posts?
Sterling
Guest
Preferable to me? Depends what the goal is. 1. Pro player pathways & development? Then sure, concentrate all available talent from everywhere in Australia into convenient/viable teams as per the current NRC. 2. Elevation of rugby's relevance throughout established and potential rugby communities Australia wide? Then no, the NRC is not the preferance. And nor was it designed to be. From what I've read over the years, these two polar opposite goals are what devides most people. People like Miko hold the community aspect as a higher priority as they can relate to a comp of high standards that is still community based. Others like yourself don't see the relationship with any club (Premier or sub-district) as paramount compared to the ability to develop players national wide etc. Due to this difference I think conversations like the one above are a little bit of comparing apples and oranges. Me? I actually think there is a way to do both, but it involves Sydney and Brisbane district clubs giving up their Premier status and becoming the same as any other subbies. Never going to happen, but still interesting to discuss.
jeznez
Roar Guru
I think the Country Eagles have to get out there and earn the engagement - we saw them really starting to do that last year with their games played around the state. The alternate option would be to have no Country team and have Sydney East and Sydney West sides, would that be preferable to you?
Sterling
Guest
Jez, The Warratahs by definition also covered the whole state. But in practice were only really relavent to inner Sydney.Do you think the NSW Country Eagles playing a regular season are something NSW Country Rugby fans can really relate to and engage with? Don't you think 9 regional zones is a little too much for 1 team?
Sterling
Guest
The Warratahs by definition also covered the whole state. But in practice were only really relavent to inner Sydney. Do you think the NSW Country Eagles playing a regular season are something NSW Country Rugby fans can really relate to and engage with? Don't you think 9 regional zones is a little too much for 1 team?
Working Class Rugger
Roar Guru
Do you know the average TV ratings for the Shute Shield were last season? Because I do. Don't let 5 games a season fool you into thinking the situation is far, far rosier than it really is. People aren't watching club rugby in the numbers you're assuming. Not even close.
jeznez
Roar Guru
Genuine question? The teams have changed. We disbanded the Rams in 2018 and as of last year for the first time we had just the Sydney side and the NSW Country side being run by the NSWRU rather than conglomerate clubs
Micko
Roar Rookie
But Sydney people showed they’re not interested in NRC jez. What’s changed this time?
jeznez
Roar Guru
Nah, can’t imagine who we are missing with a Sydney and a NSW Country pair of teams. By definition it covers the state.
Micko
Roar Rookie
Well be prepared for your grassroots supporters not to buy in then.
jeznez
Roar Guru
It’s up to us to figure it out? Great, we’ve done that, the answer is none of them. A Sydney side and a NSW Country side is the way forward.
Micko
Roar Rookie
Yes, the AB's are worshipped like a religion for kiwis.
Micko
Roar Rookie
That's something you blokes have to figure out jez. Hard decisions have to be made sometimes. South Melbourne & Fitzroy weren't going to survive without relocation or merging. North Melbourne rejected a lucrative offer from the AFL to relocate to the Gold Coast a few years ago. So the reality is the NRL & AFL might be successful...but this success is built on propping up a lot of clubs. If some rationalisation needs to take place then get cracking jez!
jeznez
Roar Guru
I tell you what, you let me know which clubs you think should die, which should survive and I'll give you an idea on the likelihood of success for the survival clubs and how many fans you might lose with the clubs that disappear. I assume Sydney Uni is one of the ones you'd suggest survive as the most successful Shute Shield club of the last 15 years - but given the failure of the Stars we can start with the evidence that they'd fail. Who else lives, who dies?
jeznez
Roar Guru
Which you can see is what I've argued for. Premier, Subbies and Country comps running alongside a 7-8 team NRC. NRC done and dusted in time for June/July internationals, the best players go to Wallabies and/or three origin sides being NSW, Qld and Rest of Oz Post the June/July series the origin teams play in the lead up to the Rugby Championship. The players that didn't make the Wallabies/origin sides return to Premier rugby for the second half of the local club seasons. Would love it if there was still the odd match against foreign sides, if there was room the origin sides could potentially play a couple of games against NZ/SA etc teams but it would have to work for those nations as well. I don't want that to be the main game though - really needs to be the NRC as the primary matches followed by a limited rep series leading in to internationals.
Micko
Roar Rookie
"...average about 1000 people to a game". Was this the case 25+ years ago TWAS before the advent of professionalism and the Waratahs becoming direct competition as a H&A pro side? Before the advent of the West Coast Eagles, WAFL clubs were getting around 10,000+ a game, now 1000-1500. The SANFL the same before the advent of the Adelaide Crows.
Micko
Roar Rookie
The Waratahs & Reds worked best when they playing a handful of state of origin style games that engaged their grassroots fans and built up hype. I don't think it was the right idea in the long term to elevate them to weekly H&A franchise sides, but I can understand why this was done initially jez.
jeznez
Roar Guru
Micko, I thought you were against silly comments! Are you inviting the Tahs into the NRC? That's even less teams than NSW supports now but it would at least give all fans in NSW a team they can support. Although, you'd start heading to a five team competition which seems pretty limited. And it would be even further from your grow the clubs idea. The simple fact is that not one of the Sydney clubs would be able to cope with the costs, exactly the same as your West Coast example. You complain that RA haven't supported the clubs in expanding but they actually have. Sydney Uni put up a joint entity with Balmain, backed by Warren Livingston's money, playing in traditional Sydney Uni blue and gold as the Sydney Stars - they were the first NRC team to disappear because they weren't good enough. If Uni couldn't make it then none of the Sydney clubs can - it's a simple fact. I think you are ignoring two key things. One, support is spread across all the Shute Shield teams and the majority of sides would not make an NRC so your plan alienates the majority of fans. Two, that split support means no single club has enough supporters to be commercial in a comp like the NRC, they could not be subsidised indefinitely by a broke national body. A Sydney side and a NSW Country side meanwhile could work, it's just that RA and the NSWRU made a bad decision in how they implemented the NRC trying to half support the exact 'grow the existing clubs mentality' you propose. It was a failure. They are now on the right path and you want to throw it away!
AlsBoyce
Roar Guru
No Super Rugby means no NSW Waratahs. A Sydney team in the proposed seven team early-season NRC-style comp effectively replaces the Waratahs, with the NSW Country team also part of that replacement.
Micko
Roar Rookie
The point also was Jez is that the overwhelming majority of both the VFL & NSWRL clubs survive in the present AFL & NRL comps. Should we do away with this jez, and create new brand new franchises in Melbourne & Sydney?