Super Rugby's simplest way forward

I'm pleased to say overall the climate has been warming here in the last decade or so. But Cradle can turn at any time, so best to be prepared. It generally is at it's best in winter though, on a clear, cold and still day, usually after rain or snow. Visibility is fantastic.

Yep. all the guys had elvis side burns and drank tiny beers in the pubs. I think they were five ounce glasses of boags draft. I had just come down from far north Queensland and nearly froze to death on cradle mountain in mid January!

Crikey, it would have been interesting back then TLN!

I passed through Devenport in 1984...been busy elsewhere ever since!

Not much chance of offending me TLN. I thought it was rather funny (and understandable).

If we are to go down the path of domestic conferences, followed by an inter-conference finals series, then I am in favour of 6 teams per conference. This is something I would have preferred rather than going down the path of the disastrous 18 team Super Rugby format, where not all teams played each other. It was totally unbalanced. I don't subscribe to the view that having 6 teams in an Australian conference would significantly spread the player pool too thinly. Hell, there's enough talented Australian players in Europe and Japan to make up a decent team, many of whom have gone overseas because they couldn't get a look-in with the existing Super Rugby teams. Even the Western Force is worthy of inclusion after it won the NRC last year, bearing in mind that it played against other single city teams with a significant Super Rugby roster. Along with the reinstatement of the Western Force, I propose that the 6th team should be based in Adelaide with a roster in its initial years composed of imported interstate talent. This is no different to what the AFL and NRL have done in establishing new teams in foreign interstate markets. The long term aim should be to raise Rugby's profile in Adelaide and in the process develop its own local player pool, just as Melbourne and Perth are doing. There's too much negative sentiment expressed on here about Australian Rugby's future prospects, focussing on the alleged lack of depth in talent that currently exists, excluding overseas based players. What hasn't been factored into the equation, is the changing scenario in the development pathways for talented schoolboys (and girls) through to higher representative honours, instigated by Ms Castle no less. Rugby has now broadened its junior catchment and is no longer solely reliant upon private schools as the source of its player base. The positive outcome of this change in strategy has already been realised in such a short time-frame with the success of the Australian Schoolboys and U20s over their NZ counterparts for the first time in years. The U20s went on to just fall short of a victory in the final of the U20 World Championship against France. If that's not making a statement, then nothing is. The other major coup is signing up most of these, if not all, talented players to commit to Rugby, rather than the past experience when many were lost to League. Looking to the future, if this strategy continues, it alone will boost the talent pool which some ignore. Getting back to a domestic conference, the 6 Australian teams should have a cap of 30 full time professional players per squad, which is a total of 180 compared with the current 192 for 4 Super Rugby teams. If through injury, squads of fit players are diminished, they could call upon the best of the players in their respective Premier Rugby competitions to temporarily fill the void. With the excessive number of contracted players currently being paid as full time professionals and rarely making a Super Rugby appearance, what's the point of it? Although it would be preferable to have more than 6 teams in a domestic conference as TWAS has suggested, it could still fit neatly into an annual Rugby calendar. With 6 teams, over 2 rounds of home and away games, that would equate to 10 matches with a 2 week Finals series involving the top 4 teams. It could be played from March to May (February is too bloody early anyway) with an inter-conference Finals series played between the top 2 teams in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Argentina in June. The inbound Test matches would be played in July, followed by the Rugby Championship on a home and away basis in August and September. No 3rd Bledisloe unless there is a drawn series in the Rugby Championship. The Super Rugby Finals would be played in a first round where 1 meets 2 between two conferences and the 4 respective winners play a round robin with the team finishing with the most points being declared the Champion. The first round inter-conference matches could be rotated each year.

Thing is, Australian rugby is only popular when it's beating the kiwis and poms. A low standard domestic competition is no preparation for test rugby and will just condemn you to irrelevance, even in your own country. The solution is to work hard, make sensible decisions and get better. You had three Super Rugby teams when you were the best in the world. That's all you need.

It would dilute the quality, JD. you're right about that. It would be like 2016 with 18 teams. But it those teams were fairly even, within each conference, could still be enjoyable to watch. And we would still have test rugby for the best quality to enjoy. I'm just thinking that having less teams suits NZ well, but has been a bit of a catch 22 for Australian rugby in competing with the other codes. So I'm just trying to think of a compromise that might be ok for both countries.

Thanks TWAS. That's helpful.

That would still dilute the quality and take it further from test match standards. You're spreading the five kiwi teams into 7 and the four Aussie teams into 5.

So, have 5 Aussie teams and 7 Kiwi teams

I agree with your sentiment here with one question - do the NZ teams feel the same about needing to play SA still. I am sure they do when it comes to Test Matches but with so many of the best South African players now in Europe is it the same. Perhaps the South Africans gave up that position by letting players out of the tournament.

Sorry mate. Geography isn't my best subject. I was just trying to lighten things up. Hope I didn't offend you.

It would just dilute the quality, simple as that.

I reckon you need 8 teams to be able to play a decent internal comp, that has enough games. That would be 14 home and away games and then finals.

It's hard to say what lead to anything. But it was the 2010s that we started to see players go earlier. It's been the last 5 years we've seen many go in their prime. Crowds are hard to say. We definitely were declining from the introduction of the Force. But what we also had from the introduction of the Force was the Reds get to a real low point. I remember talk that they were losing money at Suncorp in 2008/09. They bounced back with good results. But then in the late 2000s you saw the Brumbies start to decline (which was then recovered), then the Waratahs. Neither of them could get the crowds back in the same way the Reds could though. Probably lost crowds to the Raiders or NRL teams (or even the Swans) that they never got back.

Just throwing this out there, JD, but what if there were say, 6 teams per conference and only the top 2 qualified to play cross-conference finals? Would that help to mask the lack of depth? I know it would raise other issues.

That raises a pretty interesting question, TWAS. When did the salaries in the North explode? And is that what lead to the drop in crowd numbers for SR in Australia? Or what has actually led to the decline? Or, when did crowds start to drop for SR in Australia? For instance, were they pretty stable up until the end of Super 12 in 2005?

Many ignore that until player salaries in the North exploded, Super Rugby kept the SANZAR nations 3 of the top 4 nations in World Rugby.

Not fair The Late News, we only live 15 minutes away from Devonport (I presume you mean Tasmania), besides which there is no hospital in Devonport. You must be referring to Burnie Regional Hospital, that's 25 minutes away.