SANZAAR and Six Nations ponder global season

So who's winning the billionaire v NZRU battle? I'd say it's the NZRU. Of all the players that left, who would they have wanted to keep? Piutau? He left in 2015 and NZ went on to win the World Cup so I'd say they win in that instance. Cruden, Savea, Nonu, Slade, Sopoaga, Carter, Milner-Skudder, Smith? A lot of cash spent on players that didn't really perform up north compared to their form down south. It remains to be seen how much money these billionaires will continue to pump into their teams in light of the current situation. NZ have done fairly well out of keeping their players at home.

I believe Japan could be the savior for Tasman and Pasifika rugby, no the whole of the rugby world. But you have a massive point about cultural roadblocks to make this happen. Lots of entitled old boys who need to open their eyes a bit more than they are comfortable with.

It astounds me how often commentators particularly on this panel confound the health of World Rugby with that of professional Rugby in Australia. Despite running what in effect is a protection racket for tier one unions World Rugby has by and large done a reasonable job. Sure they could be a bit more pro active regarding rule changes but to their credit participation numbers across the globe prior to Covid 19 have grown. In successfully lobbying the I.O.C for Rugby's re-admittance into the Olympic family state funding for Rugby has exploded across the globe. The World Seven's T.V Figures likewise have gone from strength to strength. The bold decision to take the World Cup to Japan proved a roaring success that along with other preceding world cups has allowed World Rugby to increase development funding exponentially. Australian Rugby, unjustifiably in my opinion is set to be a beneficiary of some of this largesse. To be sure 16 million is a drop in the ocean in the context of professional sport but it is a lifeline of sorts to a cash strapped and increasingly desperate union but World Rugby's coffer's are not bottomless. I am Australian but I am also a Rugby supporter and It disappoints me that that money has not been as it could so easily have been allocated to more worthwhile unions. Rugby has become so marginalised in Australia that it is increasingly considered by the media and government alike as not just a second tier football code but a second tier sport. As Georgina Robinson's recent article highlights it is barely if ever considered at all by the younger population. It is in effect now a niche sport played predominantly by Private Schools, New Zealand ex pats and immigrants of South Pacific Heritage and even at the traditionally rugby centric private schools Rugby's dominance has eroded. If Rugby is to become mainstream it must appeal once again to the general population. Broadly speaking a lot of the problems in Australian Rugby are cosmetic i.e marketing and management but they are also systemic and must be addressed if the game is to seriously compete for the hearts and minds of Australians. To expect Rules envisaged over a century ago and played by amateur Victorian gentlemen to be appropriate for 110 kilogram professional athlete's is to bury one's head in the ruck for too long. The game talks the talk about how it is played by all shapes and sizes but increasingly it is dominated by collisions of heavy bodied athletes. Gone are the days of sprightly backs like Terry Wright or Russel Fairfax darting for the gap. Now it is all about getting across the gain line. Where is the overt promotion of weight based Rugby ? It seems there was more attention given to such concepts in the age of meat and two veg than there is now in the age of the Zinger burger. The game has evolved but the rules have not kept pace. It is no longer entertaining the masses. Scrums that were once envisaged as a way to restart play have become instead a tactic to win a penalty kick or to slow the clock. It is cynical but what do you expect coaches and captain's to do if the rule's or at the very least the referee's interpretation of them allows for such cynicism. It would be hardly less cynical if they went into the match not trying to win. It has become abundantly clear the rules need to evolve. They need to reflect all that is loved about the game. They need to embrace as broad a cross section of people as is possible. It needs to be mindful of the well being of player's but conscious too that when all is said and done it is a contact sport but if it is truly to have a renaissance it must appeal to as many people as possible. It needs to unequivocally embrace entertainment without appearing too contrived or confected. It needs to be a spectacle which when played at it's best it always has been but it needs to provide a entertainment more regularly and to do so it must change. With this in mind I humbly proffer the following suggestions; 1/ Laws Scrums and the endless repacking of them must be addressed. Penalty goals must be devalued - nobody attends a game of Rugby to watch someone kicking at a set of stationary posts all afternoon. I want dynamism - I want running rugby, a bit of "Ella" magic, a David Campese goose step or two. That's why we loved those guys, they played the game the way it should be played, the way we want it to be played. If we accept that tactics can evolve then we must accept too that to promote running rugby the rules must keep up. Just think if we hadn't accepted change at all we wouldn't have any points for a try. Not even the most luddite amongst us would think that that was still a good idea. 2/ Tribalism. At it's most successful football gives people a sense of belonging. Their lives become so enmeshed in "their" team that watching and supporting become habitual. Rugby in Australia has this at a local and club level but not at a professional level. The Wallaby's have too much imported talent to be embraced by the broader community. People do not see it as their team anymore. Naval gazing on the Wallaby's comes at the expense of all other levels of Rugby. I am Australian but at the risk of sounding unpatriotic I don't give a tinker's cuss how the Wallaby's perform. I like Rugby. I would rather see World Rugby and the underdog outperform. For me It doesn't have to be the best quality rugby. I have watched over the last decade more Shute Shield than I have Super Rugby even though I have had access to both. Not because the standard is superior. It is clearly not but because the Shute Shield is the better tournament and it is the better tournament because it is the more engaging tournament. The games are competitive. They are open, they are entertaining, often unpredictable. They are fun to watch and they are on at a time that suits me. I don't care how much the player has earned to play the game or whether he can bench press 300 kg. I know some do but I don't. I watch it because I am entertained, I feel connected to the history and the tradition of the tournament and I feel their is a sense of community attached to it that resonates with me. It may not be to everyone's taste but unlike Super Rugby it does not feel like an alien concept that has been imposed on me. It is not the most popular choice but if it was about watching what is popular I would watch the NBL or NFL or the EPL or the IPL. The same is true of Super Rugby of course. The few that do watch matches live in the Republic certainly don't do so because it is popular. Apart from a few close relatives prepared to get out the hot water bottle at 3 am there are, if the sober viewer numbers are to be trusted and there is no reason why they should not be few of us prepared to get out of bed to watch one obscurely named South African franchise against another. Their respective team name's give little to no clue as to their provenance. Their jersey's are emblazoned like most New Zealand, South African and Australian playing fields with cheap to worthless advertising. As the camera pans across yet another empty and soulless stadia we realise what a waste of time and energy it was to get out of bed in Sydney at 2:00 am when hardly a soul could bother to do so by 7pm over in Johannesburg. Short of Pro Wrestling and it's contrived moves like the infamous choke slam or back breaker or T20 Cricket's flashing bails and dancing girls little else in World Sport strikes me as being so brazenly confected, laboured and tired a concept as Super Rugby. It's as though SANZAR and the respective unions they supposedly represent are living in Disneyland. Will if they were they would recognise that even the magic kingdom is only open at child friendly time zones. SANZAR envisaged a product for that is what they call it and mindlessly branded it along a fashionably americanised template. In doing so they picked at some low hanging fruit called the tournament "Super" without a pass having been thrown gave the teams trite names but failed to realise that even in the land of Superlatives, America where entertainment is king the most compelling entertainment is sport and the most compelling sport is sport that is competitive. Nobody wants to see their team flogged week in week out. Not when there are so many alternatives vying for our attention. The Crusader's are an incredible Rugby franchise and it is a privilege to watch them play and witness their talent but the fact that talent is not equally distributed throughout the tournament and SANZAR'S impotence to rebalance the tournament is at the heart of Super Rugby's failure. The A.R.U struck their colours to that mast twenty five years ago. Sadly for them and for those of us that love Rugby it's downfall will coincide with the body that gave birth to it. Who are the Blues anyway ? I grew up thinking they were the New South Wales Sheffield Shield Cricket team ? If you talk of the "Blues" these days most people outside of times of pandemic would assume you are referring to the State of Origin Rugby League team. How are the Auckland based "Blues" a point of difference in Australia's overcrowded sporting landscape. They are not. Which brings me to point three. 3/ Marketing It is not Rocket science. Anyone with a remote interest in Rugby can tell you that in Sydney most interest in the game is found on the lower North Shore, The Northern Beaches and the Eastern and Southern Suburbs. Why did it take the Rugby Union twenty years then to transfer the Shute Shield final from an empty Concord to North Sydney Oval. Why have the Rugby Union been so reticent to schedule Friday night matches at the same said venue. Corporate Sydney would salivate to have scheduled top quality Rugby on a Friday evening so close to home. This story could be mirrored I am sure many times over around the country. The epitome of Trans Tasman rivalry is the Bledisloe cup. It embodies more than any other sporting rivalry, the spirit of ANZAC. It represents both the pinnacle of the sport and the nations that are bound by it's traditions and yet the day is largely ignored by both unions. A Bledisloe cup would be compelling and garner much needed media attention. The N.R.L or A.F.L have nothing to match it and yet it is they that have embraced the hype whilst the Rugby Union chases fanciful dollars playing exhibition games in Hong Kong to a handful of expats and a few curious locals. Just because I embrace this fixture does not mean that we should pin all our hopes on Test Rugby. In the case of International Rugby. Less is more. We like World Cups, We like Lions tours in part because they are so rare. To chase dollars by flogging the Wallaby's (no pun intended) is a false economy. The Rugby Championship should be re-envisaged. Japan is strong enough to make it's own way and would frankly not wish to be encumbered by our own domestic issue's but it should be embraced internationally in a revamped Championship. It makes perfect sense that world cup quarter finalists Japan, home to the third wealthiest economy on earth should be included. Their inclusion would improve the quality of their play and generate significant uplift in revenue for all unions but instead of the present long winded home and away series the championship should mirror the 6 nations where each nation play's each other just the once. The only exception being that of Australia and New Zealand who as earlier mentioned would share an ANZAC day test each year. Coupled with tours to and from the Northern Hemisphere such a schedule would address not only the issue of player fatigue but in doing so generate significant interest as well. Freeing up the international calendar may even allow the Union to make best use of that underrated marketing tool. A species rarely sighted in recent years and rumoured to be extinct the Wallaby was once in abundance foraging for a rugby ball at the suburban rugby ground on a weekend. Perhaps it's wishful thinking but you never know we might just be lucky enough to see one again. Rugby may never compete for the hearts and minds of Australians like other codes or for that matter be embraced as it is by our trans Tasman counterparts but if we are candid and we acknowledge that there are shortcomings and that they do need to be addressed and acted upon then it just might as a main stream sport survive.

Hi NV,… I’m a bit concerned that you and of course many others placing far too much hope/emphasis on Japanese Rugby being the way forward for World rugby…. Personally I think cultural roadblocks will stand in the way.. I would rather look to USA Rugby as a way forward if we must… Then again… Same road blocks..

Thanks JD…but sadly I have developed a healthy scepticism of SANZAAR as a body.

Yes I expressed similar concerns in the article I wrote last weekend. It's turned our season upside down and could diminish our flagship comp. Unless SR teams are together there's no obvious answer, beyond Pasifika teams and each other. I suppose everyone is in the same boat. Anyway, like you I have been encouraged by all this. A plan mentioned on Stuff had a World Nations Championship every two years, leaving room for the Lions, this sounds ideal.

It's not the bean counters who want to keep the Wallabies in Australia, it's the coaches. Makes it easier to get players together, manage workloads etc.

I think when they say SANZAAR they mean the relevant nations. For instance Mark Robinson has certainly been involved.

The suits everywhere are bored, give it enough time and they will come up with the weirdest ideas

My only concern is that SH nations are being represented by SANZAAR... Why does that not evoke any sense of confidence in me.?

Gees Clyde, anyone would think from your comments that Aussie rugby is a bed full of roses and all it needs is to grab hold of a global window and next thing you know, Bob's your uncle and RA survives while across the ditch, all hell burns to a crisp. Well mate, I think you should pull your head from out of you-know-where and just realise that every union is in trouble except, some are far worse than others. Until such time as this present situation resolves itself, its every union for themselves and those that have a bank balance to fall back on, will no doubt do better, than those without. That's just, a commercial realisation. Not only does NZR have a bank balance, it will soon kick-off its own local derby competition amidst the fact that it will have a TV deal, all locked and loaded ready to be televised and, its received its healthy share from WR just like RA has. Oh and btw, all of its SR and AB players have accepted a pay-deal restructure - can't say much about some players, in RA-land tho'. This global window is a start even if there's still a lot more conversations to be held but, its no good having a window if half the national unions in both hemispheres, struggle to get their own back-yard back into some formidable order. Unions have to sort out their own mess first and hopefully, the global question will sort itself out.

Let them ponder away and hopefully we get these two international windows for test match rugby. This will of course mean bigger uninterrupted windows for our localized domestic, and future pandemic proof competitions. The RA will be smart if they drop the silly rule banning overseas players from international duty. Someday some bean counter at RA will realize that one locally based player plus one overseas based player is equal to two players.This is what we call a win-win deal. Everyone wins except for the NZRU who cannot count or smell the roses, and seem to think that the they will be able to go one on one against billionaire club owners in Europe and Japan. Good luck with that, and good luck trying to explain to Barrett why Pollard, the highest paid player in world rugby is still able to play test match rugby while playing club rugby in France.

be interesting if it really happens

Will it be March-April...? 6N is currently February-March. Should do a pretty special job of killing off the RC anyway, when you look at the quality of rugby and interest in SR at the start of each season.

This is great news. It only took a pandemic for this to happen. :silly: The suggested solution is far from perfect. But that is impossible. At least it gives something to both hemispheres to build something better. With two set windows for Tests only, the Tier two and three nations will get a much better chance to get all their best players together for longer periods. A big concern, where do the SH based players warm-up for the RC in March/April? Is this the new Japanese pro league big chance? They could easily structure their season to finish mid/end-February.

About effin-time, I say. Still, the question that will have most impact imo, is which hemispheric summer, will be the easier of the two summers, to play domestic and international rugby. Nevertheless, at least there seems to be goodwill between both rugby hemispheres to give this proposal, some serious air-time. Just remains to see how far now, that goodwill will extend.