Penney warns NZ Rugby off going alone

Yes. The crowds are good in England & France, but population helps. And the fact the clubs are based on historic clubs attached to cities/regions (aside from a couple). The French & English clubs also rely on private owners to invest untold money into the game. The top 13 English clubs have lost £90m over the last 2 completed seasons. Otherwise Scotland & Wales generally scrape the barrel. Wales & Scotland seemingly only saved by making some good coaching decisions in the last decade and having some very talented players drive the team to some of their biggest results in decades. Scotland also got around to selling naming rights to Murrayfield which helped their bottom line. Ireland have been the best of them. They have been as good as they have ever been, but the RWC was a disaster given expectations. Success is a tightrope.

I’m sorry, but if you’re picking a national squad of 30-odd players, as far as that initial cohesion’s concerned; the difference between pulling them from 3 or 5 teams is minimal. There’s still plenty of familiarity across the squad to build from. How much currency you’re allocating this idea and how difficult you believe it is to be achieved is actually quite comical. Again; Test squads have ample opportunity to build cohesion and combinations. I’ve read your link and it clearly states that both England and South Africa have stability in national selections to thank for their success in 2019. Whether you’ve got 3 or 14 teams to select from, you’re going to have issues if you don’t have that stability in selections. A team drawn from 14 teams that has stability vs one that chops and changes drawn from 3- I know who id be backing. New Zealand has 5 professional teams because that is the optimal amount for them to be financially viable and somewhat competitive (financially) in the global rugby environment. Look, I can understand the allure of a 5/NZ 3/AUS model. Our best players funneled into the Tahs, Reds and Brumbies and competing in an 8 team home and away competition with NZ’s 5 sounds like a more than palatable concept. But it’s all about what you attribute value to and I think there’s more currency in a model that reaches out to more than those ‘dyed in the wool’ types of us in the Brisbane and Sydney markets. Also, I’ve been a Reds fan through good and bad times- including times in the naughties when we were the ‘whipping boys’ of Super 12, competing alongside only 2 other Australian teams. The significance of this point? A narrow base of 3 teams doesn’t necessarily mean we’ve manufactured 3 competitive sides. And despite a prolonged period of heartache for Queensland rugby, the game wasn’t withering and dyeing. What we do know is the broadcasters (purse string holders) want derbies... let’s give them derbies. The game is effectively invisible as a hard to engage with, multi time zoned monstrosity. Let’s take it to the people, build domestic rivalries and give kids a desire to pick up a Gilbert as opposed to a Steeden or Sherrin with a product that makes some sort of noise on our local landscape. And for those kids that are pretty handy with the Gilbert- make sure there’s ample opportunity and a burning desire to remain in a sport that’s more than a niche sideshow to those that occupy the limelight through winter. Again, I can understand the value of dropping to 3 (2 is the real joke) and attaching ourselves to NZ, but I just put more value behind other performance indicators that are stunted under a more narrow model.

Are NZ blameless? Have they ever manoeuvred to get a better outcome for themselves?

hansen didnt make disparaging remarks....he stated the facts about the way Aus has lied to NZ in the past for their own advantage...See it for what it is...

International teams don’t actually have that much time. The Wallabies coach only has the players for a really limited period. Sure, you can get cohesion in other ways, but it is a lot more difficult to do, and is a lot more prone to disruption (injuries, players moving overseas, etc). Look at the Welsh results I posted elsewhere on this one when they reduced teams, also discussed here by Ben Darwin https://i.stuff.co.nz/sport/rugby/all-blacks/121362550/all-blacks-dominance-would-end-if-they-gave-up-super-rugby-says-ben-darwin Then there is the super rugby perspective. With 3 teams talent is super concentrated. There is a lot of competition for spots at super level. That both means players are constantly pushed to improve and also that there is injury cover. Each team you increase beyond that reduces robustness in terms of covering injuries and results in a lot more players being selected who would not have been good enough to get game time with 3 teams. This leads to worse results. If Hansen thinks 5 is the optimal number for New Zealand with all their talent, do we really think 5 is the optimal number for us too?

Rob, from 3 to 5 teams there is a 66.66* increase. That’s huge. Even 4 to 5 is a 25% increase. There are huge ramifications for cohesion for each increase in team. Then consider it only from a super rugby results perspective, how much more difficult is it for Australia to find 4-5 quality 10s than 3? What happens when one is injured?

Club rugby is going well in Ireland, Wales not so much.

And this: ‘The Boks picked basically the same team for 18 months prior to the World Cup’- effectively proves one of my original points: ‘professionals and national teams are spending many months together playing upwards of 12 tests a year’. Of course ‘cohesion’ is important and coaches have to get the balance right between building depth and combinations. But the reality is (as you’ve effectively spelt out above), national teams get ample opportunity to build cohesion in this day and age as your link suggests happened with both the Boks and England last year and the years leading up to the final. I’m not for a second suggesting a bunch of strangers can become a team of world beaters on the back of a 5 day camp. But a stable national team has got plenty of time and opportunity to get it right regardless of club affiliations in the mix.

In any event, we’re talking about distributing talent across 3 to 5 teams. Not 3 to 15. Splitting hairs as far as any perceived value in cohesion for the Wallabies is concerned.

It’s not as simple as small number of teams = better though. Other factors like coaching, etc, do come into it. It was well commented on at the time that Cheika chopper and changed all through 2019 also, in addition to changing teams hugely year to year all the way through the comp. Ben Darwin’s theory has always been the cohesion of talent too. Not just cohesion full stop. You build talent through cohesion at club level, then refine and build it further at international level. Arguably Cheika didn’t have as much to work with, but he didn’t build any cohesion of the World Cup cycle from changing it so much. Interestingly with England, 50% of its forward pack came from Saracens and 58% of its backline from Leinster. That’s really high cohesion for both. The alignment of talent thing is the one with Argentina. They’re not really aligning talent, as they’re forced to pick below par players now that they’ve only got one side. I say again, I’m on the side of the debate with the experts, and with the empirical data. I’m not taking an ideological view, but it is the only one that makes sense from a commonsense perspective: that diluting talent too far leads to worse results.

Again, we had a more aligned team than England. In our starting XV for the QF we also had 5 from one team and 4 from another. 100% from only 4 teams- it hasn’t served us well. Stats can be manipulated to tell multiple stories. The most ‘aligned’ tier 1 nation has gone backwards since adopting such a system. They make a heck of a Super Rugby team but Argentina were in a better place when their talent was spread throughout Europe.

They can sign for bigger money in the NH and disappear. There's already a bidding war!! Wake Up!!

So currently Michael Alalatoa is in a Crusaders jersey and is not eligible to play test rugby for any nation and keeping a kiwi boy out of the sqaud.

It’s actually more important in the professional era, Rob. Neither of us have studied this data in a professional capacity, only Ben Darwin does for his career. He unequivocally states his research shows cohesion is the most important causative factor in team success. You see him backed up by coaches Eddie Jones and Steve Hansen. The Boks had a very high cohesion rating in the final too. I’ve looked at the stats and absolutely all of them back it up. Of the starting 15, 33% were Sarries (Vunipola, George, Itoje, Vunipola, Daly) and 27% were from Leicester (May, Tuilagi, Ford, Youngs). Meaning 60% came from two teams. That’s in addition to many of the players have coming up together in the u20s and playing together for years. 60% from two teams, despite how many sides are in the Prem. I’m with the experts: Darwin, Hansen and Jones. The data seems to pretty clearly back them up too.

OOP, England’s MD 23 had 6 from Sarries in the final. 3 of our 4 franchises were represented by at least that amount in the Wallaby team that was beaten by them in the QF. ‘Combinations’ is being massively overstated here and you’re pulling obscure facts out to try and build a case. It may have held some weight in the amateur era but these are professionals and national teams are spending many months together playing upwards of 12 tests a year. You get your system and landscape right to produce the high quality talent and they could be playing across 23 different teams and still get the job done.

Rob, both the Boks and England were cohesive sides. The Boks picked basically the same team for 18 months prior to the World Cup (and the Boks has enjoyed virtually no sustained success since 07-09 and have had no super rugby success since then) - https://i.stuff.co.nz/sport/rugby/all-blacks/121362550/all-blacks-dominance-would-end-if-they-gave-up-super-rugby-says-ben-darwin England is a very cohesive side too. It it is built around Saracens who have centralised much of England’s talent through breaching the salary cap.

Things just got more interesting with this article https://www.rugbypass.com/news/kanaloa-hawaii-in-contention-to-join-new-trans-tasman-competition/ Could change the dynamcs of the whole debate again. And Hansen's comments are relevant; ex-AB coach speaking about a NZ Rugby review. His insights are about as rich as anything Penney has to say, if not more so. I think we just need to give this a bit more time even though the competition is nearing the halfway (?) stage.

Don’t think they were Turkey shoots these last two seasons, JD.

Disingenuous comment Jacko. Rugby Union is NZ's national sport, where as here it's easily in last place out of four professional football codes!

Don't forget Jacko you lot make up a large demographic which would skew these results.