Debunking the lack of depth myth

Apologies, I meant in its current format. Things chop and change so much that there has been no continuity to anything in Super Rugby.

conference system has been around since 2011. Statistics in itself only provide numbers, which can be manipulated for the benefit of the narration of a story. Without context and explanation those statistics in itself means little.

For example the conference system has one been around for a few yeas so should that be taken into account? And if it is, what is the point of any statistic and what should it determine.

In a convoluted conference system weakest conference will improve the chances of the best team in that conference. those are head to head statistics, tells the story.

or NZ 8 titles, Aust 2, SA 0

So you’re happy with a general stat, thereby accusing all SA referees of bias? What about a referee that penalises one team out of the match and then when the fat lady has sung evens up the scoring sheet with a few meaningless penalties deep in the half of the team cahsing the game, thereby not really providing them with scoring penalties? Thus the ledger seems to balance, yet we all know what happened?

So just leave it hanging? Undecided? Yeah nah, bias big time down on the farm

Carrick, Yes Twiggy has lots of money and loves rugby. But he is also a very intelligent deep thinking man who thinks outside the box and does his homework. e.g. He is now Dr Andrew Forrest with a PHD in marine biology, which is just one of his side interests. Twiggy is convinced that the future economy of rugby in our area of the world is in Asia, where there are billions of potential fans and many possible major brand sponsors. He is talking of 10 year investments. He can see if rugby gets that right, then we can break out of our own little backyards and dwarf European rugby, AFL and NRL economically. These Covid 19 restrictions are not going to last for ever and we need to plan for the long term. Rugby in Aus/NZ need Twiggy for his brains more than his money.

Those “facts” have a few anomolies, those facts aren’t by referee. Those facts don’t provide information in regards to accuracy of penalties. If SANZAAR were unhappy in regards to SA referees or individual referees they would speak up and those refereees will no longer be officiating. Why not provide stats per referee? Lies, damn lies and statististics. Easy to manipulate stats if you want to tell a story suited to your agenda.

Once in a century game Corne, not like every game o/seas teams play in SA. Don’t believe facts eh

Less Australian teams means more Australians leave Australia. It is no different to the car industry leaving the country. People will follow the jobs elsewhere. We are better than this.

There are many more to add to your list, an example is a Fremantle born, WA local PG Hampshire Award winner Nick Haining, selected to play for Scotland without ever having played super rugby.

Mitch Thurston played origin the first season after he left the Dogs. He was highly rated at the Dogs too, problem was they had a Premiership halfback and five eight already. He was not so highly rated out of school when he want down to the Dogs though. No QLD team was interested in him.

Thanks for the list of Aussies overseas. It's clear that the argument that there is only a few good Wallaby prospects playing in Europe or Japan is seriously misguided. Now whether they would be interested in coming home to play Super Rugby, that's a different matter. My solution is we stop treating Super Rugby like a developmental competition and stop treating the Wallabies like a reward for playing in it. We need to fill our Super teams with the best possible talent available anywhere in the world. Whether or not they are Wallaby qualified. Then we need to start selecting overseas based Australians for the Wallabies. This protectionist system we are running is like protectionism anywhere else in the world. You start paying more and more for a product of less and less quality. Want proof? Look at the money we paid guys like Hooper and Folau to stay in the country, and what did it get us? It got us embarrassed. We need to start taking Super Rugby seriously as a competition. Like the EPL, like the NBA. And that's sourcing the best possible talent and not imposing self-defeating restrictions.

Hi Piru, I don’t disagree with you. You always want to see the players playing with commitment and I do think that has been sadly lacking in the last number of seasons generally. You do also want to see competitive games. By competitive I mean games that go the distance and are not over early doors. But my preference is to see the best players playing against each other where the skills and quality are on display. I think the tv audience numbers and pre-covid crowd figures kind of sum that up. Nobody wanted to turn up or watch. Club rugby is a little different because people will turn up to the ground. But that is club rugby not international rugby. If we could get quality, commitment and competition of the highest order then that would be great. But alas........ cheers

Other factors as well. Quality is subjective. Commentators that sound like they are enjoying the game help. Regular fixturing helps too. Super Rugby was a compromise because we all needed each other, but instead of the requirements of that being an issue it was exasperated with poor fixtures every year that made teams play away games either side of SA tours and stuff like that which just extended these breaks which see people lose interest.

Admirable stuff. Easy option would be just to back the winner. All the best within your adopted club’s plight.

@Carrick Yes, you're right that Australia doesn’t have a lack of depth of quality players; it has a lack of quality players playing in Australia. And so how do we build a competition in Aust now with big enough $$ player contracts to get our best players back home. Got any ideas now that RA are puppets of News Corp. RA certainly don't have ideas - puppets never do :thumbup: As Nick Bishop has rightly observed Aussie rugby is broken now. And after watching so many really poor quality aussie games post the C-19 return it's only getting worse. The Force-Rebels game tonight was just a terrible spectacle.