A national club competition: Australian rugby going it alone

Wre1, The problem with suggestions like this is that it panders to the desires of TV broadcasters for evermore content, but it doesn't provide an effective, long-term, sustainable national pathway. TV broadcasters don't care for quality, only quantity. For heaven's sake, haven't we learnt anything from SANZAAR's only recent impractical, suicidal expansion plans that eventually brought super rugby undone??? Yeah, let's have 16, or even 20 teams based in the 10-12 most populous cities/regions around Australia. It will look so wonderful on paper, but be a disaster in reality. Australian rugby is struggling to fill 5 quality provinces, let alone 10, 12, 16 or more teams. Forget that there is perhaps another 5 teams of (starting) players appearing overseas. This situation won't change anytime soon. Of the 4 football codes, rugby union has the lowest total of player participants. The first task would be to increase the number of player participants at grassroots level. Then later on, you can worry about adding more teams at the national comp level. But that is a long way off. It might be very pretty having Sydney Uni, Randwick, Eastwood, Manly, Parramatta & maybe Northern Suburbs, plus Uni of Qld, Brothers, East Brisbane, West Brisbane & two others, in a national comp. But you can be sure the clubs that lose out on a national comp spot won't go quietly. It will get very ugly & disastrous before it gets better. Better to leave them alone in Shute Shield, Hospitals Cup, etc. Australian rugby is not the AFL, or NRL, or even Australian soccer with its massive number of junior player participants. We have to live within our means, which sadly, are meagre.

@wre01 - Going to come at you with some questions here which relate to finances and depth of this proposed competition. Is Sydney Uni was playing QLD Uni, Gordon playing Wests, Manly playing the Melbourne side, what venues are hosting these games?

They have thirty teams because the clubs represent towns and cities across mainly southern France. We should do that here. Have a team in Maroochydore, Toowomba, Newcastle, Wollongong, Canberra, Wagga etc.. That would revolutionise the game. Unfortunately our sport's administrators are very different to the French ones. They are all accountants, with little or no love of the sport they run. Look at David Gallop as the perfect example of that.

Monorchid, The future is streaming- get yourself a Kayo account for $10 per month and you can watch rugby 24 hours per day on your computer.

Most clubs are quite happy being what they are, be it Suburban or Premier rugby clubs. Why should they all have to sign up to promotion and relegation just because Sydney Uni and Randwick have aspirations to be a team at a higher level?

I guess I'm naive then.

Create a league structure with promotion/relegation. It is not so hard. Let's the clubs go up and down by its own sporting merits. It is basically what the whole world uses beside USA and AU.

As an indigenous person I thank you for highlighting my point Jeznez. This is not about playing the race card but about playing the numbers game. By and large we are like most if not ALL country's, an immigrant nation. Hells' bells, even Hawaii has European's these days. You said it yourself. Only a small mind would think otherwise and it is, I totally agree absolutely appalling that people should connect sport to culture and visa versa but guess what, they do and Rugby is going to have to run the numbers at some point and recognise that if they are going to appeal to a broader audience in Australia then the 2 % of the population of Pacific Island Heritage and the outstanding talent that comes out of Polynesia, as good as it may be, simply won't cut it. For the game to succeed it simply must reflect and appeal to the broader community. To think otherwise is surely to be one of two things, either politically correct or "appallingly" naive.

The reality is that Australian’s don’t want to watch a Wallaby side made up predominantly of players of Pacific Islander heritage loosing on a regular basis to an All Black side also made up predominantly of players of Pacific Islander heritage on a regular basis and it stands to reason. It does not represent the demographic breakdown of either country. ‏‏‎ ‎ This part of your comment is appalling. You think the “heritage” of the players is the issue? ‏‏‎ ‎ In case you haven’t noticed we are a nation of immigrants, only the smallest minds judge based on “heritage”

To elaborate, I don't think realistically the Olympic stadium was going to sellout at 110,000 capacity for the Bledisloe Cup for ever, unless it was going to be filled 3/4 with kiwis who flew over for it.

Not only were the Wallabies extremely good back then, but people forget there was a lot of excitement about a brand new stadium built specifically for the 2000 Olympic Games. People love the novelty of being in a new stadium.

I understand the predicament but it is clearly obvious that in milking the Wallaby cash cow we are draining too, future revenue and opportunity. I was there when the Wallaby's played the All Blacks in front of a World Record crowd of 109,874. Rugby Australia cannot now sell out a venue of 80,000 for the same fixture. The reality is that Australian's don't want to watch a Wallaby side made up predominantly of players of Pacific Islander heritage loosing on a regular basis to an All Black side also made up predominantly of players of Pacific Islander heritage on a regular basis and it stands to reason. It does not represent the demographic breakdown of either country. We are appealing to a minority not the broader community. No wonder such a banal sport as A.F.L is destined to predominate the Australian Sporting Landscape for the foreseeable future.

Unfortunately the 14 odd tests a year that the Wallabies play delivers the lions share of our broadcast money. They are very careful not to tell us how much Super brings in because the answer is probably that it runs at a significant loss (if judged on it’s own merit rather than considered as prepping the WB’s).

I hear what you are saying and I too think that 16 teams is too many but not because it makes the leap to international level enormous. Why does a discussion about a National Competition always revert to the Wallaby's ? I don't care about the Wallaby's or the All Blacks for that matter. I care to watch competitive and entertaining Rugby that I can engage with on a local level each and every weekend over winter. It doesn't have to be the best but it does have to be entertaining and preferably, tribal. As co-incidence would have it this marries well with what I suspect media wants as well. An engaging product that is both competitive and entertaining. As much as I respect the aspiration of a 16 team competition I cannot support it. Not because it dilutes player talent though undoubtedly it does but because as a product it would lack balance, cohesion and be financially unsustainable. Rugby must offer a consistently, entertaining and engaging product on a Regular basis broadcast, at least in part on free to air tv in time friendly hours and to as broad a cross section of the Australian public as possible . That is the paradigm that governs Rugby success in this country not the contracting of an elite set of athletes that in many instances have been parachuted into the Gold Jersey from somewhere else at the expense of local talent. That doesn't build support for the code, it builds resentment. Directing funds and support to a team that plays as few as a handful of international's each year at the expense of a properly funded National competition only entrenches Rugby's position on the fringes of the Australian sporting landscape. The Wallaby's are to most of us a distraction at best. I support Rugby in all it's forms and standards and want to do so regularly not just three or four times a year.

I didn't go into detail Rabbitz, but my thinking agrees with yours. I can't see the FTA proposal working either even though I siezed on it in the article. But if there are lots of Iains and Monorchids out there, then rugby has an issue to deal with because it's missing out on a potentially enlarged audience. I also agree with Brett's view about FTA not falling over itself to make an offer for the product. One possible conclusion, much as it pains me, is that FTA simply sees nothing to interest it. The real danger is if pay TV comes to a similar conclusion at some stage. Another issue is that the printed press here in Queensland is always heavily slanted to RL, and it always has been. For example, the Reds almost won against the Horses, but the whopping amount of press coverage has been for the weekend round of RL. There's work to be done on these issues by the ARU.

So how is this new competition going get FTA coverage if none of the FTA companies will pay for super rugby in its full competition? For the slow: FTA depends on eyeballs watching to sell ads (aka ratings). which in turn pays for the coverage. Rugby, especially lower tier rugby doesn't rate. Further the rivers of gold that used to be advertising dollars are no more so even less reason for FTA comp[anies to pay for a second tier competition. As Brett McKay has said on numerous occasions FTA hasn't ever made a serious offer for Super Rugby, why would they bid for a lesser product in a depressed advertising market? In the end to get FTA coverage rugby will have to PAY their broadcast partners to broadcast it. That will simply dig rugby's grave so much faster.

Like your thinking Monorchid. When I was living in Melbourne getting to a Rebels game was feasible; now I live in the country far from Melbourne it isn't - and there is NO way I will support pay to view; NONE. So currently I get to see the Rebels highlights on You Tube and, if I'm not otherwise engaged with work, I can 'see' the game unfold though the Roar coverage. The other interesting thing about the debate this suggestion of a way forward triggered was just how much of it was negative! Seriously - just how useful to the discussion is that? The game we all love is at a crossroads [I would argue that even without the covid crisis it was at a crossroads] so it is a given there is going to be [much needed] change going forwards. What worries me at the moment is that talk has again emerged of the Rebels being cut; not smart thinking [although RA aren't exactly known for smart thinking are they]. Pissing off a lot of supporters and shrinking the Union 'footprint' does nothing to further the game in Oz. It's probably also fair to say that we need a comp at Super Rugby level to be competitive internationally. Currently we tend look bad when compared to the Kiwi sides - but I think the main difference which separates us is the skill level. It's not like we don't have talented players but they [Kiwis] don't seem to make too many errors in applying their skills; we do. Fix that then a fair bit of the current problem about competitiveness goes away. I also like the NRC so if a way to blend that competition with other strong state & club based championships could be found that would have to be good. Tie in some of that level union comp with the Super level clubs and it gets better. Tie in school & junior rugby to the NRC level comp - even better. It's not rocket science you just have to start with the best plan possible and then fine tune things as you go - that's how science proceeds; trial & error.

The single thing that resonated with me is the proposal that the competition would be mostly free to air. I've thought for a long time that this is a significant advantage that RL has over RU. I'm an old retired fellow and I can't afford pay TV, and I'm not interested in going to a club or pub to watch games. So I mostly watch RL even though I was brought up on RU. Now if I'm in the minority, then I don't have a point. But if there's lots of fans like me, or those who just refuse to pay for sport, then there's very little rugby on free to air TV that I can watch, even as replays. FTA would boost viewing audiences. The difficulty that I see with the proposal is money. The percentage of viewers who pay for sport hasn't risen much over the days when pay TV arrived in Australia although numbers have grown. Also NewsCorp has had to bail out Foxtel a couple of times with quite large amounts. I've also read that Channel 9 makes little or nothing from its RL telecasts. I've often wondered how long this can go on. Thanks for an interesting article.

I don't care about BS debates , just do it called the cup Terra Australis or New Holland Cup

Is this what rugby conversation has come to? Is the game so broken and underwhelming that rather than talking footy all we seem to get is more and more left-field, crackpot or inward looking articles about how rugby should be run? It's all a bit rearranging the deck chairs stuff. Having half-baked competitions won't fix the fundamentals nor will it fix the governance. having a whole bunch of amateurs running around in a second string competition rebadged as the top tiers won't improve the players lack of ability or teach them to play. If you want to see the future under such a model; go to the 65 minute mark of the Crusaders vs. Chiefs game last night. Look at that scrum. Now reimagine it with the red jerseys as black ones and the red, black and yellow as gold. This is where the Wallabies are headed. Average players pitted against other average players does not improve the pool it causes it to stagnate.