Rugby's greatest strength can make it Australia's number one international sport

Maximus Insight, Sadly, the provincial option is most probably dead. What the covid crisis has shown us, with all premiers’ obsessions to closing borders, is that we need less states, not more! As much as I might like to see champion clubs/regions like Randwick, Parramatta & Brisbane Brothers in a national club comp, how do you say to the other premier rugby clubs in Sydney & Brisbane, “Sorry, no room for you at the national table”. There would be an almighty revolt. You only need to go back to the rugby league Super League wars of 1995-97 to appreciate this. So we have to go back to composite sides like Sydney, North Harbour, East Sydney, West Sydney, Brisbane & South Brisbane, etc. Not ideal, but a workable compromise.

I agree. They're dinosaurs. Key is bring these positives (that are getting big media coverage) to potential sponsors. I recon they'd like to associate their names with the equality and non-discriminatory messages.

@Sheek, appreciate the response and don't expect you to defend your suggestions Personally, I think Option A is a non starter given the talent distribution....also a "provincial" approach is surely a dead duck. The only places it works are smaller countries with no other significant professional sport like NZ and Ireland. I think you can couple perhaps an 8 club "Option B" with a more limited sub-national representative system that is more in line with State of Origin.

Perthstayer, the ARU struggles to market bumper stickers. I suggest it gets the basics right first before embarking on such esoteric issues that most people would laugh at, or most likely ignore!

Maximus Insight, I'll produce my suggested comps again for you, although having pushed it on The Roar for nearly 15 years, I'm over it. As are probably anyone else who's been on The Roar in that time. Option A - Australian Provincial Championship (APC): New South Wales, Queensland, ACT, Western Australia, Victoria, South Australia, Eastern Australia (NNSW), North Queensland. Option B - National Rugby Championship (NRC): Sydney x 4 teams, Brisbane X 2 teams, Canberra, Perth, Melbourne, Adelaide, Newcastle & NQ. Option A retains history & tradition, & acknowledges that rugby, like cricket, probably won't expand at the top level too much over time. Option B allows the game to expand at the top while acknowledging the stronger regions as well. Anyway, like I said, I can't be bothered defending my suggestions anymore. They are what they are.

That makes more sense, Sheek This may be what you are getting at, but under your model, I would make Super Rugby a four or five week affair and ahead of internationals with three Australian teams - Warratahs, Reds and some "the rest" concept perhaps against the traditional 5 NZ teams. The Brumbies, Rebels and Force would be 3 of the 8 national league teams

Rush or blitz defense is another. Pioneered by the London WASPS coached by Shaun Edwards who had a background in rugby league.

Really can't comment on Ch9's League coverage interstate, don't watch a lot even in Sydney but I assume they do it based on ratings and financials.

Rugby league is the most boring, robotic, repetitive, bore fest of any code. yeh, i hate those 10 minute RL scrums that result in an obscure penalty decided by however the ref is feeling that day. Attitudes like yours are the reason rugby in Australia is on life support. I bet you work for RA. Hard to swallow that the league Mungies have done such a superior job with their code eh?

AJ73, Is it Suaallii's decision, or his manager, family & backers all hoping to get something from the gravy train? Also, 2 years from 16 to 18 is a blink of the eye in an average person's lifetime, even a blink for a professional sportsman. Let him be a kid. Let him develop not only physically, but also mentally & emotionally, the latter two developments being more important than the physical. That's where the ethics comes in. He might have all the natural ability & high level skills in the world. But as soon as he comes up against older, less talented players, they will have all the tricks in the world to bring him down to their level. He hasn't been exposed to that yet, & it might take him several years to figure it out. A 16yo kid can look a genius against other 16yo kids. But he willvery quickly get dragged down back to earth against older, experienced players. Playing against NZ & SA is meaningless for fans of other codes. They couldn't care less. I certainly agree Australian rugby should strive to be the best it can be. But let's stop pretending the international footprint of rugby is a bonus, it isn't. Fans of other sports, particularly AFL & NRL, couldn't care less. As long as their sport gives them their fix, they couldn't care less about the rest of the world. That's the reality.

League will never influence union rules union copies league all the time. latest is the 50/22

Maximus Insight, I’ve always viewed this differently from most people. Super Rugby should not be our pseudo national comp, as it has been since professionalism. SR should be like a Champion’s Cup, a short, sharp comp involving the best domestic provinces from each major SH country. The national comp, in my view, ought to be an 8 team national provincial comp, or an 8-10 team national club comp, take your pick. Traditionally, our national comp teams have been provincial (NSW, Qld, ACT, Vic, WA, etc). But a national club comp would work like the ARC/NRC, comprising more teams from Sydney & Brisbane, & one team from each of everywhere else. It’s just a question of whether you want to forego 100 years of history & tradition, tuning NSW into Sydney, Qld into Brisbane, ACT in Canberra, etc. You can’t have both (SR & NRC), as we’ve already seen that doesn’t work. Australian rugby simply doesn’t have the funds or players to service that many different teams. Supporters of the NRC have always argued it was necessary to provide a bridging gap between club rugby & super rugby. In theory, this is quite true. But in practice it just created another muddle to the pathways of Australian rugby. RA needs to apply clear direction with its domestic structural pathways. Not something that reads like a bit of this, & a bit of that.

hahah so triggered

Suaalii and Crichton were 2 public school kids from Penrith and Young who played League, but switched (or dual-played) Union as teenagers while at expensive private schools. I'm not claiming to know their individual situations for getting into those schools but it's fairly obvious Union has it's own systems for getting kids into the system.

this is the same channel 9 that refuses to show NRL games in WA/SA and even VIC for many years, even when they had a team? The same channel 9 that stops the grand final broadcast in those states seconds after the siren has blown? Channel 9 who would rather show re-runs of ET in Melbourne over the Storm game which would be delayed until midnight. Oh yeah, they treat the NRL so good...

I know that about ethics - but put yourself in the shoes of someone like Suaalii at 16, not many would knock back the $2m over 4 years, not many adults get that amount of money (not playing professional sport anyway). And yes he may be a flop, but I would rather have seen him running around in the Waratahs jersey and finding out he is a flop. I don't think you should be able to sign anyone at 16. The other issue I think is that moving to more than the original 3 teams before building stronger pathways hurt Union. They thought that after 2003 RWC, the sport would be flooded with new talent without really providing the proper pathways through the grassroots. The biggest point of difference that Super Rugby has/had over the other codes was playing regularly against other teams from the SA & NZ. I would love to see Union becoming a force again, but there is a lot of work that they need to do both at grassroots and behind the scenes.

Penalties reward dominance but not directly. A dominant scrum gets the penalty when the other side infringes. A retreating scrum going straight back, holding height and with everyone bound doesn't get penalised, but when is the last time you saw that? That said I agree that some areas could be clarified and some areas could do with the referees all getting on the same page.

You're welcome to hold that opinion. Please refrain from spraying it at league supporters for the sake of the rest of rugby's supporters.

"Developing an 8-10 team national comp on modest payments is in my view, a critical development that should have begun yesterday, or last decade, or last century." Surely this is only possible at the expense of Super Rugby, not a long with it? Creating an artificial third tier is far more a financial drain than any good it does. If it is about retention of top end junior talent, invest more deeply into a national academy that perhaps goes up to under 22s. Have all players on full time wages and be prepared to pay a premium for the kind of players that the NRL swoop on.

The way that the Springboks are playing is a lot like rugby league. A series of one off hit ups, then a contestable kick (I realize it's a little bit of an oversimplification). Rugby needs to incentivize the open, flowing game (if they want to grow the game); but also they need to make sure that the hard yards e.g. set piece still is vital to being successful (or it becomes rugby league); e.g. take the good bits from rugby league and mix it with the good bits from rugby union. I think if more teams played like the All Blacks rugby would be a massively more popular sport. But the first step is taking the mindset of wanting to play positive rugby. In New Zealand the NZRU sets the coaching programs to teach those skills from the start. If the young South Africans see their hero's play conservative rugby and that's how their coaches teach them to play, can you expect them to suddenly play running rugby?