From World Cup glory to a financial precipice. Where did the $48 million go?

I see-an interesting perspective. To be considered. Thanks for the reply and the discussion.

Ideally both of course, but realistically more and better players going into SR. WRT crowds IMO the primary audiences should be recognised as different too. The NRC should be community based and very much the culmination of the season, and at least some of it should still feel like club rugby. Some of the games I went to did that well, with families, kids and dogs walking around, the kids running around on the field in the break and after the match, and people meeting the players up close. Whereas SR is that professional separation, controlled and secure event type of thing, for people who mostly don't consume any other form of rugby and have no alignment to the community. The more overlap the better obviously, but that'll only happen if the NRC offers a completely different feel and experience to SR. But the money is an issue, for sure. I personally can't see us ever getting what is really required without a major structural reform of rugby in Australia, and even then elements of the amateur game will be as big an obstacle as the professional game. But I do think there is also a lot of money wasted at professional level doing inefficiently things that would be better done at the top of the amateur level. I wonder if you added up all the money spent at SR level on academies, extended playing and training squads, and the programs directed at turning amateurs into professionals, how much the number come to across five teams. And whether even half that money might do a better job of getting all those players and more 80% of the way there, while the other half could then be much better focused on the players mist genuinely likely to make it.

Ok, that makes sense then. Assuming a more developed grassroots game are you thinking more in terms of 1) More/better players produced or 2) Bigger crowd numbers? I’m uncertain of the panacea of grassroots and also cautious of its cost.

That is not quite what I said. What I said is that no form of Super rugby will succeed without that base underneath it. We can have a domestic comp, and if that is all we have above amateur rugby it will be NRC level at best. We can contemplate all manner of ‘SR’ comps, but they either will not be SR standard, or Australia will struggle to be competitive without that base underneath it. . What you keep proposing are single layers of professionalism because that is all they can afford…its what we’ve got now, and it doesn’t really work, but no such comp will regardless of how much glitter is sprinkled on it. We can change the standard of the comp to make one level work for us, and that level will be at NRC standard. Or we can change the number of levels to ensure the upper level comp meets the desired standard, which needs more than just a couple of those NRC standard teams playing a couple of extra games, or a couple of ‘All-Star’ exhibition matches. But there is no magic bullet to make one level also the ‘SR’ standard we’re wishing for. It worked once upon a time, but everyone has moved on and Australia has stood still.

What I don’t understand with super rugby being such a short season why they don’t have a short single round domestic super rugby competition leading into cross border or after cross border super rugby competition with say Fiji included. Surely that would get much needed revenue but lower costs as not paying extra wages. The squad players could surely cover the wallabies who can’t play..ok may need to recruit some extra club players but still.

For some reason the reply I try to send keeps producing an error message. 'You mention that the form of Super rugby could succeed with a different base underneath, Alas I'd doubt that. Every country with a remunerative and popular presence of the sport has a national league. They may also have an international one as well but the main competition is domestic. The only successful exception is Ireland, which plays only in an international league but is largely popular because the team wins. Wouldn't things be ok if Australia won you might ask? Well, then New Zealand would lose, fans in New Zealand would stop watching and Super rugby would be in trouble. That's the problem with Super rugby-if one country's teams are on top the others must be losing. It's inherently unstable. A national competition means that Australian teams always do well and win a trophy. You can have Trans-Tasman as well with the same number of games as now, but you need a national competition. I'm not talking about my own interest here but objectively what the fans demand to see.

For some reason the reply to this particular post isn't working.

I guess we'll see what actually constitutes 'overhaul'. If they are so dumb as to follow RAs lead, we'll, at least we can look forward to their company in the rankings soon and the Bledisloe might become a thing again. Of course, when you have something to sell, things like this also happen... https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/350202405/npc-unions-land-new-partner-move-away-nz-rugby Will be interesting to see if NZR looks to step back or step up, but I can't picture anyone in Australian rugby having any sort of discussion like this... https://thespinoff.co.nz/sports/19-08-2023/is-the-npc-still-fit-for-purpose-three-questions-with-a-provincial-rugby-ceo Gives a good sense of what they think differentiates the two levels though.

But even NZ can't afford their third tier setup Andy! Not only have they sought outside financial assistance (Silver Lake), but now they seem determined to overhaul their whole NPC setup.

And increasingly, neither do the derbies. What is failing isn't the specific arrangement of SR, where it would all come good if only we could just find the magic arrangement of deckchairs. It's the fundamental structure of the sport. Whether people like the arrangement or not, they can shuffle the chairs all they like, even spend all their money on decorations, but it's not going to matter when they've neglected hull maintenance...

'Super rugby isn’t the cause.' But this means that it isn't a major problem and that in itself it's attractive to the public. You make an interesting point about community rugby but it seems at this stage very much to be in the nature of a long-term solution. But with total crowds that are sometimes less than a single NRL crowd, it would be unlikely to work quickly enough even if it did. Also, there are presumably two results of it you're thinking of. Better players and bigger crowds. The first could follow but the NRL is stealing everything right now and there's no reason it wouldn't take them, and it's not clear why the second would eventuate even if the players stayed. Super rugby is based on the idea that playing New Zealand clubs is something fans love. They also don't care that there's no national trophy. It doesn't matter what I think personally of this but it just doesn't seem to appeal to fans.

Super rugby isn't the cause. A total reliance on Super rugby is the problem, and will be the problem for any future version on which they rely totally. At is most basic root, the problem stems entirely from the implicit belief that the entire sport should be run for the benefit of the professional game. As long as that is the case, it'll never have money and will just keep sliding.

Sure, but clearly RA has little money. We’ve seen that much in evidence this past week as never before. They could fund community rugby more and it might produce more players unless they weren’t snapped up by the NRL the moment they appeared as well. But to get the money back they’d need to have a more popular format than Super rugby. It just isn’t popular and doesn’t pay. It’s inescapable that there’s no solution to the problem Super rugby causes than to do something, whatever that is, about Super rugby itself.

And that is the rub. NZ fund their provinces, which funds those local HP programs, including the NPC, with that local community as its primary audience. Australia doesn't meaningfully fund community rugby, and tries to impose an NRC that is a pale imitation of SR, for the primary benefit of SR, trying to engage the same audience as SR, with a weakened version of SR. In essence it just doubles down on what doesn't work, but at least it is cheap. Because as everyone knows, the cheapest solution is always the absolute best solution in the long run... Although having amateurs playing a little bit more amateur rugby would also be pretty cheap. As is nothing at all, but looked at globally that is looking less cheap by the year.

This all sounds useful and if it's as free as you say then why not.   But I don't think it will make a viewing public who have profoundly rejected Super rugby became enamoured of it. I don't know if you remember John O'Neill's proposal by the way. Best of the best from Shute Shield and Hospital Cup to use existing identities. Now obviously that's not very national.

'A couple of one off seasons didn’t, but are you arguing that the Curry Cup and NPC “don’t make much difference?”' Who can say if they do or not? It's impossible to compare because Australia is in the unique situation of having 17 NRL teams each with the budget of RA devouring its youth talent pool. Who knows how it would be otherwise. But I'm not against the third tier if it's free. Maybe it works. My point is more that it can't rescue the popularity of the game which has flagged for other reasons to do with the second tier.

Part of the problem KPM, is that we see the NRC as different things. You think of it as just a place for SR players to get more game time, to fix the lack of skills they have due to limited HP development before entering a fully professional environment where there are a million and one competing priorities for their time. And to be fair, that does reflect the very top-down focus of the NRCs to date, being SR Lite. . Whereas IMO, and I suspect Piru’s too, what the NRC needed to be was primarily an introduction to professionalism for the developing players and a hard focus on speed and skills, trying to fix the lack of skills before it becomes an issue and ensure that the ones picked for SR are actually the right ones and to make the transition easier. It would also give established professionals somewhere better to continue playing during the off season, certainly better than sitting on the couch. It would also make them more accessible to the public, put them into leadership positions, and probably also involve them in mentoring the developing players. No doubt there might also be some local stalwarts of the game, not quite good enough for that last step but great team men, examples and teachers. But the main focus would always be on the best local players, representing their community, first and foremost. And for those that have made the jump to professional ranks, the community they were developed in themselves, and maybe their last true ‘club’ before it simply became their job.

There were third tiers before and they didn’t make much difference. A couple of one off seasons didn't, but are you arguing that the Curry Cup and NPC "don't make much difference?" Third tier isn’t quality opposition. It's higher quality than club, which is the point. We currently send club players up against seasoned All Blacks and hope for the best. Then wonder why we fall behind