Nice of Joe to come to the rescue of the Wallabies. Fair response to Aussie league coaches coming to the rescue that similar train wreck, the Warriors. Who knows, it might even stop the bleeding.

What most have missed the point that if Schmidt was available RA didn’t really have a choice. They are desperate to put up a credible showing in 2025 against the Lions. No one, other than Gatland, has a better understanding of British and Irish international rugby than Schmidt. With him in charge it is now possible that the tour will be a success on the field and off. Put in a novice coach and a three nil defeat is near certain, and just as damagingly will be seen to be near certain, which will effect crowds and tourists and therefore the money RA is relying on. At that point RA’s buisiness plan will be undermined and Aussie’s place on the Lions roster will come under threat.

Finally, a smart decision from RA. Hopefully the first of many.

Drua managed to win 2018 NRC with locals only, they’re already mid-table in SRP after only two seasons, so I don’t think they would be a burden on the comp.
Thing is, I don’t think SRAU could be described as T3, given that the teams will be the same as SRP except without Wallabies and other internationals, which describes the playing rosters of all the major Nth Hemi competitions in a big chunk of their games. Local international players are regularly rested and rotated throughout the URC, Top 14 and English Premiership. With SRAU it would just be more defined.
I want SR Aotearoa for NZ in the same slot, and I get the feeling that if one country goes the other will as well.

Within a few years, yes. If they gave open contracting in SRP.

This year and until then RA needs to run SR Aussie with Drua as 6th team after SRP. Double round robin and final. The only difference between that and an 8 team NRC with Drua as 8th team is that the NRC would be more expensive, of lower quality and remove the opportunity for greater cohesion in Aussie SRP teams.

SRP has only 14 scheduled games per season, and so Aussie is in even worse situation than that. Aussie needs, like NZ needs, 20 to 25 guaranteed T2 games each year. T3/NRC is a canard until T2 properly sorted. T2 comes first.

“Rest and Rotation” has been spectacularly mishandled ever since 2007 when Graeme Henry nuked that years SR and his own RWC campaign with the withdrawal of twenty something ABs from the first half of SR. He wanted them out of the whole comp, BTW.

Last year RA screwed up and yet again damaged SR with an exaggerated withdrawal policy. NZR screwed up as well, though not as badly. Billy Harmon getting pulled from the Highlanders because he had trained the ABs was ludicrous. NZR annd RA are doing a more restrained policy this year thankfully. It’s no surprise that good things happen when competent people are in charge.

Sorry to burst your bubble Aussie, but Super Rugby hasn’t failed you. You’ve failed Super Rugby. Have been for the last decade.

As a NZer, listening to Ockers blaming Kiwis for their abject failure over the last decade is exactly the same as being a Canatabrian listening to the rest of the country blaming Canterbury for their abject failure over the last seven years. You blame the winners for winning instead of blaming the losers for their poor player development, poor recruitment, poor coaching, poor tactics, poor execution, etc, etc, etc.

The honorable exception? The Brumbies. Like the Crusaders, they rate fourth out of five in their country for resources. But like the Crusaders they make so much more of what they’ve got. No wonder the rest of the country hate them so much.

Ntamack’s complaint is the first sign that France are going to struggle with the new nations championship.

France haven’t taken their southern tours seriously in more than twenty years, ever since their top tier club comp began to eat their sport. Players being rested for tours, players turning up late to tour as their club finals drift into the middle of June, players on tour being exhausted. They’ve tried to control their club’s domination of their sport but the 10 month soap opera is still running, with 26 round games in Top 14 every year, plus another 4 European games. URC is 18 and 4 over with their season a month shorter. Much more sensible, and from what I can see the ideal balance.

That dilettante attitude from France was alright when the tours were near meaningless, but now the tours will have meaning. Now the points on those tours will be vital to get France to the top of the European conference and a place in the big final every two years. And they’ll fail. Again and again and again, just like they have at the world cup. They might win the 6N, they might even Grand Slam, but every year they will do worse than they should in their mandated 3 game tour because the Soap Opera will have left their players exhausted. And they’ll be facing 2 Southern hemisphere tourists every heel bent on extracting maximum points from them in order to boost their position in the Pacific/Africa conference.

The French will have to ask themselves how much their soap opera is worth if they are missing out on the final three years out of four instead of just once out of four. And four out of four once Lions tours are eventually abandoned. Oh, the humiliation. A Fronde is on the way.

New Zealand remains what it has been for the last sixty years, the country that produces more international grade rugby players and international grade coaches than any other. And that despite the fact it has a domestic playing structure stuck in amateurism and 4 out of 5 professional teams which since 1996 have, in general, done a dismal job developing players. Fix that and the beautiful, high pitched whining that came from overseas when the All Blacks were winning 90% plus of their games will come back. Now they have a real coach, all things are possible.

I know its Christmas, but do you have to cherry pick all your facts? The Drua [your spelling is as defective as your logic as your ability to assess evidence] is a single team based on a nation that is now in the top ten. It is unsurprising it has done so well in such a short period, particularly at the expense of Aussie. Japan has less native talent spread over twelve teams that rely on foreign recruits to give them a backbone. The idea that those relatively small number of players would be able to stop their teams being utterly humiliated by full noise, top tier SRP teams is absurd. The only way League One teams will be competitive with SRP teams in the next decade is if they recruit 90% of their players from overseas. That aint gonna happen.

And as for these so called deals your offering, why the hell would NZR want 33% ownership of something that was worthless? The club world championship is even worse. This mythical beast has already been pushed out to 2028 at the earliest. Otherwise known as never, given the political, logistical and financial issues involved. As I’ve said elsewhere, NZR and and RA need to concentrate on getting SRP right by cutting the Rebels, reinventing MP, getting the Jaguares in again, tightening up the playoffs and putting on a full season of games. And all the time doing the real work, which is not restructuring competitions but doing Crusader grade player development instead of Aussie grade player development.

Effectively your argument is that in 2019 League One teams would have lost by an average of 60 points, but now they will only lose by an average of 30 points, rather evades the point that they will still lose by an average of thirty points. SR has been poisoned by introducing weak teams. It doesn’t need to alienate its fan base and most of its commercial partners yet again by indulging a competition based around teams who at best are as strong as bottom of the table NPC teams.

This is not to say it wont happen. NZR and RA have been incompetent in competition development for more than two decades, and while times are changing I have no confidence in either of them. You may get what you want, but it will all end in tears.

And as for France ruling the world with a bunch of hot housed teenage tight forwards, let us know when that actually happens. I dont think we’ll hear anything from you. England won three U20’s between 2013 and 2016. Fat lot of good its done them. South Africa have only ever won one U20 championship, nothing since 2012, have made 3rd place in the comp their own, getting the bronze 9 times out 13 tournaments, yet they are double world champs. Teenage champions dont win world cups. Adults do.

New Zealand will however continue on the path it has been following for decades, and allow those sort of players to develop in a more considered, long term, productive way, which is why Newell and Williams and Lord and Vaai are already in the AB’s, all of which are technically U23, with another quality group coming through fast. The Highlanders, Hurricanes and Blues seem to be coming round to the reality that they need to produce properly balanced teams, so who knows, maybe the AB’s will be able to recruit its tight five from five teams rather than just rely on the Crusaders and the Chiefs. Wouldnt that be nice.

Still pedalling the same old fictions.

Your whole approach to analysing rugby is based on the idea that resources equal results. If that was true then France would be perennial world cup champions. Instead its ten failures and counting, a team that, bizarrely enough, has never won a world cup playoff game in France itself. If your ideas had any merit then France’s principal competition would be England. Yet England is another perennial loser, a nation whose colossal resources have not given it success, outside its one moment of glory in 2003. Both nations test records overall reflect that level of performance. Great in Europe, crap aginst real competition.

The idea that resources equals results also the basis of your derogatory categorisation of SR as a 2nd Tier club competition. Had the SR champions ever played the European champions in a global club championship, as they should have done, then there would be decades of evidence showing the superiority of SR clubs, the same sort of advantage SH teams have at test and WC level. Resources do not equal results. Excellence equals results. Just ask the Crusaders. Just ask the All Blacks. Just ask the Springboks in RWC. None of them have more money or players that their rivals. They’re just radically better at using what they do have.

As for the idea that Japan is the wolf that eventually eat NZ and Aussie rugby, the only relevance of that is the ongoing reality that League One is just another no SR comp that recruits heavily outside its own catchment in order to make up for its own lack of talent. SH talent in general seems to have adapted well to Japanese conditions, so will become more of a target as League One evolves.

But the idea that League One will ever be competitive with SR without a massive influx of foreign talent, something that would take a decade to build up even if they did commit to it, is laughable. Japan as a test nation is, as stated, operating at the same level as Italy. Yet even then the talent that sustains that mediocrity is distributed amongst twelve club teams, not two. League One teams are full of Japanese players who wouldn’t be good enough to play in senior club rugby in NZ. Until that changes, and it would take decades, League One teams will be roadkill when facing SR teams. No competition between the two will survive that level of Japanese failure for more than a couple of years.

Aussie interest in SR has collapsed because of the ongoing incompetence of its SR teams. NZ itself has become frustrated with Aussie because of that incompetence, with real concerns about the value of the competition and its effect on the AB’s. Configuring the expansion of SR around games against one of rugby’s lightweights would be a disaster.

But then, given your obvious animosity to NZ and Aussie rugby, that’s what you want.

Again, consistent with the article, its difficult to know exactly what you mean, but if you are suggesting a champions league style competition with 4 teams from NZ, OZ and Japan, [where exactly MP and Drua fit into that, who knows] it would be a train wreck and be gone within a couple of years. Most NZ teams would beat their Japanese opponents by fifty points. Even the Ockers would win every game against them. Unless you are talking about playoff slots for losers, there would be three or four NZ teams in the semis every year. That’s not a champions league.

What you seem to be advocating is precisely the sort of “just look at the money” disaster that has done so much damage to SR over the last fifteen or so years. A non-competitive non-event that would lead only to alienation and failure. Japan is a rugby lightweight, no better than Italy. It will remain that way. It doesn’t matter how much money they throw at the sport. Opening the doors to unlimited overseas recruitment might solve the problem, but then what would the point of their rugby be?

The problem with this theory, and the others floating around, is that if it was ever tried it would get obliterated by the fact of what would happen on the playing field.

The reality is that Japanese club teams are rubbish. Even a team as mediocre as the Reds, who only scraped into the SRP playoffs last year after it was given a loser slot, a team that lost twice as many games as it won, still managed to beat the Crusaders of Japanese club rugby, the Saitama Panasonic Wild Knights, when the Reds put on a scratch team after the end of the season and the Wild Knights used their full squad in a pre-season game. I dread to think what the Chiefs and the Blues will do to their victims next year. Probably the NZ thing, get two or three sent players off and keep it close that way.

If you think that is an exaggeration, match the SRP teams 1 to 12 against the League One teams, 1 to 12 in their respective positions. Does anyone think any of the Japanese teams would get within twenty of their opponents in a fully competitive game, let alone get a win? Reverse it, have 12 v 1, 11 v 2 etc, etc, to give the Japanese a chance of getting a win. SRP’s worst, Moana Pasifika, would still have a fify-fifty chance of beating League One’s best, the Wild Knights, in a fully competitive game.

A combined, champions league cup type competition would, on merit [you know, that thing Southern Hemisphere rugby has lost acquaintance with recently] have at least 10 SRP teams against at most 2 League One teams. Or 7 and 1. At which point it’s not a champions league. If such a champions league is tried, for political reasons it will be 8 and 4. And none of the League One teams will make the playoffs, with most having been curb-stomped in the group games. Japan will then lose interest, leave, and everything will go back to square one.

My advice to NZR and RA? Consign the Rebels to the dustbin of history, get the Jaguares back [They were really growing and will be backed by WR] turn Moana Pasifika into a 2nd Auckland team, go for open contracting within SRP [Any player can qualify for their own test team from any SRP team], go for a season long, double round robin with top 4 playoffs a grand final in a neutral venue in early September [TRC will have to be moved a bit later. Saffers will be happy] and watch the wins roll in.

Money follows performance, not the other way around.

Good to see that RA and NZR remain as oblivious as they have been for the last ten years about what is really the problem with SRP. What they are too spineless to confront are

1. The pathetically weak standard of Australia’s teams. The grim reality is without a kiwi invasion, players and coaches, there is no prospect of Australia SRP teams improving any time soon, which will lead only to a continued decline in the competition. Ocker’s keep blaming the competition itself for the gross inadequacy of their teams. Or they used to. Now, in the last year, even the most “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi” types seem to have finally realised that the state of their SR teams and the Wallabies is a direct product of, with the honourable exception of the Brumbies, the dismal standard of player development in Oz. This has led to not just the feeble Aussie win percentage in SRP, but a distorted draw to give Aussie teams more wins, as well as loser slots in the playoffs to accomodate their teams. Just being part of a competition does not do the work. Work does the work. Aussies just need to get it into their heads that they have declined not because of SR, but despite being a part of it.

This leads onto…

2. The failure of all NZ’s SR teams, other than the Crusaders, to develop into genuine professional organisations capable of winning championships, which in turn has damaged the comp. The success of the Crusaders has to a large degree masked how weak the other NZ SR teams have been when it comes to actually getting over the line, which is in turn a function of those teams failure to develop the sort of players that win championships. Every year its all about the flash new outside back or the block busting centre or the fullback who is going to be the next Christian Cullen or the next Michael Jones in the loose forwards. Where are the international or world class props, locks and 1st five eighths in the Blues or the Chiefs or the Hurricanes or the Highlanders? They are few and far between. The Chiefs are getting there, the Blues are starting and should get better with Cotter in charge, but the Hurricanes and the Highlanders are pretty much at year zero.

Which then results in…

3. The Crusaders. They are a problem. Their professional standards have been so much better than the rest of the comp for so long it is damaging the credibility of the comp. People keep talking about drafts, but an open market operates in NZ, and the Crusaders still have twice the number of SR championships as the rest of NZ’s teams have put together. And this despite the fact that the Crusaders are by some distance fourth of those five NZ teams in terms of demographics/playing numbers/finances/NPC teams. The Crusaders make so much more out of so much less than almost all of the rest, [and that’s just in NZ] and yet only now are that rest finally starting to realise you have to grow your own, produce balanced teams and play a tactically balanced game. Only now are they realising that you can’t draft excellence.

Fiddling with the rules or a clever promo wont solve these problems. Only a radical improvement in player development in almost every team will solve the playing imbalance, which is the root of SRP’s problems. Its easy not to do the stupid stuff, like conferences and playoff slots for losers. Its rather harder to do the real work, which is player/team development.

I agree in general about there being far too many penalties in the game, though I wouldn’t go as far as you’ve gone. The real problem is that attackers [team in possession] are constantly penalised, which is one of the reasons teams kick so much. If the attackers were only penalised for foul or dangerous play, for penalisible offences in scrum or lineout, [because of safety issues that is not going to change] or for failing to release the ball in the tackle, then teams would be much more likely to hold onto the ball. Penalising attacking teams for technical offences like going off their feet, or going in from the side, or running a move where an attacker obstructs a defender, is frankly idiotic. They have not stopped the defending team from doing anything constructive with teh ball, so why do defenders get an opportunity to score points.

But then I would also stop teams from gaining ground from a kick out on the full within the 22m except where they have received teh ball from from an opposition kick. Now that would put the cat amongst the pigeons.

So if Australian rugby keeps McLennan it gets

1. A poisoned centralisation process as the entire model is blighted by the reality that McLennan is at the centre of it and a beneficiary of it, giving him even more power.

2. An ongoing civil war as McLennan seeks revenge on all those who tried to get rid of him.

3. A credibility gap in RA in relation to the next Wallaby coach, with candidates having to face not just organisational upheaval but also a sport divided against itself and a chairman who is effectively a dictator.

4. A dismal relationship with NZR, even though to sustain SR rugby in Australia RA desperately needs NZR to agree to universal eligibility within SR, and with NZR clearly looking to replace the Wallabies with the Springboks as its primary playing partner.

Faced with all these consequences, its not really much of a choice at all.

Bother. Foley, not Elliot. Dunno who I was thinking of.

It’ll be interesting to see how far Robertson takes the discipline issue with the AB’s, given its clearly their greatest weakness and has been dismal since 2017.

1. Is Sam Cane even gonna be in the team? Playing in Japan will make his position even worse, but given he had two finals as captain and his loss of control in both was a significant cause of narrow defeats in both, can Robertson accomodate him?

2. Scott Barrett the best tight forward in the country, but he’s also a liability when it comes to discipline. Normally you would expect him to get the captaincy, but does his loss of control disqualify him?

3. Does that make World Player of the Year Ardie Savea the captain? Besides everything else he offers, his disciplnary record is exemplary.

4. Can someone like Joe Moody make a comeback if Robertson starts taking a hardline on discipline? I have my doubts, for that and other reasons.

Robertson looks like he will have to make significant changes to the culture of the AB’s. They’ve got a bad rep, its getting worse, and they’ve lost a world cup final because of it. For me, thats the real lesson of this fiasco.

It’ll be interesting to see how all this feeds into the next round of rule changes. NZR want to create a more dynamic game, both in the interests of the onfield success of NZ rugby teams and in the interests of the survival of game in NZ, and TMO overreach mitigates against that, so you can see why they want to make an issue of Elliot’s incompetence. Their problem though is that the AB’s have had an atrocious disciplinary record over the last 6 years, one that is entirely deserved, so any attempt to roll back TMO influence on the game for the sake of the flow of the game will be countered by the idea that the TMO’s role must be extended to protect the players, and NZR are poorly placed to advocate against that.

In principle the two issues, flow of game and player safety, are separate, but in practice they are not, as Elliot’s performance during the final shows. Once the TMO decides he is the real referee, as Elliot clearly did in the final, then everything is up for grabs. The TMO is the enemy of tries, they really should be called the TPO [Try Prevention Officer], so unless NZR can get through law changes/applications that loosen up the game and make tryscoring more frequent, particularly at the top end, the TMO will always be the enemy of NZ rugby.

😁

On a more positive note, hopefully this fiasco will lead to WR limiting the role of the TMO, and more to the point imposing those limits. Firing Elliot would be a good start.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/rugby/all-blacks/301009161/bad-call-highlights-rugby-world-cup-final-tmo-shocker-but-it-didnt-cost-all-blacks-title

I dont agree with Hinton about much, he has this weird Beauden Barrett fetish, but that sums it up. The final line is hopefully more than just wishful thinking

No, I think the result would have been more TMO interference, not less. The rugby/political fallout of a legally scored but illegitimate try would have been catastrophic. The game is already far subject to TMO interference. Allowing that try would have resulted in every score being checked, and tries would have been the principal victim. That the incompetent TMO in the final focused on a try is typical of the try-hating that goes on in the game. You can score from any number of dodgy penalties it seems, but score a dodgy try and the world comes to an end. As Cardiff 2007 proved vividly.

The comparison with what happened to France in 2011 and NZ in 2007 is much more accurate. Both dominated the game, were never given kickable penalties when they deserved them, a failure of refereeing which completely reshaped the game. Personally I couldn’t care less, glad AB’s won in 2011, but i’m not going to adopt selective perception as a means of reconciling that view.

By the same token, had that try been allowed, [teh legal result] and Mo’unga converted from the better position, and the AB’s gone on to win on the back of it, would we ever have heard the end of it?

Rassie would have gone insane, the rest of SA wouldn’t have been far behind, there would have been calls for the match to be replayed, and the whole Rugby eco-system would have been in total uproar. For years.

On the whole, I think WR like things just the way they are

Then your memory of the 2011 final is clearly every different from mine, or every report i’ve ever read of it. The All Blacks got bounced around big time in the second half [same as France were in 2007] yet somehow France couldn’t get a match winning penalty. Joubert watched and did nothing, same as Barnes in 2007.

France’s performance against Tonga and NZ in the group games is irrelevant. The final stands by itself, and France got ripped off. I can’t think of worse treatment in a more consequential game in RWC history. Oh well. That’s the way things go.