The answer is simple (IMO) a third tier is designed to introduce professional rugby to semi professional/amateur players. Aside from sterner competition, a third tier is designed to provide a professional environment with training, coaches, S&C etc. Unless I am mistaken, SS clubs are not equipped to have a squad of players training, recovering, analysing for 8hrs a day. The super rugby franchises are.

Run an ‘A’ program with SR squad members backfilled by the best from club land. A professional contract is the carrot at the end of the season for aspiring athletes. If need be, perhaps Rugby Australia need to invest in a 6th team, call them the BaaBaa’s for now, to create spots for an additional 30 players. Could be a nice bandwagon team for residents who don’t have an existing connection to the other 5 clubs.

If we do some simple maths, 5 super rugby teams with 30 squad players = 150 pro contracted players in Australia. Lose 30 to the Wallabies, and another 20 (conservatively) to injury and you are left with 100 professional players sitting around twiddling their thumbs from as early as August. Bring in the best 50 club players for a round robin tournament (8-10 games) plus finals and I think that is the secret sauce. If you are not one of those 50+ club players, you realistically aren’t in the frame for a pro contract so better luck next year.

Its clear that Premier rugby clubs in Syd/Bri aren’t prepared to play ball with a third tier and previous iterations of coined teams didn’t connect with fans.

Why not simply introduce a Super Rugby ‘A’ series. Use the fringe squad players backfilled by the top club players. The games can be played on a Wednesday night during SR. A game per week or double header each fortnight. Will give players with limited minutes in SR some much needed game time and give a clear pathway for aspiring club players. Playing one extra game a fortnight shouldn’t be too much to handle if a pro contract is on offer.

I’m sure Stan would value the extra content that doesn’t clash with NRL or AFL, save for Origin (schedule a bye those weeks). Best of all you are leveraging existing franchises with fans and infrastructure. Similar set ups currently exist in the Northern hemisphere where midweek games played for lesser trophies are contested throughout the season and use mainly fringe players.

Should this program be successful we can eventually add the Drua and/or an Aussie Baa’Baas team.

While we’re on the topic of a next tier of competition. I wonder if there is any appetite within the SR boardrooms for Super Sevens. 12 rounds of sevens hosted by each franchise. Would be a great Spring/Summer gap filler and provide a more robust pathway for each countries’ respective national team. It seems pretty crazy to me in an Olympic sport you are either one of the 15 fully professional squad or amateur.

The public didn’t support the NRC and the fabricated teams that came from it (never understood why people refused to get on board with a new team but I digress) and club rugby connections run so deep that noone will support a system that provides benefits to competing clubs. So, the easiest and I would imagine cheapest solution is an ‘A’ program. Waratahs A vs Brumbies A etc

Competition can be played on a Wednesday night during Super rugby or after SR and Club comps finish (or both).

Using the wednesday night model. Double header at a major suburban ground (think Brookvale Oval, Ballymore) and played fortnightly. Stan would surely enjoy the additional content that doesn’t clash with other sports – byes to be scheduled for origin.

The players will come from the super squad members that don’t get selected to play SR that weekend, and perhaps those players that only get limited minutes. The rest will be selected from the premier club competitions. Can possibly include the clause that players won’t earn professional contracts unless they were selected in an ‘A’ program.

This model leverages the existing infrastructure, provides more content with established sporting brands, in season which will hopefully encourage aspirational players to continue working rather than having to start an entirely new season after finishing SR/SS and most importantly creates that bridge between semipro and professional.

This is not very different to what already happens in the Northern hemisphere where there are midweek games for different trophies and those fixtures are largely played by fringe squad players.

Workload is the obvious concern, but if you were an aspirational club player I’m sure you could handle an extra game per fortnight to pursue your dream of playing professional rugby.

As with all economic and political decisions there will be unintended consequences. I won’t delve into the unexplained rules pertaining to pilfering, cleaning out, pick and drives, mauling or fend offs… all of which regularly involve contact above the chest. Instead I want to pose some thoughts on tackler safety.

Anyone who’s played subbies will know there are some goliaths running around that need a few David’s to bring them down each time. A two man tackle below the waist often end up with two dangerous scenarios. Either the tacklers clash heads with each other or they upend the ball carrier. So, two man tackles are effectively eliminated. There will be a shit load of linebreaks from mismatched 1on1 tackles or a resulting offload. Call me cynical, but games with dozens of long range tries does not make for particularly compelling viewing or participation.

Injuries. Speaking from personal experience, my shoulders are shot to pieces and any time I have to stretch out to make a tackle I usually dislocate my shoulder. To compensate I have to use my chest in the contact zone. If the contact zone is now below the waist I could expect a lot of knees to the face. I obviously don’t speak for everyone on this but I have played with a lot of blokes with similar problems. This would effectively rub out a substantial number of the current amateur playing base.

Along a similar tangent, think about the incentives for ball carriers. If you’re running the ball at top speed and know where the contact zone is going to be, a subtle change of direction can easily put your hip or knee into the defender’s head taking him out of the rest of the game. There will be a surge of tackler related concussions. But hey, if the overall number of concussions decreases slightly I guess its all worth it.

I think the current law of nothing above the nipple line is the correct balance. Maintains a large enough margin for error so that defenders rarely hit the head and still allows a more even contest in the tackle zone.

Don’t hate this idea. I think short term we would see a boost in WB performance. The question beckons, long term would this better serve the WB or hamper them? I think for a world class test team you probably need 4 genuine options in every position. I think we sack off one Aus SR team (looking at you Melbourne) and that hopefully will strike the right balance. 4 works for Ireland and Wales.
The NRC needs to return, but if people won’t watch it then I don’t really know what else can be done? Do we instead just have our 4 SR teams go on tours playing national A teams like Fiji, USA, Japan? More content and more development.

agree that a draft system would not work. Basically that would just punish Canterbury for their success.
What I do think we should have is an open market where players can sign with any SR team and still be eligible for their country, albeit you may be less likely to get selected for the ABs if you end up playing at the Rebels. I think this will save NZ rugby slightly in that the allure of living and playing in the south of france may not be as great if NZ players can live in QLD – we hopefully won’t see as many players like Piutau or Naholo packing up and leaving right at the peak of their powers. Good for the ABs, good for Super Rugby and negative for Northern Hemisphere rugby. Which at the end of the day, if our respective country can’t win the world cup wouldn’t we still prefer someone from the southern hemisphere winning?

Earlier this year I attended my first NBA game in the states. The match day experience was something I’ve never before seen. Every break in play (and there are a lot) lead to a quick snippet of entertainment meaning I never once felt tempted to stare down at my phone. Basketball arenas are very different to football grounds, of course, but Australian sport in general could learn a lot from our yankee cousins.

thought provoking article, Geoff. The old saying of not throwing the baby out with the bathwater comes to mind. Each alternative competition comes with its own drawbacks.
Keep Super Rugby Pacific but with a couple of changes: #1 priority should be allowing teams to sign players from anywhere in the world. NZRU need to get on board with this and allow a NZ player to still be eligible for the ABs so long as they are playing in Super Rugby. If Australia doesn’t have the talent for 5 teams, so be it, let them pick kiwis. Along this same line, a salary cap would need to be introduced (if one doesn’t already exist).
#2 stop playing the season in Summer, a few years ago I went to a Tahs game in February and it was +35 degrees and unpleasant for the spectators let alone the players. Further to this, why does the season have to stop before the July test window. Why can’t it pause for a few weeks or even continue during the test season. I’m not saying each team should be playing 30 games a year like in France/England but they need to play more than 12.
#3 the broadcasting needs to drastically improve, this is less for RA and more for 9/Stan but rugby needs to start following the lead of other sports in having expert analysis done on the fly and not just halftime. Andrew Johns has a great knack for breaking down a play and explaining how something happened. Tony Romo is brilliant at analysing the play during NFL games and he does it immediately after it happens. Rugby is an extremely technical sport and the broadcasters need to find a way to make it an appealing part of the viewing experience rather than a hindrance. Someone get Nick Bishop a job on Stan.

I don’t think the average punter would turn up. That is why making it an event would have to be the strategy (don’t use whoever organised Super Round). If you had a double header at a suburban ground and sold cheap beers on the sidelines you should be able to get a bunch of uni students turn up. Similarly if you brought rugby to regional centers like Wagga or Dubbo you might get some more local fans turning up.

Just to caveat this above point, I am a huge fan of the NRC and believe wholeheartedly it should be reinstated. For reasons I can’t understand, rugby traditionalists just don’t seem to buy into it. Maybe its because I went straight to subbies after school and not into a premier club so I don’t have much of an affinity for prem rugby and don’t share the same belief that the Shute Shield is the answer to all the questions about developing our future wallabies.

Something I’ve been thinking a bit about lately. I would suggest a similar model to European rugby where they play for multiple trophies, the premiership and Heineken Cup carries the most weight and therefore the top players are selected for those games. Lesser trophies are generally played out by the wider squad.

I think Australia should run a midweek comp, played Wednesday night. Double header at a prominent suburban ground, think Ballymore, Leichhardt Oval or even the Shute Shield grounds like Sydney Uni or Concord Oval and rotate around the country. I’m sure a Wednesday night double header at Sydney Uni would garner a decent attendance. Schoolnights don’t need to cater for families, the organisers can make it a party atmosphere.

Players are picked from the wider squad that didn’t play on the weekend, or if they did, those that only got limited minutes. I don’t see how Jack Grant from the tahs getting 4 minutes at the end is doing much to accelerate his development.

You are already selecting approx 15 full time contracted squad members, injuries permitting. Meaning coaches would then only need to fill the bench from clubland. We need to stop this crap about protecting club rugby, we don’t pluck wallabies from Randwick anymore.

Players can wear their junior club socks, they can play for the toaster once again, this style of comp will provide any creative freedom that the ARU want in being innovative and paying homage to the game’s roots.

I’m not familiar with the commercials of running a professional rugby game but I’d imagine Stan Sport would be pretty happy to be able to broadcast 2 extra games of rugby a week particularly as no League or AFL is played on Wednesday (the teams can have a bye for State of Origin). One venue, one production team, 4hrs of primetime content on a winter’s night. Furthermore it lifts the commercial value of each of the super franchises as they have more eyeballs on their sponsors.

Robelinda2 on youtube has produced a cricket highlight video for everthing you could ever imagine. Ricky Ponting pull shots, Sachin tendulkar cover drives, Chris Martin getting bowled. There was a stoush a couple of years ago where CA tried to get him to remove all of his Australian footage because it was unlicensed. Luckily they came to their senses because he provides way more value to them than they do to him.

Squidge rugby puts together incredible rugby analysis videos on youtube. I’ve learnt more about rugby from him than any coach. Due to broadcast rights he can’t make anything for super rugby so the only southern hemisphere pieces he does is during the spring tour and world cup. If only Sanzaar could recognise the added value he brings to the organisation if you just let him get on with it. It’s not as if people are tuning in to watch Waratahs replays a week after the match

Agree entirely, Geoff. I can’t understand the angst the rugby public have about PE backing. The product that churns out each week is excellent but no one sees or hears about it. I don’t necessarilly want to see rugby go down the NBA, NFL route with players releasing NFTs and becomming prominent voices in political issues but we desperately need more eye balls. Every time an NRL winger scores a floating try in the corner its replayed on Sunrise every 30min (brilliant example in the charity shield this weekend). Last year Fainga’anuku from the Saders scored the best example of one of those tries I’ve ever seen and I had to dig through youtube to be able to show it to my then 15yr old brother… that clip should have been all over every social media app he uses.

A constant argument in my family is whether league or union is best. As a rusted on union fan I will always side with the 15 man game but the others say league is a better product because they never see footage of games from Europe, Japan or NZ. The only rugby they ever see is the Wallabies being pasted by the ABs three times a year. The product is great but in Australia we never see the good stuff.

I think O/S short to mid term stints could be even more valuable for our young players coming through. The reality we face is many talented athletes coming out of school can pick up an NRL contract with the promise of playing first grade at age 18-20 whereas in rugby that is less commonplace, especially for tight five forwards. If we can get the young fellas to play in say Japan, earn decent $$ and come back to SR a bit bigger, more mature and with top flight rugby under their belt all the while resisting the urge to give up on rugby and head to league. The 5 year eligibility clause will also now provide the comfort we will be able to repatriate those players.

Rugby is absolutely competing with other winter codes. The quickest solution I can think of is establishing junior 7s competitions to run over Spring/Summer. Will be a great introduction for a lot of kids, particularly those that play league in Winter.