My apologies nick, I did not mean to disparage any of the french or english clubs in the lower tiers. I just picked out the the competition leaders as they stand to day without much thought.

The point that I was (crudely) trying to make is that the disparity between the clubs in Tier 1 and Tier 2 on the points that Eddard was making could possibly be not as great as the disparity between the upper and lower divisions in english and french rugby.Therefore, a team in Tier 2 would not be stuck there whilst the gap between itself and a top Tier 1 side grows ever greater.

Thank you for correcting me and providing a bit of the history of these great clubs.

We would have to pray the new teams be competitive then. Anything less is going to be a disaster.

Under advantages I do mention that introducing new teams like the Kings and whoever else would be fairly simple – just stick them in at the bottom of Tier 2.

The teams and their tier placements in the article are used for illustrative purposes only and is based on the 2014 table standings. The proposed format could start in 2018 for example so as to give all teams time to organise themselves. The 2018 tier placements would then depend on the 2017 final table standings.

Thanks Rob, always enjoyed your perspective on things! Travels are done (at least for now!) and super excited for this year of rugby ahead of us.

Completely agree. I just cannot get on board with this expand-at-all-costs attitude that SANZAR has.

To counter that, I’d point out that the Worcester Warriors and Section Paloise are not the Blue Bulls and the Blues, both three time champions of Super rugby. The Super teams are known throughout the rugby community and the smallest stadium amongst the mentioned Tier 2 teams is bigger than the largest stadium in either the Pro D2 and English Championship.

Negotiating the TV deals will require someone creative and persuasive because as you highlight selling the concept will be difficult. Sponsorship will be difficult too but it is upto each team to work out the best deals for themselves.

I would also argue that teams will be far more competitive in the tiered Super rugby than anywhere else. You are right in saying that most teams are relegated soon promotion and that is because they cannot compete financially. The vast bulk of a sporting teams finances are spent on player salaries and transfer fees. In Super rugby, player salaries are somewhat subsidised by the union and there are no transfer fees.

There is every chance of that being true but I’d rather look on the positive side Lord Eddard 🙂

I too think the ideal situation would of course be everyone plays everyone else home and away and top of the league wins the pie. The problem of course is the travel between the continents. The SA teams and the Western Force will be heavily disadvantaged. Even a single round would mean four perhaps five weeks away which is the situation we face now and is not the ideal situation clearly.

I completely agree with you regarding SANZAR’s obsession with growth and the chase for the dollar. With a combined population of around 90 million people in the three Super nations, they will never convince me that the viewing market is tapped out. The English Premier League’s brand new $8 billion deal was not because the EPL added French teams but due to its popularity in Asia.

The inclusion of only the Sharks in the 2015 top tier was not meant as a slight on SA teams but rather as an example. All teams would be given a minimum of 3 years to organise their squads and be in a position to finish as high as they can the preceding season so that they can play in Tier 1.

Fans are the lifeblood of any team and any sport. Taking Super rugby to the next level will definitely need the cooperation from the fans and settling on a fair and exciting format will only go partway to achieving this. The problem of increasing and energizing the fanbase is a responsibility that falls on each team I reckon.

I kinda like your proposed format niwdEyaJ. I’m analyzing the different league formats in professional sport at the moment and will add yours to the list.

The format I suggest in my article is clearly unworkable as shown in the example of the Sharks. Playing 7 weeks away across the ocean is not fair.

Great article Peter! Loved hearing from the other side of the whistle 🙂

Awesome article Digger! Good luck with the day, making it up to your wife and your teams 🙂

True we do not completely recover the cost to develop young players who up and leave. However, the same could be said of the journeymen, the injured, the early retirees, and the ones who pursue other careers. This is the opportunity cost we face in our game and this will never change. We will never have a 100% success rate in turning young players into local superstars. This does not mean we have to shrug our shoulders and just accept it. The union’s job is to minimize the loss of players to our systems and my belief is we start where most social problems can be mitigated – education.

Educate players on –

– how to reach their potential
– how to be better people
– the opportunities that exist inside and outside the game and how the union will help them to take advantage of them
– the advantages and disadvantages of playing locally and playing in a foreign country
– the history and the traditions of the local game
– the pathways to representative rugby
– life after rugby

These are some of the stuff that I think will create ties that will bind a young fella to local rugby. When you add to this other improvements that are badly needed in SR and the RC, I think we can minimize the loss of our young players to our systems.

I too am similarly frustrated with all the talent leaving the SH but morally I cannot agree with your proposals, well thought out as they are.

In a day and age where we are mostly free to live our lives as we wish, to deny a talented 26 year old the chance of international rugby purely because he played for another nation as an 18 year old does not sit right with me. Do normal people not enjoy the privilege of being able to travel and settle down in another country? Why should the rules be different for sportsmen? I hear the argument of national representation but do we not represent our countries when we travel? Have we not all heard of idiot Americans, arrogant Brits, bogun Aussies etc etc? Just ordinary people travelling abroad who have given their fellow countrymen an unwanted and inaccurate national profile due to the way they represented themselves and by extension their nation. Why should the rules be different for a sportsmen who merely serves to entertain and bolster national pride (I’m simplifying here) as opposed for a pilot who takes a short 2 year contract abroad and has actual lives in his hands?

Conversely if a young player’s primary motivation is anything other than the pride of representing the country that he/she most likely grew up in, having gone through the rugby system with his/her closest mates, then I’d say thank you, good bye and good luck. Which brings me to the next point, how many young players have actually been poached? There is a difference between poaching and leaving and yet you relate the two. If another country can scout, identify and recruit a particular player who has not represented his/her country at even U20 level and yet has been potentially exposed to all the coaches, scouts and advisors of the national, Super and provincial teams then I’d say that’s a damn fine job by that scout. On the other hand, if a player really wants to leave then there isn’t much you can do to stop him.

The tax break is also a non-starter I reckon. As citizens they should contribute to the society that they live in, just like everybody else. Offering them tax breaks sets them apart and places them on a pedestal which can only be a bad thing. Hypothetically if we were provide tax breaks to rugby players, then what do we tell the footballers, the netballers, the swimmers etc?

You cannot draw a straight comparison between the two competitions. What works over there will not work over here and vice versa. There are just too many geographical, cultural and administrative differences.

Necessity is the mother of inventions and we needed the professional competitions to evolve to survive. The domestic leagues were not enough, and Australia didn’t even have a proper domestic league, to sustain let alone grow the game. South Africa probably could have managed, again due to necessity they adapted during apartheid, but there is no doubt something more was needed in Australia and NZ. And so we have SR and the RC and I’m sorry to say there is no viable alternative here nick. All the traditionalists and purists can moan and whinge about it but the bottom line is SR and the RC are the only things keeping the SH rugby alive. If you have even a vague proposal about how to organise the professional game in the SH whilst still keeping the 4 SH nations at the top of the international pile then I, and a whole heap of more influential people I reckon, are all ears.

I get what you say nick but I don’t see how the numbers stack up. The ABs played 14 tests last year and England played 12. Toulon played 38 games last year and the Crusaders played 19. If you add Canterbury’s 12 games then its 31 but Canterbury is hardly the pinnacle of the NZ game. A SH international player potentially plays almost half the games a NH international player does and by definition then the pinnacle is on show for half the time.

The only reason this even makes sense is because the RC has home and away and the 6N is just one game against another. So the addition of one game against the same opposition is the cause for the crowds to stay away and the ‘product’ to be diluted? Conversely, if we were to do away with the extra round the crowds would come flocking back and interest would shoot straight up? I doubt that very much.

Spot on.

True, but I have no doubt that if they could they would add more games. Instead of selling out, for example, Twickenham, a minimum of twice in the 6N, they would sell it out 5 times. Add the advertising revenue, F&B revenue, TV revenue etc etc to the money generated, don’t tell me that they haven’t gone over their options with a fine tooth comb.

You’ve hit the nail on the head with regards to the change in formats Kia. A slight tweaking of the format can improve the championship, constant changes will just exasperate your fans as is the case right now. The reason for this of course is SANZAR’s chase for the almighty dollar/rand. IMHO, SANZAR would be better off at improving the game in their home countries rather than looking abroad. The Australian market is just ridiculously neglected and the ARU are proposing expanding to Japan and Canada? Please. You are absolutely in that they should settle on one format and stick with it. Having said that, in a WC year we have no option but to shorten the tournament and keep our powder dry for the WC. I would argue that team selections more than the abridged format causes the RC to lessen in value.

I think we have a different definition for viewing spectacle. You refer to the holistic experience whereas I only refer to the game itself. The skills on show in the RC is far beyond anything the 6N has ever offered and this is what I mean by viewing spectacle. I would definitely agree with as far as the overall fan experience would go. Some of the games in the 6N generates an atmosphere that is absolutely electric. I’ve been to Twickenham and Murrayfield but I haven’t been to 6N game but it’s easy to sucked by the sheer passion on display. Games in SA especially against the ABs are similar I would argue (a kind South African might care to clarify). Games at Suncorp are pretty awesome as well. However there is clearly a lot to be done here by the unions to improve the fan experience.

If the 6 Nations is Rugby’s greatest championship then Suzy was a crossdressing alien from Alpha Centauri. It certainly has the advantage in terms of viewing numbers and tradition but falls far short of what rugby is about – moving the ball forward. The 6 Nations is the balding, overweight, 9-5 30 year veteran-but-still-junior janitor at NASA to the Rugby Championship’s Neil Armstrong.

Seriously though, you raise an interesting issue in how we can make the Rugby Championship better but comparing the two tournaments is like comparing apples and oranges.

Format – there are two reasons why the 6N is in it’s current format – they have no room in their calender and their clubs would not allow it. Clubs rule the game in the NH, even to the detriment of the national teams. A big reason I believe the ABs have been able to sustain their success over a 100 years is how they’ve managed to align national and provincial interests. Everybody pulling in the same direction makes for a strong culture. If they were able to and it meant more money, the 6N would not hesitate to add in more games. However, the one game per season does make it more interesting and intense but unfortunately the economical needs of the SANZAR unions wins out.

Rivalry and Tradition – The proximity to each other is not something we can do anything about so we need to just accept that and move on. Having said that, a favourite story of many kiwi young-at-heartsters is waking up in the middle of the night to listen to games versus the Boks in SA with their fathers and brothers. How is today’s situation any different? The 6N have their rivalries and traditions and we have ours. We have the greatest trophy in the world in the Bledisloe and the greatest rivalry in the AB vs Boks game.

Viewing spectacle – Is this even a contest? The SH game has always been superior to the NH game. Could more be done? Of course. But I think we may get better pointers from how the Americans structure their sport and build fanbases.

I do not agree with most of what you say and mixing Super rugby into what is a national team tournament comparision was reaching a bit, but really well written article Kia.

That should be game over thank god

wiziwig is no more unfortunately. try cricfree

What a terrible game. Lets hope it picks up…

With all the talk surrounding McKenzie’s selections, what do you think about Meyer’s selections so far Two Eye?

Normal self? These are SH teams, not the usual turgid NH ones. He’s lucky he got that much.

What exactly are you trying to do mate? The sheer reasonableness of your proposal will throw SANZAR into utter chaos! Worlds will collide! Oceans will drain! Donuts will find their missing middles!

I hope you’re happy.