Thanks for the update WCR. I have no doubt this will be a positive for US Rugby. Even if it fails after a couple of years it will increase the standard and depth of the national team and will identify new elite, or potentially elite players that clubs in Europe, Japan and Super Rugby may be interested in signing. To progress to tier 1 standard countries like the US and Canada need a solid base of professional players, and this will help boost that no matter how the league does (though obviously the more successful and long-lasting the better).

I’m sceptical but think they’re worth trying as they’ll remove a lot of complexity around the breakdown. It’ll do away with the tackle vs ruck situation that we have now which contributes to a lot of penalties. And I think counter-rucking is better than pilfering so encouraging that is a good idea IMO. Counter rucking requires teamwork and often results in cleaner turnovers, while pilfering usually results in penalties (either against the defence for holding on, or against the attack for not supporting their body weight, or being beaten by the ruck etc).

Sorry I thought it was going to be called ‘Americas 6 Nations’

Will they still play as the Pumas in the 6 Nations? (I know they’ll essentially be Argentina XV, but I was under the impression they’d be capped test matches).

It’s very close to the same team that came 4th at the world cup. If they don’t make the playoffs in super rugby it’ll be a disappointing season for them.

It’s a better deal than was expected, so well done to SANZAR. Hopefully the ARU can now both live within its means and invest for growth at all levels.

Much of the increase has reportedly come from the UK and France. This shows the value of having an international competition where there’s value for rights around the world. If the expansion into Asia and South America can be pulled off successfully and continues over the next decade or so then the value will skyrocket in future as well. Big opportunity to create a truly unique global sporting league with conferences in 4 or 5 regions. It just takes some bridging formats to get there. Exciting times for rugby.

The stands were packed on both days, but a lot of the crowd tends to come in around lunch time. The crowd is small during the early matches (the first game on each day in this tournament started at 9 and 9:30am local time), but if you kept watching you’d have noticed that by the afternoon the stands were basically full.

It’s the same at every sevens tournament. This weekend’s event in Cape Town is sold out for both days, but it won’t appear the way in the first few games.

Cubelli has signed for the Brumbies and will remain eligible for the Pumas. The UAR are willing to make an exception for players signed by other super rugby teams, so it’ll just be European based players that will be ineligible. And as far as I’m aware Leguizamon has signed for the super rugby team.

Do you think they could merge?

I think the decline in interest this year was simply due to the world cup. It just obviously overshadowed the NRC and there was so much rugby to watch. As someone else said I felt a bit of rugby fatigue at times watching the NRC. Next year that’ll be different.

If the other matches could be played through the red button on fox that would be great. The holy grail would be a game a week on FTA. If it’s possible for the Shute Shield then it should be possible for the NRC,,,and it’s not like Fox would lose anything at all by having 1 game on FTA. If anything it might benefit from it.

Ultimately I think 4 teams in NSW is spreading the talent too thin. I’d get rid of the Stars and have the Rams be the all of Sydney team (except the North Shore and Beaches). That would end the byes and it would be easier for the Waratahs and NSWRU to support 3 teams.

24 teams is a bridging number, but it’s the right way to go about it. The soccer world cup had 24 teams in 1986, 1990 and 1994. You just have 6 pools of 4 teams, with the 4 best 3rd place getters making it to a round of 16. It’s not perfect, but it’s fine. And actually in a lot of ways it works better than what we have now because it means teams won’t have unequal turnarounds between games. 32 teams will be the ultimate goal, but rugby is not ready for that.

If you cut the number of teams you would slow down the growth of rugby in emerging nations. The world cup is the big target and that goal needs to be attainable. The likes of Spain, Germany, Kenya, Chile etc will improve considerably if the tournament is expanded to 24 teams. They’re already not far away from the likes of Namibia and Uruguay.

Well all the codes have spent millions too. AFL and NRL have spent many millions more than rugby has. Where I’d disagree is that I don’t think our closed (or close enough) conference has to be purely domestic, I think it can and should be Trans-Tasman. Super Rugby matches featuring Australian teams vs Kiwi teams actually do as well and for some teams (like the Force and Rebels) better in terms of crowds than Australian teams playing each other. At a stretch you could include the Japanese team (or maybe 2 Asian teams by then) in our part of Super Rugby as well. Japan is in the same time zone so all matches would stay at a good time.

It’s a real pity for the Sunwolves that he isn’t going to play for them. He’s the most recognisable rugby player in Japan.

hog, rugby has never really competed with rugby league and aussie rules. They have had market dominance for a very long time – the money has just followed that more recently. Rugby is actually in a stronger position now than it’s ever been, with the exception of a 5 or so year period in the late 90’s/early 00’s.

If rugby had created a national club competition 20 years ago there may have been some chance of competing and becoming a big national sport. But even that’s very doubtful given historical factors. And there’s no way it could happen now. The salaries, crowds and tv ratings would all be too low and all the good players would leave. You might bring up the A League, but there are a lot more people with an interest in soccer in Australia than rugby – and still only a small % of those people regularly support the A League. That’s because it’s seen as an inferior competition.

A domestic only rugby comp, with say 10 or 12 teams would be about as big as the NBL. The only way it could do better is if someone very rich decided they wanted to give up tens of millions of dollars to the cause. Even then there’d be very little chance of challenging the NRL and AFL. It’s like trying to challenge Coke and Pepsi in the cola business. Rugby needs to have a different strategy to AFL and NRL.

Well the English Premiership now has over 70% english eligible players. The French league is the most international. That might not be the most beneficial thing for their national team but it’s helped make rugby a lot bigger in France and it won’t change any time soon.

So yes, it is about money. Players are professional and will go overseas if they can earn 2 or 3 times more than they can at home. With a domestic only league it might even be more than that. Everyone would go overseas and the ARU would have no choice but to completely remove any restrictions on Wallabies eligibility for overseas players.

So the domestic league would not contain world class players. At best the playing strength would be about the same as the existing NRC, and it might be lower because a lot of those fringe international players would move to where the money is. I can’t see a competition with lower level players ever getting close to competing with the other codes.

Honestly Sheek, the best thing that could happen would be for Super Rugby expansion to go amazingly well. Then within a decade or so there’d be separate conferences, perhaps even closed conferences in each of South Africa, South America, Asia and Oceania. Then we’d have our own Trans Tasman conference followed by a global playoff series featuring only the best teams from each conference. That solves a lot of problems in terms of structure and it would bring a lot more money into the game. That would allow us to eventually have more than 5 teams in Australia.

The problem Sheek, is that a national competition wouldn’t be able to compete with the salaries on offer from European rugby, Japan, or for that matter the NRL. So the best players would play elsewhere. People don’t show up in droves to watch lower quality competitions. I don’t think an APC/ARC that was effectively a feeder league to European rugby, featuring next to no Wallabies (or other internationals), would do any good for making rugby more popular in Australia.

It might have been possible 20 years ago, but I don’t see how it could work now. Give me the Waratahs vs Crusaders, featuring top players over West Sydney vs Newcastle any day of the week. I think the ARU has to focus on making super rugby better than it is. Australian rugby needs 6 successful, well supported and financially strong professional teams (including the Wallabies), and then it could consider expanding.

Rubbish. And the ball must simply not be passed forwards out of the hands. Momentum carrying the ball forward is irrelevant.

It’s due to their more conservative way of playing the game and I think that’s largely a result of when they play. The northern hemisphere play a lot of their season in the middle of a cold, wet winter and that suits a particular style of game. As a result they focus too much on power, defence and kicking over skill with the ball. But that’s not the only answer as the NZ winter is often not that much better!

How do you know? A couple of weeks ago you would have said the same thing about 20+ million Japanese watching a world cup pool match late at night. No one would have predicted that.. Australian Super Rugby games get about a 10th of the audience of a big Wallabies test match (home Bledisloe), and those are matches played in prime time. And if Super Rugby was simulcast on free to air (like test matches) it would be a higher % than that. Neither of us have any idea what support the Japanese team will get. I’m hoping it’s moderately successful to begin with, but the potential is huge. If even say half a million Japanese people start regularly following Super Rugby that will be a huge boon for SANZAR.

The fact they had 25 million people watch their game with Samoa and 20 million watch the game against Scotland. Japanese people obviously like to see their teams compete on the world stage! Super Rugby will get nothing near that, but even if it can convert a 10th of that audience it’ll be a bigger audience than any of the other super rugby teams. It’d be bigger than all the Australian and NZ teams audiences combined.

Why? France plus UK plus Ireland is not an unstoppable economic bloc. And they don’t seem serious about growing rugby in the rest of Europe.

Japan is the big potential growth market for Super Rugby. They just had 25 million people watch a pool match against Samoa. At midnight. If you combine all the markets of Super Rugby, and consider there’s only a max of 6 teams per market, it’s certainly not impossible to compete with Europe. But it is crucial that expansion goes reasonably well.

Basically to access these new markets. 25 million people watched the Japanese take on Samoa a few days ago. If Super Rugby can tap into even 10-20% of that then it’ll be huge. The more global the competition, the bigger the global broadcast and sponsorship deals will be. And the better off SANZAR will be.

There’s no easy way to up the revenue otherwise. South Africa is not a wealthy country and rugby is already quite popular, NZ is a small, already saturated market, while here in Australia rugby lives in the shadow of the NRL and AFL. The realistic growth potential is a lot smaller in these markets, and unlikely to keep pace with Europe.

BB, the reality is that Super Rugby has to expand further internationally to have any chance of survival. The days of South African teams playing 50% or more of your games against Australian and NZ teams is over, so get used to it. You shouldn’t be so dismissive of the Argentinian side either, they’ll basically be the national team and will be very strong competition.

There’s 2 possibilities – super rugby succeeds and competes commercially with European rugby, or it ends and we all have domestic competitions without any world class players that act as feeder leagues for Europe.

My hope is that Super Rugby succeeds and that we get to have world class domestic teams and players for decades to come.

But surely WR will see just how big the opportunity is now. They can incentivise the JRFU and other stakeholders to make significant improvements.

In the US Super Rugby might not be the best way to go about it, though it would help Australian rugby if they were part of it and it did okay there (simply because the broadcast deals are pooled and it’s a SANZAR owned competition).

And it might be an easier way to grow the game quickly at a commercial level than a brand new domestic league that would probably take decades to build up to scale. End game could be a separate American Super Rugby conference / championship, with the top teams then playing in a global playoff series with the best from other conferences / championships.

Rugby does have to play to its strengths, and one of its biggest strengths is the global nature of the game. In Australia it’d never get anywhere trying to replicate the NRL or AFL now, it’s simply too far behind. But it can leverage the growing international strength of the game to attract greater revenues. And that can then filter through both to the grassroots, and also to the players. And if Rugby ends up providing more professional opportunity for players, and higher paying opportunities for top players, then that would help it attract the best talent. And with Super Rugby we at least have a vehicle to keep world class players and teams on Australian soil.