I enjoy the irony of you and other Brumbies posters talking about how other fans view Carter through favourable lens while plenty outside of Canberra think this is the first year that Lolesio has looked like more than an afterthought of his halfback. You lot are just as bad as other fans.

You had Nic White and other senior Wallabies saying they couldn’t get their head around Jones’ gameplan but a first year 5/8 was meant to and be able to implement it at a WC? Very reasonable of you to hang any of them out to dry for that.

Carter showed that behind a pretty soft Rebels pack in 2023 that he could play a pretty good brand of footy and he deserved his shot. He should also be allowed some grace for this year given he found out before the season really started that his team was probably going to fold.

Lolesio deserves his shot this year but he’s still got plenty of holes in his game as the semi final showed. Hopefully he’s got a better Wallaby environment around him than Carter did.

If it gets down to where Newscorp suggested it would I think you’re already there.

It’s been reported that RA gave him a deadline. His priority was to be back in Qld if the Rebels tanked so he was closer to family. There was avenue to get him to the Reds but RA wasn’t too interested in that which is understandable but a bad call in my view. I think given the muck around he’s had its reasonable to want to be close to family. Time will tell whether he or RA made the right decisions.

I just saw some interesting comments from the new CEO on a podcast around RA and NZR relaxing eligibility restrictions for the top 15-20 of their players so they could play for any team in the comp. Will be interesting to see if he tries to get some of these ideas over the line and whether the unions will be receptive. Will say a lot if they aren’t.

I wonder if the revenue sharing model has changed since then as there was an article in the last week or so in the SMH where RA are projecting to make 100m in revenue just from the Lions. There will be serious egg on their face if it is less than even half of that which seems the more likely when you look at past revenue like you’ve noted.

The only way I see the loss of another Super team working in the favour of Aus rugby is if you take the “Brumbies” and Rebels and use them as the basis for that national club championship that sits under Super.

The local talent coming through Melbourne and Canberra is about equal to an NRC team but the brand recognition they come with as a former Super team should give enough weight to any match they play in that punters will get around it.

This was why one of my initial feelings when the potential loss of the Rebels was first raised was if we are going to lose one team, why not lose 3 and create an NRC with them that will be sticky with fans and won’t matter too much if the initial balance of teams is made up of existing clubs like Brothers or Eastern Suburbs. You can expand in population centres when once the competition is successful in its own right.

It would need to evolve quickly to a full season model instead of a truncated season so that these former Super teams have an opportunity to make real money and it would muck up the comps those other teams had come from but I think everyone could live with that if we ended up with a good national comp at a self sustaining wage base that was scalable.

I know most people justifiably think it’s gotta be one or the other with Super and a domestic comp but I think there might be a way to have both that will be attractive to a broadcaster.

I think it all depends on the break even for stadium use which as you say should be a lot lower with suburban grounds. Production quality doesn’t need to be that high but revenue/eyeballs have to cover the production costs as it would need to be a higher level production than what club footy gets at the moment otherwise you’re hurting the Super brand.

Like you I don’t understand the financials well enough but I guess my doubts around any development comp breaking even relate to the dialogue about the NPC being too much of a financial burden, despite how good a competition it is. The efficiencies you talk about with already contracted players and staff along with less teams makes sense in mitigating that.

I don’t see why a big competition break is too much of an issue, particularly around Christmas when everything shuts done in Aus. Rugby fans in other parts of the world are fine with smaller but similar breaks and their comps also don’t hugely suffer accommodating test matches.

I guess it comes down to whether you believe giving fans more meaningful games (that come at a greater cost) is worth the risk to try and achieve greater revenue alongside player development as opposed to what looks to be the safer option of what you’ve described.

I think this Super Rugby season has shown that Toole still gets found out defensively too much for test footy and probably needs another year of Super Rugby to improve that part of his game.

Flipside is there aren’t a whole lot of fit or available wingers playing better than him. I would get having Petaia, Nawaqanitawase and Koroibete ahead of him but they’re understandably out of the picture so wings look a bit skinny to mine.

If they play Daugunu out wide you’ve got him and Kellaway demanding selection (with Wright at fullback) but who else? Lancaster and Ryan are even rawer but maybe their defence is seen as more sound?

My overall preference would be extending Super Rugby so that you start the season in September/October (taking a competition break over December and January) so development players get good minutes while the international reps are away and teams with less international players have a bit of an advantage so might win a few more games.

It aligns with NH competitions so the World Club Championship is easier to fit in and gives us a bit of uncontested airtime after the NRL and AFL have finished their seasons.

The issue with any new development comp is cost/revenue so I think extending the main competition is at least some chance of making the games in that window profitable. As was discussed the other day there would need to be a big mentality shift across the ditch for that to ever eventuate.

What you’ve described is the minimum we should be doing to make our Super teams more competitive so you would think they’ve done the modelling and it doesn’t stack. You’d argue it make less financial sense in the long term not to do it…

Absolutely and of course the Newscorp article referencing the lower bid needs to be taken with a grain of salt given their previous track record with the code.

Another bidder would be wonderful but the lack of any news on that front worries me, even if some might say it’s early days. When RA started talking about Super teams having to live within their means going forward that seemed a real indicator to me that the next broadcast deal might be going backwards.

If viewer numbers were up then surely RA would be crowing about it if they had access to that information. Or does NZ have a more collaborative broadcast partner?

I think it’s more to the point that next year when the Crusaders are likely back on song (the roster is too good for them not to be) it might be tough going again for the Aus teams. Canes and Blues are first year coaches yeh so I doubt they’re going to go backwards. I also don’t think the Highlanders could play much worse than they did at times this year but improvement from them is not as obvious as the Saders.

Tahs will be in another rebuild. Force are still a year or two off their preferred roster and the Brumbies are losing a few key depth players and probably can’t afford to replace them with proven quantities like they have in the past.

Won’t surprise me if we go backwards on win ratio next year but equally there is a lot to be happy about with the way Aus has improved this year.

That’s the elephant in the room from an Aus perspective. We know Kiwi numbers are improving but we haven’t heard a single thing about Stan’s numbers on Super Rugby. Even if it’s been a drop off in Wallabies games that is the main catalyst for the potential drop in the broadcast deal you still end up with a shrinking pot to pay Super Rugby players…

Yes which is why I think it needs to include the Japanese teams as we need the initial bump in television revenue to keep the players here we need to be competitive. I think there would be real interest in Japan to see Panasonic or the like play the Blues in a meaningful competition as opposed to warm up matches. Could be wrong though.

If we believe that a primarily domestic comp will bring back disenfranchised fans or new ones, then those fans will watch those cup style games, be disappointed when we lose, but still have the feel good of potentially watching their team win a flag in the domestic comp which is apparently what is needed to make rugby here great again.

I’m not sold on that as opposed to persisting with Super as it is but I would prefer a champions cup style comp in place instead of adding the Sunwolves and Jaguares back into Super to try and get great revenue as I think they’ve got a hankering to do.

As to where it’s played and home town advantage. Do it like Super round and play one in Fiji, another in Japan, another in Aus and one in NZ. Someone will always be disadvantaged but make it a worthwhile travel destination or try and get that sevens energy so fans want to make a holiday of it.

Yep they’ve left space in the club calendar for it this year but nothing announced yet which tells me it probably won’t happen. Given the weight you give cohesion I imagine you feel similarly to me in that a short national club competition doesn’t really solve the issue for our Super teams of playing more meaningful games as a squad but it’s better than nothing.

Yes until we can afford more comprehensive academies/competitions along the European lines we won’t ever be utilising that system properly but it is a positive step in the direction and the older the age group the more you see the Super set up have influence over the age group e.g. Thrush at the Western Force for the 19’s. I think expanding it to under 23’s is a better step than a short national club comp tacked on after September for development outcomes unless the national club comp is a precursor to there one day being a full season national club comp.

Hard to know which way to go but I’d imagine Horne has a better idea than most.

If we packed up our bat and ball and went to a 8-10 team comp we would have to hope NZ went back to an expanded NPC if we wanted to have competitive cross Tasman engagement and I’m not sure why they would do that given how well 5 Super teams has worked for them in terms of preparing players for international duty.

I think the fairest and safest way to do a national comp that involves promoting existing Brisbane or Sydney clubs is to look at which of those clubs has the ability to develop a mixed use facility so these clubs have revenue outside of sponsorship/gate that can sustain them. It’s risky to promote them without that even with RA funding so works better as a tier 3 model for mine.

If RA got serious and helped facilitate development schemes and loans along those lines it’s a model that could be rolled out across the country and there are examples of those mixed use concepts generating rents/income north of $1m net a year. It would take a long time for development loans to be paid down but once they were you would have clubs all over the country that can afford their own development officers, academies and wages for players that allow them to live off it and a part time job or live off it fully while studying.

It looks to me like we’ve got nearly every piece of the pathway puzzle sorted now except for the 20-23 demographic which is what the NRC kinda was. National 16’s comp rolls into Qld/NSW 18’s followed by an Aus 18’s which rolls into national 19’s and then Aus 20’s. The 19’s has been really good lately in terms of spreading the talent around which we saw in the Brumbies 19’s getting up and those NSW players that came across to that team filtering into the Canberra comp.

I’ve said in the past that they should look at a Super Rugby Next or something similarly corny in the second half of the year which would be an under 23 comp. Run it at the same time as the under 19 comp but expand it to become full home and away fixtures.

Expensive but not as expensive as an NRC as I’m sure there are still plenty of aspirational players in the under 23 age group who won’t expect proper remuneration but rather another crack at getting a Super contract.

I think if Super Rugby changed to become a Champions Cup style comp then it should also be run like it where rounds are played throughout the season rather than all at the end and the final should also be played well before the final of the local comps. My concern if you go from a domestic final straight to international comp is that the domestic comp starts to look too much like a feeder comp. There’s also the issue around getting blown off the park because we aren’t ready for the intensity the Kiwis play at…

That style of Super should also include the Japanese teams so you can have the stronger teams in one comp and the weaker in the others which will give us more hotly contested games.

With this restructure you still don’t solve the need for Aus players getting higher level games in the international window but one step at a time I guess.

It’s nothing complicated, deals break down along these lines all the time. They don’t know who their preferred 10 is, money is tight at RA in this new era of austerity and when he didn’t want to go to the state they wanted him to, despite his willingness to find a workaround to get home, they tabled a final offer that didn’t do enough to satisfy that main desire or incentivise the deal enough for him waive it. He went with one that got him closer to home. RA wasn’t interested enough in trying to get him to the Reds on a long term deal which was his priority.

Yeh I read the rest of your comments on this after I replied unfortunately. Wouldn’t have bothered otherwise. No mate the opposite as I must have poorly intimated above. The mail I’ve got is RA stopped really engaging after he made it known he wanted to be back near family in Qld on a longer deal and there was room to negotiate elsewhere to achieve that. Creighton is going to Japan and JOC is on the way out so you could have had a good rotation at the Reds of Gordon, Lynagh and HMP. RA made a call not to pursue that avenue so he went to league. Fumble for mine.

It’s been reported elsewhere that RA gave him a deadline so that’s not on him. Having seen him today wearing full local club kit I think he’s still got plenty of love for the code. My understanding is there was an opportunity for RA to do a deal with him on pretty reasonable terms (with things that could have been negotiated outside money and location to get a result) and league wasn’t his preferred option at the start of negotiations. We’ll see if RA made the right call over the next couple of years.

Don’t get me wrong what you’ve suggested is a no brainer and is the bare minimum we should be doing right now due to how inexpensive it could be if played in smaller stadiums.

We don’t get enough mileage out of our Super staff and non international players given we are competing salary wise against other codes that have double the amount of games. It would add so much value to our Super squads.

It’s hard to say whether the increase in interest that they’re seeing in NZ is reflected here in Aus. Crowd numbers are marginally up but what about broadcast? Broadcast are the numbers that really matter with such a short season as I don’t think the small increase in crowds really change the financial stress the Aus teams are in but an increased broadcast deal in 2026 that is passed on by RA would be a lifesaver.

All good points.

I’m not completely sold that there is no future for Super as I think there is a more equal level of young talent coming through on either side of the Tasman than there has been for a decade or two. If the format changed to allow that talent to get more high level games then I think 4-5 years from now we would see a more equitable competition.

Can the competition wait that long and in this new era of financial sustainability, can we afford to retain and develop that talent? You can argue without a higher level third tier or extended Super without international players that the talent, while bridging the gap at 18-20 years of age, will continue to fall away in the crucial years after turning 20 as happens currently.

A shrinking broadcast deal would be another nail in the coffin. Anywhere near $20m a year and you’ve got to wonder whether they would be better served going down a YouTube path or something previously inconceivable like that. A Champions Cup with the Japanese teams is badly needed to get more broadcast revenue into the coffers but comprise would be needed to create space somewhere in the calender. Can that happen?

If a decision is ever made that Super isn’t going to work I hope we make a strategic retreat. The way I envisage that strategic retreat being appealing to broadcasters and not completely sacrificing high performance outcomes is keeping NSW and Qld in Super from 2026 while a LONG national comp starts which involves the Rebels, Brumbies and Force and either new teams or select existing clubs from NSW and Qld. Having three recognisable brands in the expansion Super clubs should give that comp credibility with fans. I can understand using existing clubs initially because there would be cost savings due to the already existing infrastructure and some of those clubs are financial enough to bear some of the load.

You can then make a more data driven decision in 2030 about which path to go down as if the national comp sees steady growth in crowds and ratings, you know to put your eggs in that basket and get rid of the Reds and Tahs from Super and pump those high performance players into the national comp. Reds and Tahs can go back to being representative teams that play each other a few times a year.

Or you can leave the Reds and Tahs in Super and they can go play in Tokyo, Argentina or wherever else they decide. The national comp can grow at a smaller scale/wage base which might one day allow financially feasible teams in places like Penrith, Gold Coast, Nth Qld, Adelaide etc. if you build it so that these teams can survive on crowds of 3,000-5,000. That seems achievable to me for a niche code in populated areas.

A property/facility play similar to what Wests have done in Brisbane but as a strategy driven by RA across the country would be the safest way to build a national comp. Issue there is the payoff wouldn’t come till development loans had been paid off in 15-20 years.

Here endeth the novel sorry…

100% on the second part, Blyth being in this wider squad is a real fly in the ointment if we get Canham and LSL as with Smith re-signing, Uru playing well and Riori coming through it looked like it would be Blyth and Daly bowing out once the squad and salary cap dispensations are done. There is going to be a handy second rower or two who gets moved on at the end of all this.

It’s both. We had Paisami and Gordon back at training last night but they are also given a Wallaby specific program to comply with. Some will be told to get minutes on Saturdays with their club others will be cotton woolled.