Really? OK. How about:

‘Australia was at its strongest when they had two or three teams’

and

‘Aussie rugby was at its most relevant when it had two or three teams’

I’ve picked apart (now on two occasions) the flaw in inferencing that the supposed connection within those statements provides a path forward for Australian rugby in 2024. Obviously you disagree, but it’s sounds logic that makes sense to more than a few people on here and beyond.

Nobodies saying more teams. Advocating for ‘two or three teams’ because Australian rugby was ‘relevant’ when we had that is like Blockbuster saying we should do away with Blu-ray DVD’s and go back to videos cause that’s when they were most relevant. The markets moved on and it’s simplistic to believe that just because something was successful before, it will provide the same outcomes over two decades later.

Sorry JD, I’ve had this debate with you on numerous occasions in the past and don’t have the interest to go into again and repeat the same arguments. You’re even repeating the same line in back to back comments that was adequately addressed the first time. By now I’m well aware of and respect your difference of opinion.

The ‘two-speed’ competition that we have is a problem that RA and NZR must confront if they are to maintain a relationship at this level (which I believe they should).

The easiest fix is basically operating as most professional leagues do around the globe and embed conditions that effectively remove any sort of restrictions on free player movement across the entities that occupy the competition. Imagine the imbalance in the NHL if the USA’s 25 teams and Canada’s 7 were restricted to talent produced purely within their borders.

I’ve heard and appreciate all the arguments that come from NZ as to why this isn’t desirable. I think the fact that it would probably result in an additional squads worth of NZ talent playing full time professional rugby in the same competition is a strong selling point when coupled with some ‘hand off’ clauses to remove the possibility of such policy laying the platform for it to become an RA poaching-ground.

Beyond that, I don’t think the hypothesis that SRP is working ‘just fine for NZ’ is accurate. It’s not in good health anywhere. It needs a shake-up to start drawing in much-needed interest and a competition that’s exciting and unpredictable is at the foundation of an engaging league that has fans invested. Such conditions are as much a win for NZ as they are for Australia.

It’s not about having the most number of clubs. It’s about having a number of clubs that is able to effectively compete in the market to ensure the game remains relevant.

The game was emerging from the shackles of amateurism in the era that you’re talking about the competition (NRL/AFL) had broadcast deals and salary caps that were a fraction of what they are today. You simply cannot transplant that structure on today’s conditions and expect the same outcome.

Competitiveness on the international stage is part of the puzzle, no doubt. But again, that comes from a deeper player pool and (crucially) more elite talent choosing rugby. Shrinking the footprint only achieves a quick bounce in comparative success against NZ Super sides and it’s actually counterproductive in tackling the real work that’s required to push the game ahead on our local landscape.

League and AFL have zero reliance on anything beyond our borders and their strength has nothing to do with the fact that they’re (technically speaking) the pinnacle of their sports around the world. It’s completely irrelevant. They have next to no and no international presence respectively and having the world’s best competitions in those sports isn’t some sort of leverage point for selling those leagues domestically.

The product is the key issue. Go to 3 teams as inferred and watch the game slip even further from the public consciousness. That’s another sugar hit strategy that manufactures competitiveness against NZ teams (still not a bad thing) but the product remains irrelevant on a landscape that is dominated by two giants throughout winter. The game will continue to slide and it will only be a matter of time before the conversation becomes about going from 3 to 2 teams.

It’s no mistake that Gould and Bennett were at the helm of clubs that represent two large footprints that live and breathe Rugby League in Western Sydney and Brisbane respectively. Rugby’s main issue is that nobody’s captivated by it and that’s basically been the landscape in Australia for the entire lives of those kids that are starting to enter the elite pathway today. It’s the game of choice for too few and the country’s (or eastern seaboards) best athletic talent either didn’t play it growing up or has other more enticing options to explore.

Rugby in this country has spent two decades peddling a product that’s failed to effectively captivate audiences (including the next generation). The result of that mismanagement is our reality.

Strange for a guy that seemed to enjoy having a few job at once…

Apparently when he pulled out the ukelele he got the; ‘don’t call us, we’ll call you’

I heard the foundations for this were put in place by ScoMo during a certain infamous trip to the Aloha State. Shame on the Australian public for thinking he was on holiday.

Personally I’d rather see them on the mainland. May be Atlanta to be the Dirrty South Reds.

PNG Bears and the Jakarta Jets will give us a northern roof of NRL teams between us and Xi Jinping! May be Albo could get on the offensive and rebirth failed Gold Coast clubs inside China. Shanghai Seagulls anyone…

The comment takes nothing away from the basket case that was the previous administration. Not letting them off the hook at all and as bad as the cluster was that they left behind, Phil and co. have had an opportunity to show some leadership but have left most of us screaming ‘dig up’ at our computer screens.

What an absolute train wreck. RA’s treatment of this gives me about as much faith in the leadership as I had after the World Cup.

I think it’s too hard to hold Brady and Mahomes up to each other at this stage. One’s retired and ones probably not even at the midway point of his career. Brady’s achieved more in his career (for obvious reasons) and I think what put the exclamation mark on it was a Super Bowl win outside the Patriots system (which was aided by some excellent roster management to open up a small championship window). On that, I think Brady has benefited in comparison to Mahomes from playing in some incredibly talented teams. Of course there’s no shortage of talent in this Chiefs team (including one of the greatest TE’s of all time), but those stacked Patriots sides may have given Brady more help than Mahomes has had who has just gone back to back without having Tyreek down field.

This is serious nit-picking but I feel like Mahomes can become slightly frazzled in decision-making and lose a few inches of accuracy in comparison to Brady. I know his receivers let him down quite a bit this year but they weren’t all dimes he was throwing out. If that’s a minor deficiency compared to Brady, he more than makes up for it with his running game which adds a whole dimension to his game that Brady never had.

The one certainty for mine is that Mahomes is ahead of Brady at this stage of his career and his trajectory has him finishing at a higher point which is mind blowing.

Yea the Chiefs blitz lead by Jones was immense. While the 9’ers seemed to be in the box seat for much of the first half and the Chiefs were making some errors (not exactly uncharacteristic for them for much of this year), they still seemed to go with them when it counted. The one time I thought the Chiefs might drop off was at the start of the second half when Mahomes lateral to Pacheco went pear-shaped before he followed it up with a pick a few plays later. But the KC D hanging tough for those next few 9’ers drives were season defining.

There’s only been 1 MVP given to a player on a losing side (V). That said, I agree that CMC was the standout and if they were ever going to do it again, I think it could be justified for an OT Super Bowl. Given that reality (MVP’s are basically reserved for players on winning teams), I think it went to the right Chiefs player. While there was a bit of the clunkyness that plagued him and the Chiefs for a good chunk of the regular season, he was good when he needed to be (kinda sums up the Chiefs season). 333 passing yards and 66 rushing yards is a pretty solid shift.

Cheers John. I think a concern with our current crop of veterans is that they’re not world-beaters like most of the AB’s and Boks guys that hang on well into their 30’s. The Pocock/Genia/Horwill generation (I chose to leave QC out of it), was the last group we had genuine World XV-calibre players and wins over the AB’s weren’t almost unheard of. Hooper’s a loss and Slipper has been a trojan, but the current experienced crop aren’t experienced at being anywhere near the world’s best and I’m concerned that there’s a bit of a vacuum there. But granted, a contingent of the older guys in each team across SRP is useful. I also do think there is a good crop of solid, young Super Rugby standard players in Australia and I hope a good group emerge to become solid test quality players.

The A program is a handy band-aid for the current landscape but I think a better structure renders the need for it null and void. I’d rather focus our energy and funds (if there is such a thing) on getting those structures right but support it being there in the absence of platforms that produce Super and Test calibre players.

I agree we she have taken some more experience to the world cup. But while the Springboks won the thing with their dinosaurs, ours might have been able to just get us out of the group stage.

Hi John, thanks for the analysis. Very interesting and I more-or-less agree with your assessment regarding depth. A couple of things though:
– That list suggests to me that we have depth to be competitive and if we can hold onto the majority of our players, we can fill 5 teams worth of Super Rugby talent to produce (roughly) 2 title contenders, 2 middle of the roaders and a battler which is what we should be aiming for.
– That list suggests that we should be entrenched in the top 6 but I don’t think it screams consistently top 2 or 3 in the world.
– I appreciate there are some young up-and-comers to be excited about that don’t make the list, but there’s a lot of dinosaurs on there that have probably moved passed their best years and aren’t far from hanging up the boots. I’m a little bit concerned that what’s coming through isn’t going to move us ahead which is a result of the lack of interest that the game has suffered from for a protracted period of time (while other domestic codes dominate the landscape).
– Circling back to point 1 and if we can produce that balance as opposed to what we currently have (1 title contender, 2 middle roaders and 2 battlers) and engage in an exciting and competitive competition with NZ, that should start to bring interest back to the game and give the production line a nice nudge in the process.

Ok,

1- Are you truly suggesting that PNG’s following of rugby league isn’t being parlayed into positioning ‘community support’ for an expansion club in the country as a strength of the bid? Minister for the Pacific Pat Conroy said the following ‘Papuneans are mad about rugby league and having a Papunean team in the NRL would be really good and Australia is supporting and partnering with us to realise those aspirations.’ Quotes along these lines have been a dime a dozen from the Feds in their support of this. Heck, the whole ploy of using PNG18 as a Pacific diplomacy strategy involves positioning our government and relationship with PNG favourably in the eyes of their government and people. As such, you would hope the play would have overwhelming public support there and I’m simply putting forward my opinion on this here opinion site (shock, horror) that it doesn’t.

2- I’ve outlined the hyperbolic nature of what you’re quoting back to me there which was somewhat in the spirit of what it was in response to. I’m sorry you missed it the first time. How about you leave it?

3- Yes, it’s not policy. Ok, it’s not a commitment at this stage. But what exactly do you suggest reports of a ‘$600m commitment over 10 years’ are? Figures plucked from thin air that should never be uttered in the public discourse? Like the entire bid itself, in no way do I think it’s a lock-in (which ironically is one of the issues with a bid relying heavily on government funding which I believe the PNG one will), but again, those reports coincided with noise and interest around PNG coming out of hq which suggests PVL and crew are excited about something. I haven’t ‘made up’ anything, it’s been widely reported that’s what the Feds are coming to the party with and while the exact detail is still unknown, I don’t think it’s unrealistic to expect an announcement that puts it somewhere in the ballpark of reports (which isn’t unusual in these situations). Furthermore, having an opinion on what’s being reported (while that still may be unconfirmed) isn’t a crime and I’m certainly not the only person here or in the wider world (rugby league and beyond) that’s been critical of the sort of tax payer investment that’s been suggested. BTW, this wouldn’t be the first time a premature policy has been put into the light of day to be run through the ‘pub test’- it’s kind of what they’re useful for.

Sure. You did ask where the figure came from- the $60m/year for 10 that’s been widely reported is where it came from and it seems the onset of those reports is when hq’s interest in PNG peaked. If it piddles down to be considerably less than that, I can’t even see a loose unit like PVL getting behind it.

Albanese’s putting up $60m a year for 10 years- a $600m commitment.

‘Australia broken’ is a bit different to ‘PNG broken’

Said with tongue firmly planted in cheek Redcap. That said, while it’s a small(ish) investment in the scheme of things ($60m of a $1.9B annual budget for Pacific aid), committing $600 million of taxpayer monies isn’t something not to be sneezed at. It’s enough to be scrutinized by the pub test and there’s an argument that money could be better spent in the form of a more impactful diplomatic initiative (or somewhere else all together).

Well someone’s convinced it’ll be what’s standing between us and the national expansion of Australia’s Chinatowns…

9 days of riots, looting and property destruction resulting in at least 22 dead. As gross and misguided as Cronulla was, this kinda makes it look like a prayer circle.