Spot on. All this nonsense about a “second chance” is a bad joke that the people in his extremist camp bizarrely assume we’ll swallow – as if we haven’t witnessed him stuff up two chances already. RA explicitly gave him a second chance and made their expectations very clear. Folau not only showed them zero respect by posting his nonsense, he clearly betrayed their trust.

I take your point, but to me this seems more of a symptom of the problem with Super Rugby than anything else. It ensures that this value is very asymmetrical.

Fox may get that there’s value in exclusivity, but it’s the sort of exclusivity they had with the EPL; a nice to have product that a small group of its subscribers like, but not a strategic asset that its business needs and therefore should worry about getting wrapped up in a bidding war over.

That basically means that RA need to make their money on the European TV market, like they did last time by relying on SA. Doing that gave them a sugar hit last time, but they longer they fail to address the problem with Super Rugby as a whole they longer they maintain a structural deficiency that has seen awareness and interest in Super Rugby among the general public wane into obscurity.

Optus getting the SR rights obviously doesn’t fix that either. But at least if Optus were to get the rights, it might lead to fresh eyes on the product and its promotion rather than Fox’s practice of more or less pretending the sport doesn’t exist. Optus might even be a catalyst for pushing RA to look more to Asia – who knows.

I fundamentally disagree with the idea that Rugby and Fox are reliant on each other. That was true 20 years ago, but not today. Fox created Kayo precisely because they can see the writing on the wall for cable TV, and frankly Rugby has spent the majority of the past decade being marginalised into obscurity on Fox. Their sport channels have dedicated NRL and AFL Channels, and Cricket through the summer, but to catch rugby you have to play fox sports bingo to workout where your match will appear any particular week.
As I’ve stated earlier, to me this reflects that Rugby doesn’t really benefit a great deal from being on Fox nowadays and that frankly it is arguably now a detriment to the growth potential of the code without a radically restructured super rugby tournament and connected rights deal that includes a suite of viewing options for fans.
In that sense I’m far less worried about a group like Optus getting the rights now, just so long as RA are smart enough to ensure it includes diversified viewing options and don’t make the same mistake of going all in with one provider like the did in 96.

I actually don’t think RA have much to risk by seeking an alternative provider. I’ve been looking at Super Rugby ratings and following the TV contracts for a while, and super rugby ratings have been in terminal decline for over a decade now. I’d wager that neither party are terribly reliant on each other anymore, so the smart money ought to be on pushing for a group like Optus or other streaming platforms

That’s correct. It was a direct result of a bidding war in Europe between Beinsports and SkyUk from memory. Locally, the story was rather less impressive, with Fox offering the exact dollar amount it gave for the deal prior. So with inflation taken into account they effectively offered LESS.

You raise some fair points LED. Ironically, I’ve long viewed Foxtel’s stranglehold on Super Rugby and non wallaby tests as the greatest infection that has eaten away at rugby since it went professional.

That’s not to say it was always a problem though. It made sense in the early years when Rugby League was still a mess thanks to the Super League war with lots of disillusioned fans willing to give Union a go and the AFL little more than a niche interloper in Sydney and Brisbane.

However, it no longer provides any growth potential in the current environment in which Super Rugby and the Wallabies must compete with diversified FTA, cable and streaming options for the NRL and AFL 4 days a week that come both via their own apps and providers like Fox. For Super Rugby, a competition that is on a couple days a week for all intents and purposes thanks to the South African Timezone sucking up a lot of content, there is no analogous portfolio of media. They have Fox and the Foxtel app. That’s it. Does it remotely look like RA has a digital strategy? It doesn’t seem like there’s much there.

Add to that the the strength of its competitors and you have a recipe for decline. The AFL has positioned itself as the private school upper middle class game in Sydney and Brisbane with a massive funding drive that has driven considerable success. Meanwhile, the NRL has massively regrouped in its heartlands with strong offerings across club and rep football (the success of their last World Cup – in the modest Australian context – and rise of the PI tests being a surprise to many).

It begs the question to my mind of not just where RA shops Super Rugby to ensure it can remain economically viable, but whether it makes any kind of sense to remain in the competition at all. Perhaps we should be looking at a Pacific option that incorporates Japan. It would add complexity, but the time zones would be much more attractive to broadcasters and it would add a compelling dimension to rugby for us to partner with such an important Asian neighbour.

This. The ludicrous notion that the new golden age of Australian Rugby is just a new CEO or Wallabies away has been one of the game’s most persistent problems for years now. We’ve churned through numerous execs and coaches and yet the decline has continued. This idea that putting up Castle as a yet another sacrificial scapegoat is going to solve our problems is misguided at best and duplicitous at worst

Joe, you ought to read Wayne Smith’s article in the Australian yesterday. You might learn something from his fair and sober analysis of the situation.

Just go away now please Izzy. I suspect you’ll soon be bled dry by your father’s attempts to expand his particular cult and I look forward to when you’re entirely forgotten.

Tell that to the Melbourne Storm. After the Broncos they have one of the strongest and most wealthiest brands in the NRL.

Enoughisenough, if your honestly making the claim here that quantities of a compound relative to total mass is clear evidence of there being no efficacy on the overall system, I can only assume your background in areas like chemistry or physics is virtually non existent.

For instance, when it comes to toxicity of substances to the human body often tiny amounts can be dangerous. For lead, as little as 5 micrograms per decilitre are associated with compromised health in children. That’s a staggeringly small amount, but using your logic perhaps you would consider the risk to be acceptable and wouldn’t worry if your children were exposed to lead in even higher levels because you seem to think compounds and elements can only have effects on systems in large quantities.

Your misunderstanding here seems to be driven by your reliance on intuitive logic over hard science. For instance, intuitive logic told ancient man that the sun revolves around the earth, whereas hard science demonstrated it was the other way around. The point is, intuitive logic may feel like common sense, but when it comes to highly complex matters it is very often the enemy of reason.

You would be more likely to have a rational discussion with Folau as to whether God even exists than you would with the average climate change supporter about whether stopping coal exports would actually help in global terms.

I suspect you’ve never spoken to a religious fundamentalist if that’s what you’re claiming. There’s a reason that atheists hide in ultra conservative religious countries; announcing their disbelief publicly invites not just violence, but even the death penalty in some places. Folau is of that ilk; he’s not quite that extreme to advocate the death penalty for apostates and atheists, but he’s certainly on the same spectrum as they are and his form of late suggests he’d be happy with laws against disbelief if he had the power to enforce them.

Stillmissit: the problem with your argument is that the evidence for climate change is much like the evidence for evolution in that it doesn’t rely on one or two data sets, but rather a tapestry of overlapping data from a myriad of sources. This technique you’ve employed of trying to single out one or two pieces with issues is a classic example of what is known commonly as “whataboutism”. Indeed, you’ve used the Folau saga here precisely so you can make this attack on climate science.

However, the fundamental issue at hand with your conspiracy theory is that it appears to be predicated on an assumption that scientists around the world have conspired to either hide of “lose” data that doesn’t help their case. This is a false narrative that his been widely dismissed by most rational people for two reasons: 1. at the heart of the scientific method is falsifiability and replication, both of which create an incentive structure for work to be challenged and disproven, and 2. The need for mass coordination on a global scale to pull off this trick would have needed to be intentionally designed to attack and undermine the wealthiest and most well resourced global corporations and government state owned resource bodies on the planet.

It’s classic ocam’s razor stuff; at its core what you’re suggesting is that a bunch of broke university professors decided they’d take on the economic interests of groups like Exon Mobile and Aramco. Given the latter’s attachment to a state with a proclivity for disappearing journalists they disagree with via bone saw, it’s just one of those things that immediately sounds not only ridiculous, but actually like intentional disinformation in the same category as the FSB campaign to make Americans believe that it was actually Ukraine that meddled in the 2016 US election.

This is what’s know as a “long bow”. In essence you and Stillmissit are trying to use the Folau controversy as a vehicle to make a blanket criticism of advocacy for action on climate change by lumping the entire movement in with groups like extinction rebellion.

It’s a classic straw man argument and frankly the analogy isn’t remotely relevant, appropriate or accurate. In fact the only common factor they share is their call for action in this one narrow instance includes natural disasters. That’s really where it ends though.

Extinction rebellion is certainly an extreme movement, but at its core it doesn’t have any prejudice against a particular group of people based on their immutable characteristics like Folau’s brand of Christianity does. Like I’ve written below, you can argue that their policy prescriptions are unrealistic or even just unhelpful, but the thing they’re panicking about is well supported by science – it’s just that they’re all focusing on a worst case scenario in which the planet ends up like Venus (which is generally considered highly unlikely by most scientists – even if it hasn’t been categorically ruled out).

This is frankly a bizarre line to draw… as TWAS points out, the “climate change brigade” are advocating policy changes based on masses of data about the effect of green house gasses over the past 100+ years. It is beyond ridiculous to put such evidence based policy suggestions in the same category as claims that people who are naturally inclined to be attracted to the same sex are such great examples of sin that a Christian god would intervene with natural disasters. You can argue that the policies aren’t fit for purpose or there are better solutions, but the evidence is far from baseless and the problem is absolutely NOT imaginary.

Oh well that sure cleared things up. To recap, Izzy’s definition of love is basically advocating people repress their sexuality if it doesn’t fit his narrow reading of the bible and if they don’t god will express his love by going all pyro on us. Thanks Izzy, that was very helpful. Got any other pearls of wisdom you care to share?

This absolutely needs to happen. The mixed time zones of Super Rugby have in my view been the most lethal force for the code in Australia. I think RA should be enthusiastically engaging with the Japanese and Pacific – if the Kiwis could be on board then it’d be perfect

Interesting read Brett. Having watched the dreadful decline in SR ratings over the past decade, I’ve been wondering what the next TV rights deal would look like.

From a purely structural standpoint, I’ve long felt that Super Rugby is a terrible model for RA to grow it’s base in Australia. Sure, it gives you the European time slot and that bolstered the total rights package last time around, but domestically it ensures Rugby gets 2 days of prime time content a week, whereas the NRL and AFL get 4 days and they’ve got a lot of that on FTA, which has a tonne more reach than Foxtel.

This wasn’t such an issue in the early ‘00s when AFL was still carving its niche in Brisbane and Sydney and the NRL was still in post super league war recovery, but as those two big codes have consolidated and the Wallabies have become also-rans, the limitations of the model have become all too apparent.

If I were RA, I’d be inclined to take the punt with Optus. Their viewing numbers of Foxtel have been utterly abysmal hovering in the 40-50k range anyway, so the argument regarding market reach doesn’t really wash in my view. Indeed, if the numbers demonstrate anything, it’s that most of foxtel’s sports subscriptions are driven by the NRL, followed closely by the AFL. By comparison to their numbers, the average Australian Super rugby match is negligible at best and indicate that fox may not even see much churn if they lose the rights at this point.

With all that said, if RA tie up a good deal with Optus, they ought to use the cash to start bedding down FTA partners and try to work out ways to tie the NRC into the SR content to raise its profile.

A lot of people are commenting on the perceived risk of signing Rennie to a 4 year contract (well, 3.5 really).

I think it’s worth pointing out that there are almost certainly performance criteria within that, so it’s not quite as locked up as people think. Furthermore, there’s a secondary aspect to it as well – if Rennie is successful, it actually insulates RA from some risk, as it’s not entirely inconceivable that we could be outbid by another rugby country in 2 years from now should his results be brilliant and another country has gone pearshaped.

The world works in WC cycles, and whilst it’s not ideal, RA doesn’t want to be needlessly scrambling for a new coach 2 years down the track.

Very positive development. I know a lot of people were pining for Eddie, but my sense is he may not have been the best fit for where Australian rugby is right now anyway. Rennie has a reputation as someone who can collaborate and unite, which is something sorely needed in Australian Rugby right now.

It’s Folau. Folau is more unhinged.

To call what has happened to Izzy totalitarian is quite frankly a hysterical and irrational response. Izzy wasn’t sent to a labour camp, thrown in jail or even fined.

He just lost his job because he breached company policy and brought his employer into disrepute. This happens literally all the time. Just like Scott McIntyre was when SBS sacked him for criticising the ANZACs and Michaela Banerji was when the government sacked her for anonymously criticising government border policy at Border Projection.

Fundamentally, the world people such as yourself seem to be advocating is one where people are free of personal responsibility for the impact of their speech. Sure, the government shouldn’t be interfering (and at no point have they – hence the totalitarian argument being so ludicrous), but that doesn’t mean a private company needs to endure harm by continuing to associate itself with such polarizing speech.

The question I have for people such as yourself, is at what point would you as an employer feel your rights were being impinged for having to continue to pay a salary to an employee under some over-reaching for of a right to freedom of speech (which we actually don’t have here in Australia)?

For instance, how would feel if the government used such a law to compel you to keep paying the salary of an employee that was using the platform your company had given them to spout messages about white supremacy or unsavoury views about children and marriage that some religions still hold?

That could be fairly described as a breach of your rights to free speech, as effectively you would not be free to express your company’s position by no longer supporting such views.

Who said he’s lost his livelihood? He’s still allowed to go out and get work with likeminded organizations. He just doesn’t have a right to stay with organizations that don’t share his vitriolic intolerance.

What about this is so hard to understand for people? We saw a senior public servant lose a high court challenge over wrongful dismissal regarding a twitter post critical of government policy – and it was from an anonymous account. There was no outrage about that, so why is Folau so special?

You raise some very fair points – indeed I’ve made similar ones lately – but I also think that the idea that “we are interested in his views about why God sets fire to things because he is super good at footy” isn’t actually quite accurate.

It’s fundamentally correct, but in reality it goes beyond footy. Which is to say the reason we pay attention to Folau is purely because he has a high public profile. The fact that he got that profile playing footy is almost irrelevant. After all, we live in a society where we also manage to get worked up over the views of people that have appeared on reality TV shows – a group of people that have public profiles purely because TV gave them a public profile because they thought their cocktail personality disorders make good viewing.

Ultimately, people like Folau that have big public profiles are just operating with louder megaphones than the rest of us. It’s frustrating, but it’s hard to tell people to tune it out when they’ve become so accustomed to thinking of this sort of stuff as “news”.

Soviet Union? 😂 mate you need to take a deep breath. Was Folau sent to a labour camp, thrown in jail, fined or even just lost a couple points on his license? No? Oh, so it’s not like the Soviet Union in anyway then I guess…

Folau has shown that he’s quite free to make a fool of himself. What people like you have so much trouble grasping is that this doesn’t mean the rest of us have to sit quietly whilst he spews his vile nonsense.