• Welcome to the Green and Gold Rugby forums. As you can see we've upgraded the forums to new software. Your old logon details should work, just click the 'Login' button in the top right.

Australian Rugby / RA

Derpus

George Gregan (70)
https://www.smh.com.au/sport/rugby-...les-while-the-code-burns-20200604-p54zdv.html

Is it just me, or does Roy Masters sound reasonably jubilant as he writes this article? Seems more a statement of what has happened, rather than "opinion" though.

He also, as usual, poses no useful suggestions or solutions. Thank fuck journalism won't be a thing for much longer so we don't have to pretend these morons opinion are somehow more relevant or informed than anyone elses.
 

Rebels3

Jim Lenehan (48)
One Australian franchise? I thinks that’s a tad ambitious, even for the kiwis
It’s obviously a load of crap. Prob heard it in a tweet once and that was good enough for him. At an absolute minimum they would want QLD and NSW
 

Slim 293

Stirling Mortlock (74)
I have a friend who works at the AFL who has been told they will be cutting at least 25% of their current staff.

This isn't so much a 'rugby in turmoil' story as a 'sport in turmoil' story. Cricket Australia is doing the same.

I feel for all of the people involved.


I’ve also just heard that quite a number of people from channel 7’s sport department have been let go, and some AFL programs won’t be returning.......... there’s just no money for it.
 

ForceFan

Chilla Wilson (44)
It’s obviously a load of crap. Prob heard it in a tweet once and that was good enough for him. At an absolute minimum they would want QLD and NSW

It depends upon the target audience/fan base/longer term objectives.

Lower the sights, aim for success, focus on timezone, reduce the amount/cost of travel, don't try and fix everybody's problems, slow and steady growth from the grass roots, seek more corporate sponsorship, competition managed by professionals not amateurs, ensure that media coverage is readily accessible and affordable.
 

Slim 293

Stirling Mortlock (74)
Even a broken/stopped clock shows the correct time twice per day.


Not ol' Roy.........

tumblr_p4qhyturtU1s46p8ao1_640.gifv
 

John S

Desmond Connor (43)
He's been writing anti-rugby articles (as opposed to articles providing appropriate criticism) for thirty years.

I know that - I've been reading the Moaning Herald for at least that long. This just seems to be more smug/gloating than usual
 

Derpus

George Gregan (70)
Seems the media beat up has already started on Rennie and he hasn't even started yet. I give it a couple of months before he's hounded out.
 

RedsHappy

Tony Shaw (54)
I’ve also just heard that quite a number of people from channel 7’s sport department have been let go, and some AFL programs won’t be returning.... there’s just no money for it.

The song remains the same: they all got fat big time on multi-year sports media deals (all with zero performance KPIs) and, related, live sports production budgets within the FTA and Pay TV businesses.

The flow-to-sports TV $ were all bid up relentlessly as terrestrial and Pay TV realised they were all sinking in a war with the streamers and thus live sports and reality TV were perceived as the best lines of defence.

COVID-19 has been the shock they all needed to have economically speaking and they all woke up realising: "fuck, we are massively over-staffed and now we have a good excuse to cull back to a more sustainable level of money overhead". COVID-19 just advanced the inevitable day of reckoning as to what had gone on before it.
 

RedsHappy

Tony Shaw (54)
We can hope that pissing here on the Roy Masters and others like him is balm to our own wounded prides as rugby heads ever downward here sadly, but the fact remains his central points were entirely justified and accurate.

The ARU/RA executives and directors he named were all guilty - both at the time and in hindsight today - of massive complacency and strategic indolence.
 

Derpus

George Gregan (70)
We can hope that pissing here on the Roy Masters and others like him is balm to our own wounded prides as rugby heads ever downward here sadly, but the fact remains his central points were entirely justified and accurate.

The ARU/RA executives and directors he named were all guilty - both at the time and in hindsight today - of massive complacency and strategic indolence.
We all know this and agree with. What exactly is achieved by constantly banging on about it without making any positive suggestions?

Nothing, in my opinion.
 

John S

Desmond Connor (43)
Seems the media beat up has already started on Rennie and he hasn't even started yet. I give it a couple of months before he's hounded out.

Well, my old man started that months ago (on top of other things) I quote "good that Raelene Castle's gone, what was she doing hiring a Kiwi coach, it should be an Australian, Kiwi coaches never do any good in Australia........" not verbatim, but close enough before mum interjected to say to either enjoy the game or don't.
 

RedsHappy

Tony Shaw (54)
We all know this and agree with. What exactly is achieved by constantly banging on about it without making any positive suggestions?

Nothing, in my opinion.

One achievement: as spewing justified acid at the very complacency, unjustified arrogance and indolence that still exists today in the halls of RA and most of the local RUs. Right.In.Our.Faces.

Can't you see how little has really changed, even today, when we're at fucking death's door? Who exactly in positions of rugby power today is articulating the 'positive suggestions' you want? And where are yours, btw, as you seem to spit and crackle at some of us here.

Has one innovative, radical new change suggestion yet come out of any of the mouths of RA and the local RUs? Just one? Well maybe McLennan's super-hazy SOI idea, maybe that's one. Maybe the possibility - long overdue - of some rule tweaks for 2020 Super Rugby (such as it is). These will fix nothing central and core to our problems though.

Years back (just a few actually) when all that was wrong in these hallowed bodies was sort of cunningly hidden from view and the status-quo-forgiving-and-adoring mainstream rugby media and many, many posters here howled down voices that saw the appalling management and sick cultures in neon lights, then no one spoke out.

Pissing on 'loig' and 'the mungos' was the order of the day then, any critics were 'just negative', yes - that stream of always condescending stuff from most rugby followers, we always sort of knew best vs everybody else and would stay in our lofty towers as an 'elite' code that would surely never risk decline, let alone death. There's plenty of that tone still evident here, remarkably.

No Aust rugby change agent is ever good enough in many of the comments still alive today, remarkably. We approve of: none of them it seems.

We _might_ need some change, but, nonetheless, we want the ideal, elegant, approved change agent to appear that is just hygienically perfect in our respectful opinions for the very gentlemanly job at hand. No, we don't like the 10 Captains, we don't like A Jones, we don't approve of NFJ, we don't like Peter Wiggs, we don't like Papworth, we don't like News Corp. When will Jesus Christ himself return for the job?

Well, FFS, who exactly DO we like to get the change processes going? Do we think it will arrive via some kind of idealised auto-pilot process?

Speaking out strongly in protest and bringing attention to crass and disastrous incompetence does not always require an addendum of beautifully articulated solutions to still be of change-enabling value. Often the anger and real tough observations and truth-telling has to come first and in super load mode to hope to trigger some real change awareness and urgency, and then, when the conditions finally arrive to allow some genuine change, solutions will then start to gestate and hopefully bear fruit.
 
Top