Where to for Super Rugby?

[Quick Hands]

If you hadn't noticed we already have wet feet, could be drowning

 

[Quick Hands]

Not opposed to this in concept, but QH does make a good point re the Qld and NSW sides. To have some tribalism they need to have some geographic identity - so Qld city would be the Brisbane Reds, and the other team needs to be Sunshine Coast, or Darling Downs or whatever is deemed most appropriate. Similarly NSW city would be the Sydney Waratahs and the other team Western Sydney, Newcastle, Central Coast or whatever. However, I do think all the country zones should be affiliated with these second teams.

In terms of the NSW teams I like you idea of affiliation with and interaction between country zones.

Manly-Warringah-North could extend up the coastal strip north play a home game at Newcastle and/or Central Coast (Brookvale Oval is about to get a slice of the money not being spent on Homebush and will be a state of the art 25,000 seat ground with a centre of excellence attached)

Parramatta-Eastwood could broadly extend north-west towards New England etc play a home game at one

Sydney could broadly extend west towards Bathurst, Dubbo etc plus Illawarra and Cambelltown - play a home game in the regions

I'm proceeding on the basis that the SW of the state stays with ACT

 

[Quick Hands]

I don't see how an Australia only comp will ever be viable - unless the NRL goes bust or some billionaire decides to throw a shitload of cash at founding a comp that would be very high risk at best.

Depends what you mean by 'viable'. If you mean that wages will be paid at the current level then nothing is viable. At best broadcast rights will be between 25-50% of the current level even if the current Super Rugby concept continues. That hammer is going to fall on the middle level no matter what form it takes.

Shrinking to 3 Super Rugby teams - which is the NZ preference for TT just continues to shrink the pie. RA needs Twiggy's money, but NZ don't want the Force in TT as it is 4 time zones behind. This is one of the reasons the ARU chopped the Force as it suited NZ.

Once we go back to NSW, QLD and ACT, what then? How is that financially viable when NZ have already said that pooling broadcast money and dividing equally is off the table. If they provide more teams and more games and their broadcast deal is worth more (which it undoubtedly will be), we still won't get enough to pay these guys anything close to what they've been getting.

 

[Dan54]

Depends what you mean by 'viable'. If you mean that wages will be paid at the current level then nothing is viable. At best broadcast rights will be between 25-50% of the current level even if the current Super Rugby concept continues. That hammer is going to fall on the middle level no matter what form it takes.

Shrinking to 3 Super Rugby teams - which is the NZ preference for TT just continues to shrink the pie. RA needs Twiggy's money, but NZ don't want the Force in TT as it is 4 time zones behind. This is one of the reasons the ARU chopped the Force as it suited NZ.

Once we go back to NSW, QLD and ACT, what then? How is that financially viable when NZ have already said that pooling broadcast money and dividing equally is off the table. If they provide more teams and more games and their broadcast deal is worth more (which it undoubtedly will be), we still won't get enough to pay these guys anything close to what they've been getting.

Interesting points QH, where do you get all the info in what NZRU and RA are bringing to discussion? They pretty good insights.

 

[Derpus]

Sounds like quite a few assumptions are being made.

 

[dru]

Sounds like quite a few assumptions are being made.

Yes, in all directions, not the least in the presumed success and/or desirability of shrink to greatness.

 

[barbarian]

NZ don't want the Force in TT as it is 4 time zones behind.

Have you seen that reported anywhere? I read an article last week (on SMH from memory) that stated the Force might be more likely to end up in an NZ comp than the Eastern teams.

Just unsure of where they sit in this.
.

 

[barbarian]

We're all making assumptions. Everyone has made up their mind. We're on page 806 and for some reason we are back talking about how we'd split up Sydney in a national comp (think we did that one on pages 312,387,439,505,616,698 and 727-39).

This site is built on baseless assumptions, wild conspiracy theories and circular arguments. This thread is ground zero for all three. Why stop now?

 

[Derpus]

Speculating is generally quite fun

 

[Quick Hands]

What else is the site for?

 

[The Honey Badger]

Looks like a Rugby team, I count 15. Might be the Rebels

 

[Mr Wobbly]

*snip

This site The Internet is built on baseless assumptions, wild conspiracy theories and circular arguments. This thread is ground zero for all three. Why stop now?

FTFY

 

[The Honey Badger]

What else is the site for?

No doubt that Bill, Raelene, Michael, Cameron and now Hamish have all had a read in the search for inspiration.

 

[Rugbynutter39]

Sadly I think we are heading to rebels or brumbies getting dumped - force as self funded entity guarantees their place but agree can’t sustain 5 teams against 5 kiwi teams - there is an answers - could have open borders policy to encourage more top kiwis to play for oz sides but NZRU will never allow.

 

[Derpus]

Sadly I think we are heading to rebels or brumbies getting dumped - force as self funded entity guarantees their place but agree can’t sustain 5 teams against 5 kiwi teams - there is an answers - could have open borders policy to encourage more top kiwis to play for oz sides but NZRU will never allow.

Can't see NZ ever going for that.

 

[qwerty51]

Which is why the comp should be privately owned. Fuck whatever RA and NZRU want.

 

[Rebels3]

Which is why the comp should be privately owned. Fuck whatever RA and NZRU want.

I think this is what RA want, get rid of the liability.

 

[Brumby Runner]

Yes! And i just amazes me the degree to which many posters here are still mock-designing new Aust prop comp structures with lots of imagined Aust teams when the really key issue is:

...the actual playing quality (and, to a material degree, player quality) of our 4 Super teams has been declining markedly for over a decade. Look at the Super 15 comp table pre COVID, only the Brumbies were attaining a respectable table position!

Do we think this is not a substantial and highly financially important issue for any future Super comp redesign here? FFS, it's THE issue! Filling any comp with a team-numbers driven model as the first priority will only perpetuate the very problem we have today - teams size expansion before team rugby quality improvement - that is driving fans and viewership interest away, slowly but surely. The issue of '2am SA games' is a total side-show issue.

The core of _any_ financially viable new Aust rugby pro comp has to answer this question before anything else: (a) how do we credibly get the average playing and player calibre of Aust pro teams going quickly upwards and (b) how is that going to be resourced (esp wrt coaching quality and adequacy of specialist coaches, etc) and financed and whom realistically will do and provide that resourcing and financing?

If that question is not - yet again - credibly answered and up front all we will do is _at best_ slow down the suicidal path we are on now.

Adding say Fiji and NZ teams in a new pro comp structure - I agree, yes, highly desirable - will not in any way fix our core quality problems, we must fix these ourselves and quickly.

RH, your posts are always well thought through and carry a consistent message. If I might be so bold, I would characterise your positions as being Reds Happy and Aussie Rugby Unhappy. I wish you would be able to see a little more positivity for rugby at the highest levels in this country. I interpret your comments above to mean that to quickly improve the calibre of our pro teams, we will need to jettison another one or two of those teams to load up the remaining couple with the displaced players. I sincerely hope you are wrong, but am waiting on RA's decisions about where we go from 2021 with some trepidation.

I have to say that I am not so pessimistic. I don't think our teams are so far inferior to the NZ sides to make a TT competition unsustainable, if that's the way they go. There will mostly be one or two of our sides who will be competitive, while there is usually one or two NZ sides who battle against the better sides. Unlike most comments so far about the two NZ games this weekend, I don't think they were such highly efficient performances as others make out. There were many errors by all teams, poor kicking displays both from hand and off the tee, missed tackles and more than enough penalties awarded to suggest the skills were somewhat deficient in some areas. What they did demonstrate was that they were very competitive on the scoreboards. There were also some outstanding individual performances, those by Reiko Ioane and Sututu being the best in my opinion.

One last little thing that has bugged me for quite a while, too. You consistently misuse the word "whom" in your posts. Given the excellent writing otherwise, I don't know if it is intentional. "Who" is the subject and "whom" the predicate of the associated verb.

 

[Rugbynutter39]

Which is why the comp should be privately owned. Fuck whatever RA and NZRU want.

I pray for this!

 

[RedsHappy]

What else is the site for?

Well, it also needs to be said: there many elements of analysis and facts clusters that are advanced herein that aren’t speculation and that form the basis of our concerns; the speculations are what to best do about them.