Wallabies 2024

[Braveheart81]

How do we think that is going as with our recent success rate and dumped out of the RWC in the group stage? How do we think it will pan out as we settle into closer to a ranking of 10 that away from it?

The health of World Rugby is a significant part of this.

There's probably a hundred Australians playing professionally overseas at various levels. The pathway to a professional career doesn't need to be limited to here to attract interest in playing.

Football?

There's massive interest in the top level, just not the top level in Australia.

EPL and the various competitions in Europe have a lot of followers in Australia.

It's not an easy solution, granted, but this attitude of "it is what is it" just baffles me.

I don't think anyone has this attitude. It's just not a reasonable suggestion to say that we need to put more funding into the grassroots without a serious analysis of how that can be achieved.

 

[Tomthumb]

I don't think anyone has this attitude. It's just not a reasonable suggestion to say that we need to put more funding into the grassroots without a serious analysis of how that can be achieved.

True, but I feel an audit would find plenty of money being completely wasted that could be used effectively

 

[Derpus]

True, but I feel an audit would find plenty of money being completely wasted that could be used effectively

Seems unlikely since we are broke.

 

[Tomthumb]

Seems unlikely since we are broke.

Being broke doesn't usually happen due to smart financial decisions

How much did that team camp to the NT cost?

 

[Proud Pig]

My 2 cents for what it is worth.

Rugby in Australia cannot fund itself. The interest is simply not there because it is a third string game in a country with a smallish population. Rugby league has first pick of the majority of talent because of the support and money it can offer the elite talent. The grassroots game suffer because of this greater interest in league.
The key thing to note is that Australia is the only place in the rugby playing world where union is not the primary rugby game so lacks access to the best rugby talent. The Wallabies are the prime source of revenue for Australian Rugby.

The Australian rugby market place has a limited revenue making capabilities unless we can change the level of interest in the game from the public. This is highly unlikely as we are not going to unseat League and AFL as the principal winter sports.
The structure of the Super Rugby competition also makes it's playing model far more expensive than AFL and Rugby League.

The Super Rugby sides and Rugby Australia cannot compete with the financial drawing power of Europe or Japan as the funds just do not exist in this market.

So what do we do?

Well, there are no magic bullets that can raise the revenue of the game in Australia unless some major benefactor decides that he is happy to burn money on behalf of rugby in this country. Private equity partners are not the answer they will just be a sugar hit and will expect Rugby to start making a return on investment in a very short period of time and expect that return to grow.
Given revenue won't be easily lifted the only thing you can do from a business perspective is to lower costs to make the game sustainable. Now, I love the Super Rugby competition with games against New Zealand sides but the current model is just burning money which Rugby Australia do not have.
I don't know that the professional game in Australia can survive, the game can but not in it's current form. Our population will only support professional sports at the pointy end of the landscape and there is simply not enough room for the also rans which unfortunately includes Rugby. Maybe we need to embrace the fact that the game as a non-professional has a chance of surviving long term but the current professional version of the sport is doomed. Let the best players go overseas to earn as much as they can. Pick the Wallaby squad from players from anywhere. Get rid of the travel and high salaries for the domestic competition and reign in the cost bleeding that is going on with the game.

This is a very negative outlook I know but I fear it might be the realistic one.

 

[rugbyAU]

My 2 cents for what it is worth.

Rugby in Australia cannot fund itself. The interest is simply not there because it is a third string game in a country with a smallish population. Rugby league has first pick of the majority of talent because of the support and money it can offer the elite talent. The grassroots game suffer because of this greater interest in league.
The key thing to note is that Australia is the only place in the rugby playing world where union is not the primary rugby game so lacks access to the best rugby talent. The Wallabies are the prime source of revenue for Australian Rugby.

The Australian rugby market place has a limited revenue making capabilities unless we can change the level of interest in the game from the public. This is highly unlikely as we are not going to unseat League and AFL as the principal winter sports.
The structure of the Super Rugby competition also makes it's playing model far more expensive than AFL and Rugby League.

The Super Rugby sides and Rugby Australia cannot compete with the financial drawing power of Europe or Japan as the funds just do not exist in this market.

So what do we do?

Well, there are no magic bullets that can raise the revenue of the game in Australia unless some major benefactor decides that he is happy to burn money on behalf of rugby in this country. Private equity partners are not the answer they will just be a sugar hit and will expect Rugby to start making a return on investment in a very short period of time and expect that return to grow.
Given revenue won't be easily lifted the only thing you can do from a business perspective is to lower costs to make the game sustainable. Now, I love the Super Rugby competition with games against New Zealand sides but the current model is just burning money which Rugby Australia do not have.
I don't know that the professional game in Australia can survive, the game can but not in it's current form. Our population will only support professional sports at the pointy end of the landscape and there is simply not enough room for the also rans which unfortunately includes Rugby. Maybe we need to embrace the fact that the game as a non-professional has a chance of surviving long term but the current professional version of the sport is doomed. Let the best players go overseas to earn as much as they can. Pick the Wallaby squad from players from anywhere. Get rid of the travel and high salaries for the domestic competition and reign in the cost bleeding that is going on with the game.

This is a very negative outlook I know but I fear it might be the realistic one.

Nice post

 

[Yoda]

My 2 cents for what it is worth.

Rugby in Australia cannot fund itself. The interest is simply not there because it is a third string game in a country with a smallish population. Rugby league has first pick of the majority of talent because of the support and money it can offer the elite talent. The grassroots game suffer because of this greater interest in league.
The key thing to note is that Australia is the only place in the rugby playing world where union is not the primary rugby game so lacks access to the best rugby talent. The Wallabies are the prime source of revenue for Australian Rugby.

The Australian rugby market place has a limited revenue making capabilities unless we can change the level of interest in the game from the public. This is highly unlikely as we are not going to unseat League and AFL as the principal winter sports.
The structure of the Super Rugby competition also makes it's playing model far more expensive than AFL and Rugby League.

The Super Rugby sides and Rugby Australia cannot compete with the financial drawing power of Europe or Japan as the funds just do not exist in this market.

So what do we do?

Well, there are no magic bullets that can raise the revenue of the game in Australia unless some major benefactor decides that he is happy to burn money on behalf of rugby in this country. Private equity partners are not the answer they will just be a sugar hit and will expect Rugby to start making a return on investment in a very short period of time and expect that return to grow.
Given revenue won't be easily lifted the only thing you can do from a business perspective is to lower costs to make the game sustainable. Now, I love the Super Rugby competition with games against New Zealand sides but the current model is just burning money which Rugby Australia do not have.
I don't know that the professional game in Australia can survive, the game can but not in it's current form. Our population will only support professional sports at the pointy end of the landscape and there is simply not enough room for the also rans which unfortunately includes Rugby. Maybe we need to embrace the fact that the game as a non-professional has a chance of surviving long term but the current professional version of the sport is doomed. Let the best players go overseas to earn as much as they can. Pick the Wallaby squad from players from anywhere. Get rid of the travel and high salaries for the domestic competition and reign in the cost bleeding that is going on with the game.

This is a very negative outlook I know but I fear it might be the realistic one.

A lot of sense there. Only thing is when you pick a Wallaby squad that comes from overseas they have limited time together which makes it harder to build a team with cohesion? South Africa have made this work though. Probably the way it should go from a financial sense.

 

[The Ghost of Raelene]

The playing in Aus thing is purely about keeping talent here to sell super rugby though.

Soccer is able to play anywhere and put together squads for the WC. Even if you look at England who would have most playing in the Premier League. It’s still made up of a lot of teams so what’s the difference to being separated all over the world.

 

[Dctarget]

Hopefully Kerevi can still improve back to his old standards, not sure if his ceiling has been permanently lowered by his injuries though. He will be Bundee Aki's current age at the next RWC so definitely not over the hill just yet.

 

[hammertimethere]

My 2 cents for what it is worth.

Rugby in Australia cannot fund itself. The interest is simply not there because it is a third string game in a country with a smallish population. Rugby league has first pick of the majority of talent because of the support and money it can offer the elite talent. The grassroots game suffer because of this greater interest in league.
The key thing to note is that Australia is the only place in the rugby playing world where union is not the primary rugby game so lacks access to the best rugby talent. The Wallabies are the prime source of revenue for Australian Rugby.

The Australian rugby market place has a limited revenue making capabilities unless we can change the level of interest in the game from the public. This is highly unlikely as we are not going to unseat League and AFL as the principal winter sports.
The structure of the Super Rugby competition also makes it's playing model far more expensive than AFL and Rugby League.

The Super Rugby sides and Rugby Australia cannot compete with the financial drawing power of Europe or Japan as the funds just do not exist in this market.

So what do we do?

Well, there are no magic bullets that can raise the revenue of the game in Australia unless some major benefactor decides that he is happy to burn money on behalf of rugby in this country. Private equity partners are not the answer they will just be a sugar hit and will expect Rugby to start making a return on investment in a very short period of time and expect that return to grow.
Given revenue won't be easily lifted the only thing you can do from a business perspective is to lower costs to make the game sustainable. Now, I love the Super Rugby competition with games against New Zealand sides but the current model is just burning money which Rugby Australia do not have.
I don't know that the professional game in Australia can survive, the game can but not in it's current form. Our population will only support professional sports at the pointy end of the landscape and there is simply not enough room for the also rans which unfortunately includes Rugby. Maybe we need to embrace the fact that the game as a non-professional has a chance of surviving long term but the current professional version of the sport is doomed. Let the best players go overseas to earn as much as they can. Pick the Wallaby squad from players from anywhere. Get rid of the travel and high salaries for the domestic competition and reign in the cost bleeding that is going on with the game.

This is a very negative outlook I know but I fear it might be the realistic one.

Willfully relegating rugby to non professional status in Australia is a bad idea. Call me crazy but trying the utmost to avoid the death of our sport seems a reasonable goal to have (realistic? not sure, but fuck knows we should try).

That said, your points about Australian Rugby's unique commercial realities are valid. So, I therefore propose the following (1st draft posted on the NRC thread).

What if we ran a two tiered model for the pro game which seeks to take all the elements of our rugby landscape and use them for their best fit purpose (and minimising their downsides).

1. Our Super Rugby participation should be kind of like a champions league type thing for us. We consolidate our participation to 3 teams max (called by their franchise names, centrally controlled by RA) and have our best players playing in it with each other against NZ teams, Drua, Moana Pasifika.
- Helps to reduce costs a bit and should improve our cohesion (and hopefully performance) for a lot of our top players to best prepare them for international duty.
- This runs from Feb-mid June at a sprint (round robin, 4-6 teams finals series).
- Domestic club rugby competitions (which remain amateur in scope) run parallel to it (might start a couple weeks earlier and finish a week or two later depending on the number of teams and local needs, but should be broadly similar).

2. The Wallabies then assemble for the international season to start with the inbound tour while the rest of the pro players have a brief break/conditioning period . The international season would then flow through inbound tour (July), rugby championship (Aug/Sep/Oct) and spring tours (Nov).
- Parallel to this you run the equivalent of Super Rugby AU (but call it the Asia-Pacific provincial championship) with 5 Aussie teams (called by their state names, not franchise. Encourage tribalism) + Fiji and a hopefully a Japanese side. which is semi (or part time) professional rugby (i.e at lower salaries than Super Rugby 65-100k).
- Home and away round robin + 4 teams finals series.
- Critically, this competition cannot clash with Japan League One (which is December to Feb) or to a lesser degree MLR (which is Feb-July), because if experienced players who don't crack super rugby squads in a given year (as it will be more difficult) want to earn some yen or USD rather than play club rugby but still put their hands up for domestic pro rugby later on we want them to have this opportunity. These players can remain full time pros, but still have the option to play in Australia and compete for national recognition and the following years Super Rugby squads by participating at this time of the year. There are many many players in NZ's NPC which do this and it's a significant factor in creating their depth which flows through to Super Rugby (these players earn 30-50k from their NPC side, then 70-120k from a Japanese club or similar).

The calendar looks like
Late Nov (or Late Oct for domestic players) to early Jan = Off season
Jan-Mid Feb = Pre-season
Mid Feb - Mid June = Super Rugby + club rugby
End of June to mid July = Inbound Tour + 2nd pre-season for non Wallabies
End of July to end of October = Rugby Championship + Asia-Pacific provincial championship
November = Spring tours

We can therefore use all the currently competing elements in our game for their best fit purpose to support high performance i.e club rugby for developing amateurs and young players, Super Rugby to battle harden our top players for Wallabies duties, Asia-Pacific for grooming early pros or fringe internationals to take the next step and the fringe professional comps (Japan League One) to allow the players who haven't cracked it as a regular Wallaby yet keep getting paid more that we can expect to offer them for the domestic comp alone (allow us to leverage the current relationships e.g QLD-Panasonic, Melbourne-Kintetsu, ?Brumbies-Suntory.)

 

[Slim 293]

1. Our Super Rugby participation should be kind of like a champions league type thing for us. We consolidate our participation to 3 teams max (called by their franchise names, centrally controlled by Rugby Australia) and have our best players playing in it with each other against NZ teams, Drua, Moana Pasifika.

It's going to be hard to cut the Tahs after they ceded control to RA...

 

[Dctarget]

Willfully relegating rugby to non professional status in Australia is a bad idea. Call me crazy but trying the utmost to avoid the death of our sport seems a reasonable goal to have (realistic? not sure, but fuck knows we should try).

That said, your points about Australian Rugby's unique commercial realities are valid. So, I therefore propose the following (1st draft posted on the NRC thread).

What if we ran a two tiered model for the pro game which seeks to take all the elements of our rugby landscape and use them for their best fit purpose (and minimising their downsides).

1. Our Super Rugby participation should be kind of like a champions league type thing for us. We consolidate our participation to 3 teams max (called by their franchise names, centrally controlled by Rugby Australia) and have our best players playing in it with each other against NZ teams, Drua, Moana Pasifika.
- Helps to reduce costs a bit and should improve our cohesion (and hopefully performance) for a lot of our top players to best prepare them for international duty.
- This runs from Feb-mid June at a sprint (round robin, 4-6 teams finals series).
- Domestic club rugby competitions (which remain amateur in scope) run parallel to it (might start a couple weeks earlier and finish a week or two later depending on the number of teams and local needs, but should be broadly similar).

2. The Wallabies then assemble for the international season to start with the inbound tour while the rest of the pro players have a brief break/conditioning period . The international season would then flow through inbound tour (July), rugby championship (Aug/Sep/Oct) and spring tours (Nov).
- Parallel to this you run the equivalent of Super Rugby AU (but call it the Asia-Pacific provincial championship) with 5 Aussie teams (called by their state names, not franchise. Encourage tribalism) + Fiji and a hopefully a Japanese side. which is semi (or part time) professional rugby (i.e at lower salaries than Super Rugby 65-100k).
- Home and away round robin + 4 teams finals series.
- Critically, this competition cannot clash with Japan League One (which is December to Feb) or to a lesser degree MLR (which is Feb-July), because if experienced players who don't crack super rugby squads in a given year (as it will be more difficult) want to earn some yen or USD rather than play club rugby but still put their hands up for domestic pro rugby later on we want them to have this opportunity. These players can remain full time pros, but still have the option to play in Australia and compete for national recognition and the following years Super Rugby squads by participating at this time of the year. There are many many players in NZ's NPC which do this and it's a significant factor in creating their depth which flows through to Super Rugby (these players earn 30-50k from their NPC side, then 70-120k from a Japanese club or similar).

The calendar looks like
Late Nov (or Late Oct for domestic players) to early Jan = Off season
Jan-Mid Feb = Pre-season
Mid Feb - Mid June = Super Rugby + club rugby
End of June to mid July = Inbound Tour + 2nd pre-season for non Wallabies
End of July to end of October = Rugby Championship + Asia-Pacific provincial championship
November = Spring tours

We can therefore use all the currently competing elements in our game for their best fit purpose to support high performance i.e club rugby for developing amateurs and young players, Super Rugby to battle harden our top players for Wallabies duties, Asia-Pacific for grooming early pros or fringe internationals to take the next step and the fringe professional comps (Japan League One) to allow the players who haven't cracked it as a regular Wallaby yet keep getting paid more that we can expect to offer them for the domestic comp alone (allow us to leverage the current relationships e.g QLD-Panasonic, Melbourne-Kintetsu, ?Brumbies-Suntory.)

Do you have promotion/relegation between the champions league and the aus one? Or do the Rebels/Force just go fuck themselves forever?

 

[hammertimethere]

Do you have promotion/relegation between the champions league and the aus one? Or do the Rebels/Force just go fuck themselves forever?

If promotion/relegation can be made workable then I'm all for it. If it can't then I am agnostic about which teams get into super rugby to start

I'm on the record as saying back when an attempt was made to cut a team, that the best option was to find some way to merge the operations of the Brumbies and Rebels.

 

[The Ghost of Raelene]

Hopefully Kerevi can still improve back to his old standards, not sure if his ceiling has been permanently lowered by his injuries though. He will be Bundee Aki's current age at the next RWC so definitely not over the hill just yet.

Difference between them though is Aki has the ability to step for a big guy. Kerevi has been a power through player. Needs to get that yard of pace back.

 

[Sword of Justice]

I used to think playing in a comp with South African, South American and Japanese teams was the stupidest thing in the world given the timezones. Now I think it may have been the only thing keeping Australian teams exposed enough to world rugby to survive.

Being fucking destroyed by NZ every week is now killing us pretty quickly. Cutting the amount of registered pro players by 2/5ths and reducing our footprint by two states would also kill us pretty quickly too.

What is the point of either of those options? To die later and not now?

Also we already tried the shrink to success thing and it didn't change anything.

The lions and world cup money isn't going to fix the systemic problems which are pathways (player and coach), public's exposure to regular season games, and lack of matches at a competitive level. Paying eligible players more won't make them better and in any case that money will just fix our debt at that time.

I'd just reinvent the NRC to get more players on contracts early and accept the best players will find jobs in the NH. We select those players for the Wallabies given that's our only significant income.

It will almost certainly fail. Doing any variation of what we are doing now will certainly fail.

 

[Slim 293]

If promotion/relegation can be made workable then I'm all for it. If it can't then I am agnostic about which teams get into super rugby to start

I'm on the record as saying back when an attempt was made to cut a team, that the best option was to find some way to merge the operations of the Brumbies and Rebels.

I reckon merging the Force and the Tahs would've made sense...

 

[Derpus]

Hopefully Kerevi can still improve back to his old standards, not sure if his ceiling has been permanently lowered by his injuries though. He will be Bundee Aki's current age at the next RWC so definitely not over the hill just yet.

Yeah to BHs point earlier, we expect players to get back to full form and fitness too fast. I'm sure he has loads more caps in him (if we he wants to be around that is).

 

[Braveheart81]

A lot of sense there. Only thing is when you pick a Wallaby squad that comes from overseas they have limited time together which makes it harder to build a team with cohesion? South Africa have made this work though. Probably the way it should go from a financial sense.

South Africa are much better at the RWC than they are at other times because the RWC is the one time where you have enough time to build that cohesion.

Soccer is able to play anywhere and put together squads for the WC. Even if you look at England who would have most playing in the Premier League. It’s still made up of a lot of teams so what’s the difference to being separated all over the world.

Soccer has international breaks where players gather to play international games so every team is on the same footing.

That's not the same in rugby where the international windows are shorter, some of our games are outside the windows and a lot of our players are playing on the other side of the world.

The issue is when you play the All Blacks who have been in camp for two weeks but your side only flew in on the Tuesday with a test match on Saturday.

 

[Proud Pig]

Willfully relegating rugby to non professional status in Australia is a bad idea. Call me crazy but trying the utmost to avoid the death of our sport seems a reasonable goal to have (realistic? not sure, but fuck knows we should try).

That said, your points about Australian Rugby's unique commercial realities are valid. So, I therefore propose the following (1st draft posted on the NRC thread).

What if we ran a two tiered model for the pro game which seeks to take all the elements of our rugby landscape and use them for their best fit purpose (and minimising their downsides).

1. Our Super Rugby participation should be kind of like a champions league type thing for us. We consolidate our participation to 3 teams max (called by their franchise names, centrally controlled by Rugby Australia) and have our best players playing in it with each other against NZ teams, Drua, Moana Pasifika.
- Helps to reduce costs a bit and should improve our cohesion (and hopefully performance) for a lot of our top players to best prepare them for international duty.
- This runs from Feb-mid June at a sprint (round robin, 4-6 teams finals series).
- Domestic club rugby competitions (which remain amateur in scope) run parallel to it (might start a couple weeks earlier and finish a week or two later depending on the number of teams and local needs, but should be broadly similar).

2. The Wallabies then assemble for the international season to start with the inbound tour while the rest of the pro players have a brief break/conditioning period . The international season would then flow through inbound tour (July), rugby championship (Aug/Sep/Oct) and spring tours (Nov).
- Parallel to this you run the equivalent of Super Rugby AU (but call it the Asia-Pacific provincial championship) with 5 Aussie teams (called by their state names, not franchise. Encourage tribalism) + Fiji and a hopefully a Japanese side. which is semi (or part time) professional rugby (i.e at lower salaries than Super Rugby 65-100k).
- Home and away round robin + 4 teams finals series.
- Critically, this competition cannot clash with Japan League One (which is December to Feb) or to a lesser degree MLR (which is Feb-July), because if experienced players who don't crack super rugby squads in a given year (as it will be more difficult) want to earn some yen or USD rather than play club rugby but still put their hands up for domestic pro rugby later on we want them to have this opportunity. These players can remain full time pros, but still have the option to play in Australia and compete for national recognition and the following years Super Rugby squads by participating at this time of the year. There are many many players in NZ's NPC which do this and it's a significant factor in creating their depth which flows through to Super Rugby (these players earn 30-50k from their NPC side, then 70-120k from a Japanese club or similar).

The calendar looks like
Late Nov (or Late Oct for domestic players) to early Jan = Off season
Jan-Mid Feb = Pre-season
Mid Feb - Mid June = Super Rugby + club rugby
End of June to mid July = Inbound Tour + 2nd pre-season for non Wallabies
End of July to end of October = Rugby Championship + Asia-Pacific provincial championship
November = Spring tours

We can therefore use all the currently competing elements in our game for their best fit purpose to support high performance i.e club rugby for developing amateurs and young players, Super Rugby to battle harden our top players for Wallabies duties, Asia-Pacific for grooming early pros or fringe internationals to take the next step and the fringe professional comps (Japan League One) to allow the players who haven't cracked it as a regular Wallaby yet keep getting paid more that we can expect to offer them for the domestic comp alone (allow us to leverage the current relationships e.g QLD-Panasonic, Melbourne-Kintetsu, ?Brumbies-Suntory.)

I wasn't trying to relegate rugby to non-professional more considering semi-professional.

I can't see how the model you are suggesting will change the financial stakes in Australian Rugby at all. It is not going to increase the numbers watching the game in fact by cutting down two teams (meaning Rebels and Force) you are further limiting the numbers watching and as such public interest, viewing public etc... Once you remove WA and VIC from the potential viewing audience you will you will make potential revenue even less for the Australian public as no broadcaster wants less content and reach for their money. You won't cut back on the salary position as you are simply consolidating all the high paid players into 3 sides. I would suggest that like most businesses 80% of the salary budget would go on 40% of the players at a conservative estimate. The only saving are on cutting the players who round out the rosters on very little money. This will therefore cause a drain of all the young players who aren't going to get one of the few spare slots on your now drastically reduced rosters to go offshore for money.
The problem as I see it is I just don't know where the revenue injection that rugby needs to survive is going to come from. The only way to ensure that Rugby survives, in my opinion, is to drastically reduce costs so that Rugby can live within it's means.

 

[Proud Pig]

South Africa are much better at the RWC than they are at other times because the RWC is the one time where you have enough time to build that cohesion.



Soccer has international breaks where players gather to play international games so every team is on the same footing.

That's not the same in rugby where the international windows are shorter, some of our games are outside the windows and a lot of our players are playing on the other side of the world.

The issue is when you play the All Blacks who have been in camp for two weeks but your side only flew in on the Tuesday with a test match on Saturday.

I agree that that is a problem but given the alternative appears to be rugby circling the drain as it is doing at the moment I think it is something we may just have to accept.