I'm happy with your vision, but to me the attitude you have outlined is NSW-centric. More-so Sydney SRU-centric. For whatever reason, SRU clubs have never gotten behind the Waratahs. It isn't the case in Qld. And of course in Vic and WA the state Union franchise basically is the game pathway, to what extent the grass roots are naturally aligned to the franchise. In ACT you have a single club, the Vikings, who have (in the eyes of many) arrogated (assumed, taken control of) the Bumbies with only poorly formed resentment through traditional supporters of the other clubs.
Personally I'd prefer a model that was club based in NSW, but what happens elsewhere is far from clear and NSW would deserve everything if it followed that elsewhere had the shits with what NSW want and lampoon it from underneath. The rest of the rugby world would not deserve this, just the Sydney club element that has been rugby-xenophobic.
NSW clubs are as responsible for this mess as much as anyone.
QRU can respond positively to a revised structure that requires multiple teams from Qld but it is far from clear that this would be directly club based. Just think about the NRC. If the Brumbies are offered primacy, and ACT Rugby is offered funding for an alternate team, and the local development structures are held for those, maybe, maybe... perhaps not.
Force and Rebels I think could adjust to the change but IF what you want is forcing Force and Rebels to develop fundamentally locally, immediately, to protect NSW (and of course Qld) talent, and to see a plethora of clubs elevated from Sydney, well there will be more issues.
I'm not saying it shouldn't happen. Far from it I'm very likely to be enthusiastic about it. However if this leads to a "National" comp dominated by numbers from Sydney Clubs, and probably dominated in quality by the Brumbies - well the thinking is incomplete from the outset.
A solid point of agreement: Anything is better than Super.
I understand that there are many in Australian rugby who have a beef against the Sydney clubs - some justified and some perhaps not.
In trying to look rationally at things without emotion can be difficult so I like to use other examples from world and Australian sport to illustrate certain points. I'll use English Premier Rugby, French Top 14 Rugby, plus NRL and AFL from Australia. Each in their own way have been able to run national competitions, but because the relevant sport in each case isn't spread equally or universally across each respective country this doesn't mean that the teams are spread equally across the country. Teams are concentrated in the areas which produce the most rugby players and thus have the most clubs and can support professional teams with a decent supporter base.
Premiership Rugby (England) - out of the 10 teams currently playing - 4 (Bath, Bristol, Exeter and Gloucester) come from the South-West which has the lowest population density in England, but is the part of the country where rugby is strongest, 2 come from the midlands (Leicester and Northampton), 1 from Manchester (Sale), 1 from the North East (Newcastle) and only 2 (Saracens and Harlequins) from London.
Top 14 (France) - out of the 14 teams currently playing - 12 are located in the south of France and 8 of these are located in the South West, some in small towns such as Pau and Bayonne and 2 are located in Paris. Outside of Paris there are no clubs in the northern half of the country.
NRL - 9 teams in Sydney, 1 in Newcastle, 1 in Canberra, 2 teams in Brisbane, 1 in Melbourne, 1 on the Gold Coast, 1 in Townsville and 1 in New Zealand.
AFL - 9 teams in Melbourne, 1 in Geelong, 2 in Perth, 2 in Adelaide, 2 in Sydney, 1 in Brisbane and 1 on the Gold Coast.
What I'm suggesting is that all of these competitions have a degree of being something centric. How exactly that is managed is something that Australian rugby seems incapable of coming to any sort of sensible arrangement, with many taking a anything but Sydney clubs approach and others wanting anything to be centred in Sydney and Brisbane.
What I'm suggesting is that it is perfectly rational and sensible to have more clubs in Sydney and Brisbane than anywhere else, simply on the basis of mathematics - more rugby people, more existing rugby clubs, greater likelihood of attracting tribal support for clubs in a professional competition. But that doesn't mean that other areas should be ignored or excluded, it just means that people need to be realistic about how the professional sporting universe works.
As a simple start - Western Force become the Perth Force and with the Melbourne Rebels are part of it. Local development is part of the solution, but pro (or semi-pro) leagues everywhere have a mixture of locally produced players and those recruited from elsewhere.
Canberra - you make a good point above re the Vikings. I have no problem with a Tuggeranong Vikings and Canberra Brumbies - but I'm not sure to what extent that there is enough money there to support two teams.
Brisbane - I would be interested in seeing how many existing clubs think they could participate (either individually or jointly) - again my knowledge of Brisbane rugby clubs isn't from any first hand experience. Brisbane is crucial to the game - just as important as Sydney because it is a heartland of the game.
Sydney - the largest rugby market in the country. No national competition can succeed in Australia unless it succeeds in either Sydney or Melbourne. Melbourne is out of the question so if it doesn't capture a portion of the Sydney market then any national competition in rugby will fail. (See ARC and NRC). There's strong, well-supported rugby clubs in Sydney with strong junior programs - I've always thought that it's been nuts to deliberately try to exclude them from the conversation as ARU/RA have done (and then complain that they aren't co-operating). You need to have a significant number of clubs in Sydney involved - how that looks I'm not completely sure. What I do know is that there are parts of Sydney which have brand recognition inside and outside the game. Casual sports followers in Sydney associate Randwick with the glory days of Australian rugby, people identify with names such as Parramatta, Manly-Warringah and associate them with sporting success. Rugby people know that Eastwood is a very strong and successful club with financial resources to compete. Newcastle is a large regional city in its own right.(These are just examples and not meant to be proscriptive)
As you allude to, and as Wayne Bennett observed a few years back (after he came to Sydney to coach) - Sydney and NSW are different. Parochialism in NSW (including Sydney) is regional. It's why league state of origin took much longer to capture the imagination of people in NSW than in Qld. People's identity is what part of Sydney or NSW they come from before they identify as being from NSW as a whole.
What is the optimum number of teams? Is it better to start with more teams in the first year and then split into 2 division with promotion and relegation from Year 2? How do we reconcile the desire to maintain a national spread and keep the heartland strong?
No easy answers to any of these and sadly I have very strong doubts that our current group of administrators are up to it. McL strikes me as being JON on steroids, and the whole organisation is awash with GPS old boy group think. Let just reflect on Phil Waugh's idea to run an old boys day at Alliance Stadium and play a full day of GPS fixtures as a way of regenerating rugby.
A few things we do know
- Super Rugby was a great way to start the professional rugby era, but its time has come. The big mistake in Australian rugby was not to build this club competition 10-15 years ago so that we could have seamlessly moved from Super Rugby to a domestic competition when Super Rugby began to wobble about 2010.
- Anything from here is going to be a long build. The days of Super Rugby being able to support full time professional athletes is approaching the end. Anything we start is going to be semi-pro (unless we can find 14-16 billionaires who want to fund it). We've been driving in the wrong direction for at least a decade so the first decade of any competition is merely going to get us back to where we should have been about 2015.
Tough times ahead, and what is required is solid, strategic management for a long, hard slog. What I suggest we don't need is a CEO getting involved in childish spats with the CEOs of other sports, or making decisions on sacking/hiring coaches or signing players, or grandstanding as the game sinks around him.
