We cannot sustain 5 teams because they’re not consistently competitive with NZ teams and never will be whilst we have current set up.
Getting beaten all the time flows into lots of things - confidence and belief of players, confidence and belief of the public and cohesion at national level.
We will continue to see wallaby teams play like they’ve just been introduced to each other unless we go back to 3 teams.
I feel for Melbourne and the Force but selfishly for the good of Australian rugby, this is the key first decision that must be made for the good of the game and the strength of the national team.
There is not enough cattle to feed 5 franchises and be competitive. There is enough talent for 3 strong teams and if players head overseas, then they weren’t good enough to be selected.
Going back to a meritocracy is the best thing to happen to state rugby. ACT, WA and VIC will still produce the odd player of note but will be imported teams otherwise.
A strong wallabies will feed into all levels of rugby. There is a direct correlation of our demise with the super rugby expansion.
The second thing to do is more rugby for all elite and potential elite players. More touring visits and hosting of touring teams, more possibles v probables, and more national second tier competition complemented with club comps.
No no no
The real question is why can’t a country of 26m people which has a higher propensity per person to engage with contact sports than any other country produce enough players for 5 teams? This isn’t trying to fill 10-15 team league, a measly 5 teams. 5 teams in any professional sporting context is ridiculously low threshold to fill. You have far bigger issues with your pathways if this is an issue.
Why can’t the 3rd largest economy of the established rugby nations produce enough players for 5 teams?
Why would we not have enough players to fill only 1 more team than wales and ireland?
These are the only questions that need to be asked. It’s a complete inditement of the game here if we cannot sustain a measly 5 teams.
What happens in the future, let’s say 20yrs when the wallabies are extremely successful. Do we ever allow the game to grow or live in fear that we will destroy the success of the game here and keep the game with 3 teams, despite having a population of 35-40m people? When do we allow and share the game with people outside the Sydney, Brisbane and Canberra?
It’s so nonsensical to retrograde the sport and compare it with a time that isn’t remotely comparable with the current professionalism in the sport. Proper professional set ups, money, more money and modern philosophy of how the game is played. It was Rob Kearny only recently reflecting on his time here where he said the standard of coaching was well below par, the facilities we inadequate and the support systems not close to irelands, but he did mention the caliber of athlete was very good. Maybe we look to solve these obvious issues.
The touring thing is gone, there is far too much power in the large leagues and not enough space in their calendars to allow any for of touring. It will never return and if you are meaning touring from our club teams then apart from Japan and amateur Argentina, you aren’t going to get high level opponents because their calendars and player priority to rest takes preference.
We also talk about cohesion etc. we already have a national team that essentially only draws from 4 sides as rarely a Force player is picked. We fail to recognize that teams performing better than us come from more collective teams than us. Even Scotland has a huge amount of players from different sides, Wales has players not really regularly playing with each other, RSA the same, etc.
We need to move on from this thinking.
