This bit is wrong. The two hurdles are self-imposed by the directors and can be waived by those directors.
The Rebels players, support staff and coaches are not the upper management and/or directors. Drawing parallels between a one off performance and the organisations current financial issues isn't very helpful. A lot of the Australian teams have been having inconsistency issues, much like the Wallabies if we're honest.
They won’t have a pathway no kid will move to Canberra to go to the Brumbies academy over the Storm academy or playing TAC Cup. So rugby will be left with the rejects nobody else wants
It will be like the old days. If you want success you move up to Sydney or Brisbane to finish school and get on a professional pathway up there (ala Digby Ioane, Lloyd Johansen, etc). The academies down here will drop in standard as the best leave making them less viable pathways. We go back to the days where we produced a wallaby prop about every decade instead of the steady line of internationals coming out of Victoria now.
100% but it will also be harder than the old days as only now are storm trying to bring through locals. So there is another option for them
What do you actually want to happen?
You are right. They head off to basketball or get paid to be a ruckman instead
Just spelling out the reality of it buddy. If the Rebels die so does the production of juniors out of Melbourne. You can’t have one without the other. The fact that all people care about is how they can enrich their lists and get access to the talent coming through is reflective of the myopic attitude that is pervasive throughout Australian Rugby
If you’re 6’10 you are likely to get drafted.
Literally a product of the Rebels academy and the only one that moved away to start his super rugby career. He also came through at a time where we didn’t have a Storm academy in the state.
You'd switch to basketball or AFL
Lol
Where is anyone picking the corpse of the Rebel.. If there's no Rebels of course we will lose some Victorians..
Undoubtedly that is a big problem. The loss of the NRC and the cancelled seasons with covid really hurt the club comp here. You saw a mass exodus of the local products who made up the NRC squad as well as those who were on the fringe. With the loss of that talent the Rebels put their players in the QPR not a move that I am too fond of and those two things greatly diminished the club system here
To date myself, Tamati was same year as me at school - played against him. As I recall it back then, Ewen McKenzie was the great Victorian success story that we all knew about, Andrew Heath got to the wallabies whilst I was a schoolboy and that was huge. Tamati got to Aus A, but it was mainly the guys who had moved north in school who went further as there were no real pathways. I think David Palavi made it the Brumbies via the Storm but all in it was a lean time for higher honours.