Where to for Super Rugby?

[KOB1987]

Well the question if we do expand to 8 is;

If they are Aussie teams where is the money coming from? If it’s overseas teams, which ones? How is talent going to be spread? How is talent spread going to be managed with keeping the credibility of the competition? How are we going to attract players back to our shores to fill these spots with less money on offer?

There’s a lot of unknown variables here, especially if we don’t get overseas interest, i find it very hard to believe we’d introduce 3 new teams any time soon, or when the time comes, all 3 at once. While I support the force inclusion it has again strained our playing stocks a tad.

If you’re thinking of expansion you better hope there’s a couple of Twiggy Forests out there willing to bankroll everything

We don’t need Twiggy Forrests. We have a Lions Tour in 25 and then likely hosting the RWC two years later. With proper people in charge the appeal of this will start to bring players back to our shores say from 23 onwards. Add to this the young crop of players and the pathways you allude to in your prior post, right now is the time to start building a domestic comp. You wouldn’t jump straight into an 8-10 team comp straight away, but that’s what we need to head towards and there isn’t going to be a better time to do it. We still need capital in the interim though, and that’s what the PE approaches are all about. Australian Rugby would be a pretty attractive investment opportunity over the next 7 years or so if structured right.

 

[hoggy]

We don’t need Twiggy Forrests. We have a Lions Tour in 25 and then likely hosting the RWC two years later. With proper people in charge the appeal of this will start to bring players back to our shores say from 23 onwards. Add to this the young crop of players and the pathways you allude to in your prior post, right now is the time to start building a domestic comp. You wouldn’t jump straight into an 8-10 team comp straight away, but that’s what we need to head towards and there isn’t going to be a better time to do it. We still need capital in the interim though, and that’s what the PE approaches are all about. Australian Rugby would be a pretty attractive investment opportunity over the next 7 years or so if structured right.

This is a good point, it doesn't have to be a sky scraper from day one, but why not a 10 year vision of where you could be.

You sign upto a TT and you give all that away, you limit your ability to make any changes moving forward and we saw what happened with that approach with 20 years of Super Rugby.

Just one factor alone by signing a TT deal you negate your ability to ever have two teams in NSW, you literally cede the traditional home & heartland of rugby in this country to the other codes, you don'y even try to compete.

 

[Tomikin]

To be honest I prefer that to playing in a crap Super AU comp that means nothing, personally I feel like it’s the definition of a Mickey Mouse comp

But I don’t think our trans Tasman results will be as poor for much longer. RA has started to put some real investment into our pathways and development and we’re starting to see the results of that come to fruition with the batch of young players coming through. That depth we have now is only going to grow.

Ultimately though I think we should have a TT comp where player movement between the two countries occur. I actually think it’ll happen unlike most on here, maybe not immediately but NZ aren’t going to be able to sustain themselves without us much longer. There’s only so much of the AB’s they can offer up to private investors and their super teams are way too much a part of their rugby fabric to let them fall on the wayside if they wanted to go internal and fall back on the NPC as their main comp. Unless they bypass us and go to Japan they’re going to need us eventually

The ratings proved that this wasnt a Mickey Mouse comp, we actually have fan interest, it wasn't a perfect storm with the environment, and some teams where better then others, but getting walloped by on average 40 points a weekend by the Kiwi's wont help. More people watching, more people playing, better players in our game.

I'm not saying dont play the Kiwi's in some champions league/shield I'm saying domestic first where we get an Oz champion where we are engaged in the rivalry... No one in Oz gives a fuck if the Brumbies are playing the Highlanders in south NZ. But everyone cares if the Brumbies play the Tah's..

 

[sendit]

The ratings proved that this wasnt a Mickey Mouse comp, we actually have fan interest, it wasn't a perfect storm with the environment, and some teams where better then others, but getting walloped by on average 40 points a weekend by the Kiwi's wont help. More people watching, more people playing, better players in our game.

I'm not saying dont play the Kiwi's in some champions league/shield I'm saying domestic first where we get an Oz champion where we are engaged in the rivalry. No one in Oz gives a fuck if the Brumbies are playing the Highlanders in south NZ. But everyone cares if the Brumbies play the Tah's..

Like I said in one of my previous posts, those ratings are useless, there’s too many outside factors. I’m surprised so many people are rushing to use that them as an example, I get it’s all we have to use atm but surely you recognise the flaw in using them in a argument?

Nah I care if the Brumbies are playing the Highlanders. What I don’t care about is the Brumbies playing the reds for the 3rd time in 9 rounds. I don’t get this sense of nationalism to the point where you can’t enjoy a game of rugby because one of the teams happens to come from one country over.

 

[sendit]

We don’t need Twiggy Forrests. We have a Lions Tour in 25 and then likely hosting the RWC two years later. With proper people in charge the appeal of this will start to bring players back to our shores say from 23 onwards. Add to this the young crop of players and the pathways you allude to in your prior post, right now is the time to start building a domestic comp. You wouldn’t jump straight into an 8-10 team comp straight away, but that’s what we need to head towards and there isn’t going to be a better time to do it. We still need capital in the interim though, and that’s what the PE approaches are all about. Australian Rugby would be a pretty attractive investment opportunity over the next 7 years or so if structured right.

So until 25 at a min we are stuck with a 5 team super AU comp? No thanks…….

I think it’s crazy optimistic of you that a Lions tour/a hole World Cup will bring back the number of players needed to to justify what you’re saying? How many do you expect to return?

 

[Rugbynutter39]

This is a good point, it doesn't have to be a sky scraper from day one, but why not a 10 year vision of where you could be.

You sign upto a TT and you give all that away, you limit your ability to make any changes moving forward and we saw what happened with that approach with 20 years of Super Rugby.

Just one factor alone by signing a TT deal you negate your ability to ever have two teams in NSW, you literally cede the traditional home & heartland of rugby in this country to the other codes, you don'y even try to compete.

I think most on here realised the 8 team + is 5 to 10 year vision. And ideally we somehow move to 6 with ideally Fiji being the sixth so we don’t already stretch our limited depth to fill 6 teams when struggling to fill 5 team’s at sufficient quality. We need to improve and make more strategic investments and that is where PE, lions tour in 25 and RWC in 2027 comes into play.

Key to resolve here is trying to resolve getting a better TT / champions league designed competition bolted on to a domestic competition that addresses the lopsided contests we saw with this TT. I definitely don’t think we could sustain the damage of another TT like this next year. That is the real challenge for RA given what nzru wants does not appear to align to what nzru wants due to competing agendas and sadly agendas that are outside of what should be key customer goal of providing best TT product that appeals to fans.

 

[hoggy]

Like I said in one of my previous posts, those ratings are useless, there’s too many outside factors. I’m surprised so many people are rushing to use that them as an example, I get it’s all we have to use atm but surely you recognise the flaw in using them in a argument?

Nah I care if the Brumbies are playing the Highlanders. What I don’t care about is the Brumbies playing the reds for the 3rd time in 9 rounds. I don’t get this sense of nationalism to the point where you can’t enjoy a game of rugby because one of the teams happens to come from one country over.

You can't just dismiss those ratings because it doesn't suit your argument, and even if you do then lets take the steady decline in ratings of the last ten years as an example.

Okay you may not care about about this sense of nationalism your a rusted on rugby fan, your gonna watch whatever is provided.

The problem the game has here is about 90% of the population in Australia do seem to care about that nationalist approach.
At what point does rugby start targeting that 90%.

 

[KOB1987]

So until 25 at a min we are stuck with a 5 team super AU comp? No thanks…….

I think it’s crazy optimistic of you that a Lions tour/a hole World Cup will bring back the number of players needed to to justify what you’re saying? How many do you expect to return?

No we go to 6 first and foremost, that could happen as soon as next year. I’d do that for 2 years then go to 8 for the year of the Lions tour. There would obviously be some TT crossover as well, just not the debacle that we had this year.

As for the second part, it’s not only about bringing back players but also retaining them. If we can do a dozen of the best each way that would go a long way to our overall depth, it’s not insurmountable.

 

[Bullrush]

Funny you should say that, yes English allow foreigners in their comp, but they don't allow their test players to play elsewhere, neither do Wales etc, and I not sure , but don't think the French let anyone to play outside the country. Neither do Australia!!

They can afford to do that with the money that they can generate with their market size.

 

[sendit]

You can't just dismiss those ratings because it doesn't suit your argument, and even if you do then lets take the steady decline in ratings of the last ten years as an example.

Okay you may not care about about this sense of nationalism your a rusted on rugby fan, your gonna watch whatever is provided.

The problem the game has here is about 90% of the population in Australia do seem to care about that nationalist approach.
At what point does rugby start targeting that 90%.

I’m not dismissing it, I’m questioning it’s validity, which based off one sample size and large mitigation external factors is very fair, don’t you think?

I think a very large portion of engaging that 90% can be done through starting to get fair dinkum about marketing and junior participation. As it is rugby just expect people to show up. Couple that with the Stan deal and we are going to eat into that percentage

 

[Bullrush]

You can't just dismiss those ratings because it doesn't suit your argument, and even if you do then lets take the steady decline in ratings of the last ten years as an example.

Okay you may not care about about this sense of nationalism your a rusted on rugby fan, your gonna watch whatever is provided.

The problem the game has here is about 90% of the population in Australia do seem to care about that nationalist approach.
At what point does rugby start targeting that 90%.

I don't think it's about dismissing the ratings. It's about understanding why they have been declining and the answer is pretty simple - Australian teams have been losing.

@Quick Hands posted the numbers earlier:

The Reds best attendance number:
2010 - 22,826
2011 - 33,253
2012 - 34,479
2013 - 31,836

The Brumbies best attendance numbers:
2003 - 21,536
2004 - 21,450
2005 22,895

The Waratahs best attendance numbers:
2003 - 30,521
2004 - 34,500
2005 - 33,739

What's happening in those years? They are winning. They are contenders. The Tahs took a massive hit over the next 10 years dropping to just and average of 17,000-odd in 2013 but in 2014 when they won, they go up to 19,500 and go up again in 2015 when they finished 2nd in the standings but fall in 2016 when they start losing again.

The problem isn't that there aren't enough local derbies. The problem is the losing.

I guess one way to fix that is to lower the standard of the competition by not playing teams you don't think you can beat but I'm not sure that given these are supposed to be the elite players, the best Australia has to offer, you can fool Australians for too long by taking the easy road to winning more games.

 

[Derpus]

I guess one way to fix that is to lower the standard of the competition by not playing teams you don't think you can beat but I'm I'm not sure these are supposed to be the elite players, the best Australia has to offer and I'm not sure you fool Australians for too long by taking the easy road to winning more games.

I guess it would constitute a tacit acceptance of the fact that a large percentage (eventually a majority) of Australia's best clearly won't be playing here.

Go see the Aussie Exodus Thread. Skelton seems to be the best lock in France. He alone would have made a monumental difference to the Tahs season.

For whatever reason NZ have managed to stave off the drain (though, maybe they haven't. Maybe they just had more initial depth to tap into).

 

[sendit]

100%, it's also about recognizing why these tv stats may be favorable too . Super AU may very well be the way forward but...

How do we know these tv ratings aren't because of

*The STAN deal
*Covid & the Aussie public wanting sport as a result

*Would TT have fared better if the same amount of marketing and lead up was put into it as Super AU
*Would TT have fared better if it was run before Super AU

There are way too many variables for anyone to definitively say Super AU was an out and out success

 

[hoggy]

100%, it's also about recognizing why these tv stats may be favorable too . Super AU may very well be the way forward but.

How do we know these tv ratings aren't because of

*The STAN deal
*Covid & the Aussie public wanting sport as a result

*Would TT have fared better if the same amount of marketing and lead up was put into it as Super AU
*Would TT have fared better if it was run before Super AU

There are way too many variables for anyone to definitively say Super AU was an out and out success

But it just doesn't make sense to abandon it just because you have some doubts about the length of time that data is gathered.

What assurance do you have that a TT will do any better, what data are you basing that on.

Okay lets accept that the AU had a noneymoon period, But at least there was a small fire of enthusiasm and growth, why would you reject that and not at least give it 3/4 years to show some genuine results.

When at least taking into account this is by far the overwhelmingly prefered option of Australian sporting public. You reject that to sign upto a competition that has equally if not more queston marks hanging over it.

 

[Bullrush]

I guess it would constitute a tacit acceptance of the fact that a large percentage (eventually a majority) of Australia's best clearly won't be playing here.

Go see the Aussie Exodus Thread. Skelton seems to be the best lock in France. He alone would have made a monumental difference to the Tahs season.

For whatever reason NZ have managed to stave off the drain (though, maybe they haven't. Maybe they just had more initial depth to tap into).

Just read an article from last week about Skelton. This was written near the start,

"Throughout his time in England, we marvelled at the Australian who was overweight and unfit when first arriving in North London"

Skelton has been playing with guys like Victor Vito, Tawera Kerr-Barlow, Maro Itoje, George Kruis, the Vunipolas etc.

It's almost as if playing with and against some of the best players in world rugby has lifted his game. Australia needs better depth in players and coaches and NZ should be looking to work with Aus to fix that issue if they want the Super Rugby TT to be meaningful and successful.

 

[Derpus]

Just read an article from last week about Skelton. This was written near the start,

"Throughout his time in England, we marvelled at the Australian who was overweight and unfit when first arriving in North London"

Skelton has been playing with guys like Victor Vito, Tawera Kerr-Barlow, Maro Itoje, George Kruis, the Vunipolas etc.

It's almost as if playing with and against some of the best players in world rugby has lifted his game. Australia needs better depth in players and coaches and NZ should be looking to work with Aus to fix that issue if they want the Super Rugby TT to be meaningful and successful.

I reckon it had more to do with addressing his mental health issues and getting into a professional strength and conditioning program.

The 'playing the best' thing seems like one of those statements everyone takes as axiomatic without actually analyzing.

 

[Bullrush]

I reckon it had more to do with addressing his mental health issues and getting into a professional strength and conditioning program.

The 'playing the best' thing seems like one of those statements everyone takes as axiomatic without actually analyzing.

It's not just playing against the best - it's playing WITH them. That's why I noted his teammates and not so much his opposition.

 

[Rugbynutter39]

Just read an article from last week about Skelton. This was written near the start,

"Throughout his time in England, we marvelled at the Australian who was overweight and unfit when first arriving in North London"

Skelton has been playing with guys like Victor Vito, Tawera Kerr-Barlow, Maro Itoje, George Kruis, the Vunipolas etc.

It's almost as if playing with and against some of the best players in world rugby has lifted his game. Australia needs better depth in players and coaches and NZ should be looking to work with Aus to fix that issue if they want the Super Rugby TT to be meaningful and successful.

I share the same view as we are the biggest player outside of nz to help create a viable Asia Pacific competition to ward of the threat of European and Japanese rugby poaching our players as well as ward of the threat of nrl. We need to create a strong viable commercial product that can pay decent salaries to negate these threats. I really hence don’t understand why nzru appears so combative and not more collaborative to help oz rugby grow and be stronger as would create more viable teams at super rugby and wallaby level to create better products to grow the fan base as well as more pathways for nz players aNd coaches to lessen the drain to Japan and Europe as well as nrl. To me it is economics and business mgt 101 and suggests to me not enough commercial and strategic grunt at nzru to see the vision which holds back creating a stronger Asia pacific rugby footprint and strong games and fan appeal to negate these threats.

Yes I just don’t understand nzru’s mentality as appears bound in outdated amateur era and the world has moved on but nzru appears to have not.

 

[Bullrush]

I share the same view as we are the biggest player outside of nz to help create a viable Asia Pacific competition to ward of the threat of European and Japanese rugby poaching our players as well as ward of the threat of nrl. We need to create a strong viable commercial product that can pay decent salaries to negate these threats. I really hence don’t understand why nzru appears so combative and not more collaborative to help oz rugby grow and be stronger as would create more viable teams at super rugby and wallaby level to create better products to grow the fan base as well as more pathways for nz players aNd coaches to lessen the drain to Japan and Europe as well as nrl. To me it is economics and business mgt 101 and suggests to me not enough commercial and strategic grunt at nzru to see the vision which holds back creating a stronger Asia pacific rugby footprint and strong games and fan appeal to negate these threats.

Yes I just don’t understand nzru’s mentality as appears bound in outdated amateur era and the world has moved on but nzru appears to have not.

I'm not sure but I think it may be because the All Black brand is built globally on basically being perhaps the most dominant sports team in all team sports. If they assist Australia in being more competitive on the field, are they putting the cash cow at risk?

I don't know if that's it but I'm not sure that private ownership of our team - which they are looking at right now - is good for us either.

 

[Derpus]

I'm not sure but I think it may be because the All Black brand is built globally on basically being perhaps the most dominant sports team in all team sports. If they assist Australia in being more competitive on the field, are they putting the cash cow at risk?

I don't know if that's it but I'm not sure that private ownership of our team - which they are looking at right now - is good for us either.

What's the point in being the 'most dominant team in any sport' if there are only 3-4 other teams?

Fuckn stupid.