Australian Super rugby has always had a pretty predictable transfer environment. New South Wales largely had the deepest pool and always had a wealth of players to choose from. Queensland was much the same where as ACT took a lot of the scraps from NSW and to a lesser extent Queensland and molded them using the very effective ACT training techniques.

With the advent of the Force this all changed, the depth of Queensland and NSW on the creation of the Force was hardly what it should have been, interest in Rugby Union was waning, perhaps because of the non-performance of the Wallabies and the tendency of the Australian general public to only support winners. ACT and Europe shared the spoils in the form of the players who didn’t play for NSW and QLD and there was not much meat on the bone after they took their cut, so the only option for the Force was to take players from the established powers to create a team from scratch. From then on player transfers became a word which held much of the meaning that it does in many other sports and regions throughout the world.

One day the strength of Rugby in Australia could heal itself to the point where all the current franchises are self sufficient, yet there are a few factors which could make the player transfer market as important as ever to the success of a Super rugby team. The new Super franchise being touted, probably for Melbourne, will bleed even more talent out of the Australian franchises and teams will no longer have the stock to fill in their weak spots, resorting to buying the talent from other teams who may have an abundance of this type of player. Expect to see many more situations occurring like that of the Force in 2008 having a lack of quality halfbacks while NSW kept Josh Valentine playing club rugby as they had a wealth of halfbacks at the time. In the old days perhaps a player from the reserves or club rugby would be promoted but at the level the game is at today the emphasis on professional level players has grown much larger. The problem is that there are very few pathways in Australia for players to become professionals, and even then if they cannot make the grade of Super rugby the franchise will have hardly any chance to get a suitable backup.

With the addition of foreign players to Australian Super rugby teams expect to see many trash articles written about international players wanting to play in certain regions, even if not true.

What worries me about this growing professionalism and importance of the transfer market is that we could end up with the circus similar to European football where the transfer speculation comes in hard and fast, 95% of it is rubbish but is still parroted 1000 times until a deal is made or the sweet respite of the close of the transfer window comes along.

Unfortunately I see evidence of such trash reporting occurring at the moment. As I mentioned above, the Force have had to rely on taking players from other franchises while they develop their own stocks. Perth is viewed as a backward town by the cosmopolitan Eastern states who cannot understand why we pride ourselves in our simple homely ways over much of the perceived pleasures they may possess. So ever since the Force has been started up it has been like a jolt to the Eastern State rugby media, how is it possible that these good Eastern States boys could go to such a backwards place as Perth? I mean, they don’t even have Starbucks or Krispy Kreme!
It gets to the point where the media will report such and such a player is unhappy with the Force and wants to move back to the good old Eastern States. This story is parroted by pretty much every media outlet until the player in question comes out with a statement saying it’s a false story or they re-sign with the Force. The media of course are unaccountable; they were simply quoting their ‘unknown sources’ which are of course never named.

I recall a Brumby fan (I think it was Fushi) saying that he was glad the Force came along as we took the title of the medias whipping boy off the Brumbies. I just hope that by the time a possible Melbourne franchise starts up that the situation doesn’t get any worse. Perth is seen as a backwards town, imagine the Sydney papers if Melbourne starts taking their players. The sky would fall in, Melbourne recruits would be reported by ‘unknown sources’ to have had giant sex orgies and killed hookers, it would be Armageddon.

The answer could be simply ‘don’t pay attention to the media’. But I like rugby and sometimes a good story is released which reflects the amateur mate ship and beauty of the game we love rather then the soul-less, trashy aspects that professionalism has injected into the rugby media. What is the bigger story? A rift between players and coach which was denied by every single party involved or a New Zealand international signing with Queensland in a ground breaking policy change by the ARU? Hell, I heard of the supposed rumour of the signing of Braid a few days before it happened yet the media didn’t really pick up on it until the signing took place, what the hell are they investigating?

 I suppose I will just need to grit my teeth and hope those few good rugby journalists manage to climb their way to the top while the various gossip and sensationalist journalists fall down to writing horoscopes for Woman’s Weekly.

I can dream.