Tomsey
Academy Player
- Joined
- Dec 7, 2008
- Messages
- 169
- Country Flag
- Club or Nation
I have been watching a little of the ITM and Currie Cups recently and it saddens me to compare it to the Australian equivalent (if you can call it that) which can only be Sydney/Brisbane club rugby. The quality of rugby/players/facilities is dismal is comparison. Sure there are pretty decent sides like your Sydney Uni's and Manly's, but you also have clubs like Parramatta and Penrith who can barley scrape together a first grade side and get beaten by more that 100-0. This raises a number of problems. Firstly it affects the depth of national quality players. The 5 Super Rugby franchises have a very small player base to select their squads from.
The poor quality of club rugby has lead to the development of “2nd XV's†for the Super teams like the Junior Waratah's and the Brumby Runners. However these squads are based around youth which so limits the opportunities for older players. They also play a very limited number of games (the Junior Waratah's only played 6 games this year). This is a huge part of the reason as to why so many schoolboy stars end up in rugby league. Once they finish school all they have to look forward to is playing 6 games a year for the a team that rarely trains and playing club rugby for next to nothing. Or they can go and play Toyota Cup (the NRL under20 competition) for a Sydney NRL team, which is much better money and offers a real chance to progress into 1st grade. Since the world cup in 2003 Rugby's share of the Australian sporting market has dropped form 22% to 13%*and League and AFL are still increasing their push for greater player numbers.
All this points to a need for an Australian nation wide rugby competition. Where is ARC tried and failed in 2007, another competition must succeed if Rugby is to remain part of the Australian sporting landscape and the Wallabies are ever to beat the All Blacks again.
I believe if an Australian Provincial competition is ever going to take off it needs to be based around the Super Rugby teams. Have Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra and Perth teams. This means they can directly feed the their respective Super Rugby counterparts and the supporters are directly transferable. If you support the Waratah's then you are likely to support Sydney. If you Support the Force then you will go for Perth etc. In the ARC they had two teams in Sydney and Brisbane, effectively alienating them from supporters. I would also go with a Queensland and NSW Country sides. They could be based in regional cities like Bathurst (pop. 35 000) or Wagga (pop. 60 000) in NSW and Townsville (pop. 160 000) in QLD. Support and sponsorship could be sourced from the entire regional populations of these states meaning they would be commercially viable. The intra-state games would also be blockbusters. Imagine a NSW Country vs. Sydney game! That's seven teams so three would play every week and the other one gets a bye. They play each other twice each then a top 4 finals series makes it a 14 week competition, making it a similar length to the ITM cup which is 15 weeks.
There is plenty of room for expansion but I believe its better to start small because that means early problems/losses are comparatively small meaning one bad season doesn't mean the competition dies. (alla the ARC). Only 3 games a week also means maximum exposure because all three could be televised (eg. Friday, Saturday nights and Sunday afternoon games.)
The model is obviously not perfect but something must be done to improve the quality of rugby in Australia for the viewers sake, and for the sake of Wallabies selectors.
* SOURCE:http://www.smh.com.au/rugby-union/union-news/rugby-is-paying-the-price-for-smugness-in-a-changing-cutthroat-marketplace-20100728-10w44.html
The poor quality of club rugby has lead to the development of “2nd XV's†for the Super teams like the Junior Waratah's and the Brumby Runners. However these squads are based around youth which so limits the opportunities for older players. They also play a very limited number of games (the Junior Waratah's only played 6 games this year). This is a huge part of the reason as to why so many schoolboy stars end up in rugby league. Once they finish school all they have to look forward to is playing 6 games a year for the a team that rarely trains and playing club rugby for next to nothing. Or they can go and play Toyota Cup (the NRL under20 competition) for a Sydney NRL team, which is much better money and offers a real chance to progress into 1st grade. Since the world cup in 2003 Rugby's share of the Australian sporting market has dropped form 22% to 13%*and League and AFL are still increasing their push for greater player numbers.
All this points to a need for an Australian nation wide rugby competition. Where is ARC tried and failed in 2007, another competition must succeed if Rugby is to remain part of the Australian sporting landscape and the Wallabies are ever to beat the All Blacks again.
I believe if an Australian Provincial competition is ever going to take off it needs to be based around the Super Rugby teams. Have Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra and Perth teams. This means they can directly feed the their respective Super Rugby counterparts and the supporters are directly transferable. If you support the Waratah's then you are likely to support Sydney. If you Support the Force then you will go for Perth etc. In the ARC they had two teams in Sydney and Brisbane, effectively alienating them from supporters. I would also go with a Queensland and NSW Country sides. They could be based in regional cities like Bathurst (pop. 35 000) or Wagga (pop. 60 000) in NSW and Townsville (pop. 160 000) in QLD. Support and sponsorship could be sourced from the entire regional populations of these states meaning they would be commercially viable. The intra-state games would also be blockbusters. Imagine a NSW Country vs. Sydney game! That's seven teams so three would play every week and the other one gets a bye. They play each other twice each then a top 4 finals series makes it a 14 week competition, making it a similar length to the ITM cup which is 15 weeks.
There is plenty of room for expansion but I believe its better to start small because that means early problems/losses are comparatively small meaning one bad season doesn't mean the competition dies. (alla the ARC). Only 3 games a week also means maximum exposure because all three could be televised (eg. Friday, Saturday nights and Sunday afternoon games.)
The model is obviously not perfect but something must be done to improve the quality of rugby in Australia for the viewers sake, and for the sake of Wallabies selectors.
* SOURCE:http://www.smh.com.au/rugby-union/union-news/rugby-is-paying-the-price-for-smugness-in-a-changing-cutthroat-marketplace-20100728-10w44.html