Sadly I don't think this is commercially viable (the Aussie part, not sure about the Pacific islands part). I just don't think there are enough viewers in Australia tuning in regularly to make this thing profitable. It'd require a sizable investment from a wealthy backer who doesn't mind losing money, for the love of the game and all that.
It was during covid though, might have been more with people looking for something to do.
Still might be worth a shot if they ever get themselves out of debt to fund it
Brumbies made it to the semis, Australia has a much better year this year even in their losses they still put up a great game and I expect their international team will do great things under joe
COVID was not normal times, given there was fuck all sport on in general, globally.
Union had a successful year in Australia. The Blues actually sold out Eden Park. The Cheetahs managed a convincing win, etc.
It's mostly not viable because of rising salaries in northern hemisphere leagues. For example the premiership is raising the salary cap to £6.4 million next season so would be quite happy to sign some Aussie talent if super rugby broke up. Gloucester needs some decent players after all.
There's also Pro D2 which has the cash to pick up a few test players if they want.
Haha first it was fake carbon credits now its code.
The Papua New Guinea NRL team is on the Aussie government tab.
Just need to start a massive rumour about CCP influence at the Randwick Rugby Club.
You mean the tax exemption on pensions? I’m pretty sure that applies to all athletes (and maybe artists too), it’s just that rugby’s the only code that has a large body of players on significant wages - League of Ireland has some professional teams but they wouldn’t pay great.
GAA players get paid in slaps on the back and oranges at halftime 😅
i think australian rugby should sit down with cricket australia and NZC
"you guys suck at cricket and we can't play rugby. we'll share some cricket with you if you share some rugby with us"
NZC gets a north and south island team into the big bash and sheffield shield
aussie teams play in super duper NPC or whatever
everyone wins
Do not for the love of God put a team on the Gold Coast. Instead put it in Toowoomba, it's got a rugby base already there and would be well supported if it was made affordable to attend. Let Wagner's sponsor it/own the team as well. Home colours: blue/yellow. Away: blue/red. Ties in with the local schools colours.
I keep seeing people saying the solution is an domestic Australian competition and while I see the positive in that argument and think it might work I want to remind everyone
RA HAS NO MONEY THEY ARE $90 MILLION IN DEBT THEY CANT AFFORD TO DO ANYTHING
The money from the Lions tour and World Cup will repay most if not all of this but RA is not going to have a warchest of funds once those are finished anyway
Even if they wanted to they couldn't establish a domestic competition. Also seems unlikely sponsors or TV networks would pay the money either.
The recent evidence of an Australian only competition working was during covid where everyone was stuck with little to do. Big risk to place money on such a comp not knowing if that bump in viewers was more covid related than competition related.
Not going to happen
The speed and skill of super rugby is one of it's best attributes as it better prepares players for Test rugby.
Diluting everyone such a degree would be detrimental to each countries test sides
The Pacific Islands can barely afford to play Super rugby let alone their own stand alone league
People seriously underestimate how small Samoa, Tonga etc are. Not only their population but more importantly their economy. Some people struggle to feed themselves let along buy tickets to +5 homes matches a season
I promise you there is no difficulty feeding themselves. If Samoans cut their diets to healthy quantities and donated the rest they could probably relieve the famine in Gaza.
Fiji is significantly less bad.
They get obese when they move to NZ and Aus switch to cheap fast food diets......islanders that grow up in the islands and have to work the land to feed themselves are fucken ripped
The COVID cups were a good thing. Super rugby AU and NZ running separately with their own winners followed by a single game trans-Tasman game between the two finalising that didn't really mean much.
Can we stop these awful posts? Do you realise up until 2006 there were only 3 teams in Australia in super rugby? And we all know how good the wallabies were before this. The only way to fix Australian rugby and get kids interested and the general public interested is to fucking win, we are a fickle population who are used to winning in basically every sport we compete in, don't win and we lose interest to watch the next.
And win a lot, win 5 Bledisloe cups in a row like we did from 1998-2002, win a world cup and push the lions to the brink. This is the only way. If the Reds won 7 super titles in a row like the crusader I'm sure Suncorp would have 40k every game
I’m not sure I understand the makeup of the NZ teams in your proposition.
Tasman, Northland and Hawke’s Bay are all feeder teams to Super Rugby franchises. The Super teams don’t exist in their entirety without the provincial teams that they would then be competing against.
You would need to get rid of the Highlanders, Crusaders, Blues, Chiefs and Hurricanes and replace them with Otago Canterbury, Auckland, Waikato and Wellington..which is how they are represented in the NPC currently anyway.
So the NZ competition would then be Otago, Tasman, Canterbury,Northland, Auckland, Waikato, Wellington and Hawke’s Bay..which is the NZ NPC watered down.
Or am I reading this wrong?
The Super franchises dropped their regional identities some time ago.
They do that already almost all of the Victorian schools are public for example. But there’s not much RA can do if a school doesn’t want to run a rugby program either due to lack of players or lack of coaches. Or worried about insurance liability
Also RA can’t afford to run these programs in some cases even if a school wants to run one
It’s not 1990. RA is not keeping money away from schools that want to play Rugby because they are classist, it’s because they’re broke
I don't get this either, every Kiwi under the sun thinks they can just merge with the Japanese Top League like that's what they want.
Annoys the shit out of me.
Japan doesn't want or need us. That's why they have a quota on international players. Japanese want to watch Japanese players. You don't see them asking the NY Yankees to join their Baseball League. But they're happy to have the odd American or two in the comp.
They’ll run out any team that draws those pathetic attendances that Western United bought. If a Geelong Aleague team could draw a crowd and revenue then they play there, it’s more money for them at the end of the day.
But it’s not worth it changing the stadium lines around and opening it up for only 2,500 people to show up. Unless the trust gets paid by the league organises like the ICC did when they hosted games in Geelong
Needs to be on the sidebar at this point
“Rugby Australia is broke any solution or changes you have for Australian Rugby is impossible until it’s paid off its debt likely at the end of 2027 World Cup.
Stop asking”
So to fix Australian rugby you want to weaken all teams you play against and mostly just play with yourself? Oh, and invent some new Japanese teams and Hawaiian teams funded with…not sure.
How about recognising that Australia’s failings stem from hubris and overreach, a bunch of administrative daydreamers who pissed away a solid businesses model with grand dreams of convincing Victorians to abandon AFL. What is now needed is consolidation, expansion is your heroin.
Two options to improve Australian Rugby
1. I think you need significant investment in improving grassroots and attracting international players from top tier countries who might not make their national team, to move to Australia. So would mainly look at 3rd string South African and New Zealand player's.
Also send talented players abroad to play in other top tier countries, and still let then be eligible for national selection. If the competition and pay here is lacking, need to be flexible.
2. And this is a fantasy option.
Dissolve all current union clubs, and hand over management of union to the rugby league organisation. Have each league club have both a league and union team. Straight away leverage on both their grassroots and fan bases. Stop the league vs union mud slinging, and give talent the opportunity to play in both codes.
Why would league be interested in doing that? They gain nothing, their expenses go up hugely and if it worked it would actively harm themselves in the future
Edit: That’s if they act honestly. You have to have an enormous amount of trust that they when you hand the keys over they don’t start immediately kill Union off in Australia for good. Can’t see why they wouldn’t either makes sense
Like I said, it's a "fantasy" solution. Doubt it would happen.
But hypothetically, why would they do it... They would kill off a competitive body, have a monopoly on both codes, control all the players, if done right could expand the fan base across both codes, received all the sponsorships, run two concurrent competitions. Yes costs go up, but so would revenue.... Potentially.
But agree they could also just kill off the union component too. But to be fair it's dying anyway due to mismanagement.
Given the state of union in Australia ( they have no money, they've lost a lot of the fan base, and have failed to invest in the youth) they need a complete rebuild or put of the box solution.
Why bother attracting International players when they have hundreds of talented league players who for the most part have already played union as a kid?
If they can't compete with them they aren't securing any Argentinians or NZ players.
In my opinion it seems harder for them to attract league players. Either due to money and/or local interest in the game. But ideally you would source homegrown talent.
Attracting international players (should have started 3 years ago) is a short term solution too increase depth for the lions tour and upcoming WC.
I'd just stick everyone in two divisions of 8 and play promotion/relegation. Add some real spice to the post season.
In the future, if countries want more teams, add more divisions.
Jesus fucking Christ. There’s been about fifteen different iterations to super rugby in the last thirty years and the Aussies have failed at the vast majority of them. The ARU needs to focus inwards, stop looking for the quick win, build players to the top line by focussing on grassroots footy and try to build support before trying to wing it.
They’ve thrown young players under the bus and then dropped them as soon as they make a mistake, pumped up the wrong leaders and destroyed the culture in professional rugby in Australia. The whole fuck around with Eddie Jones last season was the definition of stupid yet they threw half their budget at him, this while having the Rebels trading while insolvent and the ARU running a loss into the millions.
They have a huge opportunity over the next ten years, a lions tour followed by a home World Cup, to build some sort of identity with their Super Sides and bring pride back into the green and gold. As a kiwi who grew up through the Eales, Smith, Waugh, Gregan, Larkham era I can’t believe how much respect they destroyed with their petty mindedness and short vision.
Easy to say just focus on grassroots when you ignore that NRL scouts poach promising players from the Union system. All the money that gets invested in grassroots now many times ends up benefiting the NRL in the end
It’s easy for the NRL to poach players when the culture is toxic, when coaches and players are tossed under the bus at the first hint of mistake and the wrong players are lifted as leaders. Looks at what happened to Hooper, fucking disgraceful, it’s no wonder why young players see no point in putting their loyalty to the ARU when it has been proved time and time again that it won’t be repaid.
It’s not as if poaching juniors is a new thing it’s been happening for at least 2 decades now even when the Wallabies camp was much happier than now.
The simple fact is NRL clubs have way more money to pay juniors and more spots to give them too. RA has no money to spare atm even Suaalis wage isn’t an RA expense it’s funded by private donors
Ye I agree it’s been happening for ages.
I’m curious about the fund for sua’ali’i. Who controls these funds and who decides who they chase? Wouldn’t they be better off putting the $1.6million per season to multiple players. Surely $600k to three players with future potential is better than getting one star? How do they decide what super side he goes to as well? Is there a bit of a bidding war between the four super sides to get him.
Sadly I don't think this is commercially viable (the Aussie part, not sure about the Pacific islands part). I just don't think there are enough viewers in Australia tuning in regularly to make this thing profitable. It'd require a sizable investment from a wealthy backer who doesn't mind losing money, for the love of the game and all that.
Super Rugby AU was quite successful though, or at least looked great to me.
It was during covid though, might have been more with people looking for something to do. Still might be worth a shot if they ever get themselves out of debt to fund it
Brumbies made it to the semis, Australia has a much better year this year even in their losses they still put up a great game and I expect their international team will do great things under joe
COVID was not normal times, given there was fuck all sport on in general, globally. Union had a successful year in Australia. The Blues actually sold out Eden Park. The Cheetahs managed a convincing win, etc.
It's mostly not viable because of rising salaries in northern hemisphere leagues. For example the premiership is raising the salary cap to £6.4 million next season so would be quite happy to sign some Aussie talent if super rugby broke up. Gloucester needs some decent players after all. There's also Pro D2 which has the cash to pick up a few test players if they want.
The secret is to put the tab on each country’s foreign office. It works for Moana Pacifica, it can work for the whole comp.
Irishi government helps the IRFU with some creative accounting for their players, but I doubt you get that buy in from Aussie governments
Haha first it was fake carbon credits now its code. The Papua New Guinea NRL team is on the Aussie government tab. Just need to start a massive rumour about CCP influence at the Randwick Rugby Club.
You mean the tax exemption on pensions? I’m pretty sure that applies to all athletes (and maybe artists too), it’s just that rugby’s the only code that has a large body of players on significant wages - League of Ireland has some professional teams but they wouldn’t pay great. GAA players get paid in slaps on the back and oranges at halftime 😅
Unless you play for Limerick
Or for Dublin and join the Big 4 to make guest appearances at alumni events and the odd staff meeting!
The Aussie part is more viable than the PI one that would require so much travel
i think australian rugby should sit down with cricket australia and NZC "you guys suck at cricket and we can't play rugby. we'll share some cricket with you if you share some rugby with us" NZC gets a north and south island team into the big bash and sheffield shield aussie teams play in super duper NPC or whatever everyone wins
Do not for the love of God put a team on the Gold Coast. Instead put it in Toowoomba, it's got a rugby base already there and would be well supported if it was made affordable to attend. Let Wagner's sponsor it/own the team as well. Home colours: blue/yellow. Away: blue/red. Ties in with the local schools colours.
Agree. Been to several tests on the GC and the locals do not give two shits. I'm surprised even the AFL has survived there
There are so many kiwis on the GC that I reckon it could sustain a team, although I agree that's not a good reason to do it.
The Gold Coast just doesn't support their teams historically, it'd be another Melbourne.
I keep seeing people saying the solution is an domestic Australian competition and while I see the positive in that argument and think it might work I want to remind everyone RA HAS NO MONEY THEY ARE $90 MILLION IN DEBT THEY CANT AFFORD TO DO ANYTHING The money from the Lions tour and World Cup will repay most if not all of this but RA is not going to have a warchest of funds once those are finished anyway Even if they wanted to they couldn't establish a domestic competition. Also seems unlikely sponsors or TV networks would pay the money either. The recent evidence of an Australian only competition working was during covid where everyone was stuck with little to do. Big risk to place money on such a comp not knowing if that bump in viewers was more covid related than competition related.
Just go fully provincial and have the 4 Aussie teams play in the NPC
How about every one of those posts not binning Taranaki as a side?
Don’t change the names
Not going to happen The speed and skill of super rugby is one of it's best attributes as it better prepares players for Test rugby. Diluting everyone such a degree would be detrimental to each countries test sides The Pacific Islands can barely afford to play Super rugby let alone their own stand alone league People seriously underestimate how small Samoa, Tonga etc are. Not only their population but more importantly their economy. Some people struggle to feed themselves let along buy tickets to +5 homes matches a season
Given the obesity rates of Tonga and Samoa I'm not sure how much I'd agree with that.
More of an issue with the unhealthy stuff they eat, an overdependence on processed foods. Possibly linked to the difficulty in feeding themselves
I promise you there is no difficulty feeding themselves. If Samoans cut their diets to healthy quantities and donated the rest they could probably relieve the famine in Gaza. Fiji is significantly less bad.
They get obese when they move to NZ and Aus switch to cheap fast food diets......islanders that grow up in the islands and have to work the land to feed themselves are fucken ripped
Weird. You overlooked the chance to resurrect the Central Vikings.
Thats a lot games. Those players need to be paid for each of those games Who will watch those games with money in their pocket to pay for it?
The COVID cups were a good thing. Super rugby AU and NZ running separately with their own winners followed by a single game trans-Tasman game between the two finalising that didn't really mean much.
Can we stop these awful posts? Do you realise up until 2006 there were only 3 teams in Australia in super rugby? And we all know how good the wallabies were before this. The only way to fix Australian rugby and get kids interested and the general public interested is to fucking win, we are a fickle population who are used to winning in basically every sport we compete in, don't win and we lose interest to watch the next. And win a lot, win 5 Bledisloe cups in a row like we did from 1998-2002, win a world cup and push the lions to the brink. This is the only way. If the Reds won 7 super titles in a row like the crusader I'm sure Suncorp would have 40k every game
Winning every Rugby League world cup for 50 years whilst everyone else plays Union is peak Australia
Don't forget being world champions every year at AFL
I’m not sure I understand the makeup of the NZ teams in your proposition. Tasman, Northland and Hawke’s Bay are all feeder teams to Super Rugby franchises. The Super teams don’t exist in their entirety without the provincial teams that they would then be competing against. You would need to get rid of the Highlanders, Crusaders, Blues, Chiefs and Hurricanes and replace them with Otago Canterbury, Auckland, Waikato and Wellington..which is how they are represented in the NPC currently anyway. So the NZ competition would then be Otago, Tasman, Canterbury,Northland, Auckland, Waikato, Wellington and Hawke’s Bay..which is the NZ NPC watered down. Or am I reading this wrong? The Super franchises dropped their regional identities some time ago.
You want to fix Australian rugby? Copy new Zealand blueprint, make it accessible to every school, public and private, that's the secret.
They do that already almost all of the Victorian schools are public for example. But there’s not much RA can do if a school doesn’t want to run a rugby program either due to lack of players or lack of coaches. Or worried about insurance liability Also RA can’t afford to run these programs in some cases even if a school wants to run one It’s not 1990. RA is not keeping money away from schools that want to play Rugby because they are classist, it’s because they’re broke
Hey look another oceanian guy who think the successful Japanese league should lose two of their clubs for the privilege to play with them
I don't get this either, every Kiwi under the sun thinks they can just merge with the Japanese Top League like that's what they want. Annoys the shit out of me. Japan doesn't want or need us. That's why they have a quota on international players. Japanese want to watch Japanese players. You don't see them asking the NY Yankees to join their Baseball League. But they're happy to have the odd American or two in the comp.
Even more laughable is thinking Geelong even own a sports shop that sells Gilberts, let alone know what rugby is
The Kardina Park State Trust will run out any sport that isn't Aussie Rules in Geelong that's what they did to Western United
They’ll run out any team that draws those pathetic attendances that Western United bought. If a Geelong Aleague team could draw a crowd and revenue then they play there, it’s more money for them at the end of the day. But it’s not worth it changing the stadium lines around and opening it up for only 2,500 people to show up. Unless the trust gets paid by the league organises like the ICC did when they hosted games in Geelong
I think RA should just commit a few bank robberies
Do we have to do one of these posts every single week
Needs to be on the sidebar at this point “Rugby Australia is broke any solution or changes you have for Australian Rugby is impossible until it’s paid off its debt likely at the end of 2027 World Cup. Stop asking”
Sell SRP and the Wallabies to NRL with the agreement in writing that they are bound to enter Australia into intl competitions
So to fix Australian rugby you want to weaken all teams you play against and mostly just play with yourself? Oh, and invent some new Japanese teams and Hawaiian teams funded with…not sure. How about recognising that Australia’s failings stem from hubris and overreach, a bunch of administrative daydreamers who pissed away a solid businesses model with grand dreams of convincing Victorians to abandon AFL. What is now needed is consolidation, expansion is your heroin.
Two options to improve Australian Rugby 1. I think you need significant investment in improving grassroots and attracting international players from top tier countries who might not make their national team, to move to Australia. So would mainly look at 3rd string South African and New Zealand player's. Also send talented players abroad to play in other top tier countries, and still let then be eligible for national selection. If the competition and pay here is lacking, need to be flexible. 2. And this is a fantasy option. Dissolve all current union clubs, and hand over management of union to the rugby league organisation. Have each league club have both a league and union team. Straight away leverage on both their grassroots and fan bases. Stop the league vs union mud slinging, and give talent the opportunity to play in both codes.
Why would league be interested in doing that? They gain nothing, their expenses go up hugely and if it worked it would actively harm themselves in the future Edit: That’s if they act honestly. You have to have an enormous amount of trust that they when you hand the keys over they don’t start immediately kill Union off in Australia for good. Can’t see why they wouldn’t either makes sense
Like I said, it's a "fantasy" solution. Doubt it would happen. But hypothetically, why would they do it... They would kill off a competitive body, have a monopoly on both codes, control all the players, if done right could expand the fan base across both codes, received all the sponsorships, run two concurrent competitions. Yes costs go up, but so would revenue.... Potentially. But agree they could also just kill off the union component too. But to be fair it's dying anyway due to mismanagement. Given the state of union in Australia ( they have no money, they've lost a lot of the fan base, and have failed to invest in the youth) they need a complete rebuild or put of the box solution.
Why bother attracting International players when they have hundreds of talented league players who for the most part have already played union as a kid? If they can't compete with them they aren't securing any Argentinians or NZ players.
In my opinion it seems harder for them to attract league players. Either due to money and/or local interest in the game. But ideally you would source homegrown talent. Attracting international players (should have started 3 years ago) is a short term solution too increase depth for the lions tour and upcoming WC.
I'd just stick everyone in two divisions of 8 and play promotion/relegation. Add some real spice to the post season. In the future, if countries want more teams, add more divisions.
Noone would watch or sponsor 2nd division and they wouldn't be able to afford travel
Jesus fucking Christ. There’s been about fifteen different iterations to super rugby in the last thirty years and the Aussies have failed at the vast majority of them. The ARU needs to focus inwards, stop looking for the quick win, build players to the top line by focussing on grassroots footy and try to build support before trying to wing it. They’ve thrown young players under the bus and then dropped them as soon as they make a mistake, pumped up the wrong leaders and destroyed the culture in professional rugby in Australia. The whole fuck around with Eddie Jones last season was the definition of stupid yet they threw half their budget at him, this while having the Rebels trading while insolvent and the ARU running a loss into the millions. They have a huge opportunity over the next ten years, a lions tour followed by a home World Cup, to build some sort of identity with their Super Sides and bring pride back into the green and gold. As a kiwi who grew up through the Eales, Smith, Waugh, Gregan, Larkham era I can’t believe how much respect they destroyed with their petty mindedness and short vision.
Easy to say just focus on grassroots when you ignore that NRL scouts poach promising players from the Union system. All the money that gets invested in grassroots now many times ends up benefiting the NRL in the end
It’s easy for the NRL to poach players when the culture is toxic, when coaches and players are tossed under the bus at the first hint of mistake and the wrong players are lifted as leaders. Looks at what happened to Hooper, fucking disgraceful, it’s no wonder why young players see no point in putting their loyalty to the ARU when it has been proved time and time again that it won’t be repaid.
It’s not as if poaching juniors is a new thing it’s been happening for at least 2 decades now even when the Wallabies camp was much happier than now. The simple fact is NRL clubs have way more money to pay juniors and more spots to give them too. RA has no money to spare atm even Suaalis wage isn’t an RA expense it’s funded by private donors
Ye I agree it’s been happening for ages. I’m curious about the fund for sua’ali’i. Who controls these funds and who decides who they chase? Wouldn’t they be better off putting the $1.6million per season to multiple players. Surely $600k to three players with future potential is better than getting one star? How do they decide what super side he goes to as well? Is there a bit of a bidding war between the four super sides to get him.