we are heading down that route, how long it will take? dont know but would suggest it will be within the next 20 years, maybe earlier depending on broadcasting deals.

The probnlem is, while there may be more money in the SH game, there will always be more in the NH gamge and the difference between tyhe two seems to be widening

I'm not so sure, France recently upped the number of French qualified players the teams must have which might reduce the flow and English teams broadly won't take more foreigners and can't really. Also trying out a different system, one that not only works successfully elsewhere but also, as I pointed out before,worked successfully in Netball in your countries is worth doing. If what's happening now is not working, change it.

Ultimately I agree with this. I think Super Rugby is great. I'm British but I prefer watching it to European rugby. Look at how the cheetahs have coped with Pro 14. I think it is here to stay they just need to get the format right.

I'd pay for a rugby Netflix sort of thing. Give me all of your NZ and Aus televised games, from Super to Shute to 1st XV schools and I'll watch on delay when I'm good and ready.

Thats the answer for the NH. Doesn't have to be live but available to stream at their convenience

Trouble with games on delay is the internet. Gives away the results!!!

Rugby is in terminal decline in Australia. Dumping the Force hasn’t improved anything.

Hard to say whether a modified Sup rugby is the answer, or pull out all together and select Wobs from local comp and overseas. Either way, I don’t expect the twats running the show to get it right.

I think you're being overly pessimistic. You admit that the current system isn't sustainable, but then seem to be suggesting that we just give up and let market forces decide what happens. Sorry but that's crap - I'd rather SH changed things up. Rugby is still a popular game in all three countries and there is no reason whatsoever that professional domestic leagues cannot be sustainable in Australia, NZ and South Africa. I'm not talking about rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, I'm talking about changing the whole freakin ship.

The Brazilian soccer analogy isn't really accurate. The difference in wages between European and Brazilian soccer, and European Rugby and SANZAR Rugby is much greater. We may not be able to compete with their wages, but we can do better than we are currently doing.

The trans tasman comp isn't happening. Australia put on your big boy pants and just embrace your own domestic competition. How are the Melbourne Stockaders doing by the way?

I think you're right we could probably do as well as the A-League. The problem there is, they play 27 matches each, and they have squad sizes of around 23 players, with a salary cap of $3m.

So discount the rugby deal by the number of games and divide by the number of players in a squad, and you're paying your players a relatively tiny wage.

Rugby will survive in Australia, thanks mainly to the sort of twats who run the show.


It will survive in Sydney and Brisbane mainly, and will be kept alive primarily by the private schools twats. And some of the universities.


Club rugby will continue as a semi-professional effort, why wouldn't it? It is bloody good to watch, and play. If we want to field a competitive Wobbs team, we will have to select players from overseas competitions.

I would hate that. I actually don't like watching NZ teams play each other, I prefer to see them playing other countries teams.

As other posters have noted Super rugby is where we pay our players to play in NZ, we'd be stuffed without it.

Club rugby runs at a major loss so that's why it may not survive

After culling 2 sides us Saffers are on the right track.

Well, the Bulls are looking muchly improved this year, but you haven't really 'culled' 2 sides though, they're just playing in a different competition. Your quality players are still going to be spread across 6 teams.

Maybe not as a professional sport, but surely the sport will survive? What is the worst case? Back to amateurism?

Id argue the Aus sides are looking much better this year too.

The Rebels are much better. The Reds are much better. The Tahs are much better. The Brumbies are much worse.

THe Aus teams arent going to win it, but teams that were cellar dwellers are now mid table teams.

Great to see the Rebels and Reds start off with a hiss and a roar, they've had a rough couple of matches since but the improvement has been stark. I haven't seen a huge amount of the Tahs matches, but are they really looking better?
In any case, I'd much rather have a strong Aussie conference, it's going to be better for the game, the comp, and provide much better competition for the NZ teams at all levels.

But maybe all that is bad for rugby generally.

Of course it bad for SR. That's why we have a conference system.

Do Trans tasman competitions work for Australia? Their Netball team got better when they stopped it there, Oz's strongest sports are ones with one a trans tasman comp. I wonder if because if Oz get's beaten by NZ it hammers their psychology? NZ must win be innate talent or better resourcing. Where as if Oz beat's NZ it's a case of "Well they are a bigger country, bigger population, per capita and all that".

A domestic competition in that context could boost Australian Rugby if that holds any accuracy.

That's quite saddening really. My view of the Aussies when growing up in the nineties (in UK) was that every kid was playing several sports at the same time and that rugby was one of the most popular sports... aside from Cricket (just.. why cricket lol).

Tell me if i'm wrong, but from my perspective, South African Ruggers is also down the tubes. Every other team is / has moved on from the "up the jersey rugby" synonymous with the South African style. Also, they have a shed load of talent in the European leagues which they don't even consider for the National team.

I think NZ would struggle with a domestic only pro league. Maybe not enough teams? How do you solve a problem like SR?

Terminal decline is overly pesimistic. Look at club rugby finals around the country (even in the bush where I'm told rugby doesn't exist). The 110k people that went to the Australia NZ bled in 2000 haven't all died, but like most aussies, they back winners. We haven't been winning.

For me Super Rugby has never been an ideal competition. For me the idea that you combine provinces and expect to have fans of those provinces support that combined team is flawed. For example, I'm from the BOP. When I was growing up Waikato were our closest rugby neighbour, our "big brother" and the team we wanted to beat the most (yeah beating Auckland and Canterbury would have been great but pretty much never happened plus we didn't have the rivalry created by being neighbours). So I had no love for Waikato when it came to rugby. And yet when Super Rugby started I'm now supposed to support a "combined" team? (combined is in "" because lets face it, BOP players barely feature).
Also, even to this day, outside of NZ no one thinks of BOP when you talk about the Chiefs. It's always Waikato this, Hamilton that. So my team, BOP, is pretty much excluded for all intents and purposes. That grinds my farking gears.

Anyway that is where I am coming from. And it means I have no team that I fervently support. So I have always just thought of Super Rugby as NZ vs Oz or SA (and now Japan and Argentina).

I'm not saying I haven't immensely enjoyed a lot of Super Rugby over the years, I have. But nothing in Super Rugby could match the sheer joy of something like when BOP won the Ranfurly Shield.

I watch Super Rugby because it is rugby and it's all that is on at this time of year. I want something different but I don't know what a realistic replacement would look like. Hopefully one day we get a competition this part of the world deserves, right now we aren't getting that.

agreed. Its got proper shit, I didn't watch a single game this weekend.

Tried to watch the second half of Shorks v Stomps when I got in, but couldn't find it on Sky red button, and then had a much better time watching ABdV hit 90 off 40ish balls in the IPL instead.

edit: But also to be fair there have been a few very entertaining games in the first couple of weeks and some good tries in the few games I did manage to catch.

You guys are blessed with ease of travel as spectators. I could count on one hand, the number of Super Rugby fans I know who've travelled to Australia or South Africa to watch a game. And they were Crusader fans come final time.

yep, the transport logistics & sheer distance kills it really for 99.9% of fans, would expect any actual fans there to be expats and the like

I am wondering if the whole super rugby thing could be condensed into a mini world cup - alternating location every year between SA, NZ and Aus - where the other countries clubs would fly out (as would some fans say) and then you have a mini tournament with games every day, over a few weeks. I think people could save up and do a trip if it was for a tournament rather than one match, everyone would have the same level of fatigue etc. would probably need to be far fewer teams though than present SR.

NB I'm saying there would be at least 1 game on every day, not that every team would be playing every day as that is daft.

One of the benefits of a domestic competition is there there will always be a domestic winner.

The problem is the distance and timezones. Holding a mini comp anywhere only alienates a whole set of fans... already pissed off with a manufactured conference system with its weighted finals series. Rugby fans don't like being sold fake shit like that, not down here.

Super rugby though, the rugby itself, is about as good as you'll get outside tests and I reckon it's the main reason for an extended period of SH dominance which the NH is only now starting to catch up on through coach recruitment, training ideas and skills development along with playing styles, helped along by the declining fortunes of SA and Aus through the misadventures of the game's administration in those countries.

Like it or not, Super rugby has been a cash cow and funded the development of the game here in the SH. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with the game but the way it's presented to the fans will change and what comes of that change will need to continue to generate revenue while recapturing the fans' interest.

That means timezone friendly games and teams with solid history... not some made up hash of a commercial enterprise housed in Japan costing a much loved franchise in Australia a spot, for instance.

I genuinely think that's one reason NRL and AFL do so well.

Harsh.

It's part of the appeal, sadly... but a bigger problem is the host broadcaster for all three sports.

Fox.

Murdoch.

The ARU have to divorce themselves from that parasite and challenge their market, not try to be accommodated within it. The amount of effort Fox put into promoting and supporting the other two codes is way out of proportion.

I'd like to see SANZAAR look at selling rights to streaming services. Go lightweight and fast.

So you want a fully professional BOP team right? I wonder why noone ever thought of that!

Did you consider the fact no one else is putting in a bid for rugby broadcasting rights?

The rights deal isn't due for renewal until 2020 dude. There's plenty of time.

But no one is ever gonna put up $300m/5 yrs for rugby in Oz.

Fox has been brilliant for rugby.

I'm not suggesting that... while I think the way the code is promoted by the rights holder here isn't ideal, compromised by it's conflicting interests across the sporting landscape, rugby down here needs to work together to generate the revenue. No way any of the three countries going alone works.... I'm sure you and I are pretty much agreed on that, aren't we?

I've got a rough idea of selling packages through lightweight internet based streaming services like ESPN who are moving into serious sports coverage... tv, internet and handheld device access to various packages bringing the game straight to the consumer in the format and combinations they want.
Formula 1 was sold last year after decades of ownership by Bernie Ecclestone. I'm not a fan of everything the new owners (American based) are doing with the sport but they are selling packages to their own product and controlling that access really well. It's a model that works. Rugby should be looking at doing the same.

My concern is that the current format is putting a severe handbrake on the development of the SH game because of the geographic spread and the problems caused by timezones. The current SR comp features at most 2 games a week in every country played during prime time. That's at most six prime time games played across the whole of SANZAR. If the three SANZAR nations opted for their own ten team domestic comps, that would mean 15 prime time games played across all three settings. That's a 150% increase. That has to make 3 x strengthened domestic competitions much more valuable than the current flawed setup.

I was a big fan of a Trans Tasman comp, mainly because I support NZ teams, live in Australia and hate 3am games in SA. But I have come to the belief that a TT comp won't work. Australians won't watch their teams get anally gaped by their cross-Tasman foes. They want to watch comps where Australian teams win. And I think NZ would also benefit from having complete control over it's 2nd tier comp.

Yep this. From one competition we've got TV revenues from 5 markets. You're simply never going to get that income any other way. Think an NZ only comp will pay for any sort of league of competitive salaries and grass root development below the ABs? Forget it.