🏉 What next for Aussie Rugby? Part 1
Despite the weekend's results, the last week was both an exciting and delicious week for the game and proof it's on the up.
Last week was great for Australian Rugby and despite the weekend’s 0-5 result to the Kiwis, I believe the game is heading in the right direction.
A total of 1.3 million viewers tuned in to watch the Super Rugby AU Final and a big piece of chocolate… sorry, piece of the puzzle (lol) was put in place with Rugby Australia (RA) securing Cadbury to a 5-year major sponsorship deal, filling the void left by Qantas.
But where to next?
12 months ago I believed the game’s biggest issue was it’s over-reliance on Foxtel, but with matches now in the hands of an enthusiastic broadcaster it’s time for us to identity the next biggest issue and figure out how to solve it.
And when I say “us”, I mean “anyone who cares about the game” as I believe great ideas can come from anywhere, and it shouldn’t just be tasked to RA staff to identify the problems and to think of solutions.
From Super Rugby’s tournament structure and governance issues, there’s still loads to fix before we can truly say “Rugby is back” and here’s how I think we should approach it:
Time to think different
One of my favourite movies is the American biographical sports drama Moneyball, which is about the Oakland Athletics Baseball team and how their General Manager (GM) used a controversial recruiting philosophy to assemble a team that won a record 20 games in a row.
And he did it on a shoe-string budget.
One the best scenes is where GM Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt) tries to help his colleagues understand what’s the real problem they face, and implores them to think differently to their rich opposition.
Check out the 2-min scene below:
“If we try to play like the All Blacks and AFL in here, and then we’ll lose to All Blacks and AFL out there.”
And I think there’s a lot of similarities to the predicament Australian Rugby is in.
So whats the problem?
Australia is the most competitive sporting market (per capita) on the planet and Rugby Union has it tougher here than in any other country because of it.
Around the time of the Sydney Olympics, Australia was a world sporting powerhouse, over-achieving (on a per capita basis) in many International sports like Swimming, Cricket and Rugby Union which filled the country with pride.
But Australian culture has changed, and I believe fans would rather watch their team beat a team from the next suburb, then from the other side of the world.
And this trend has lead to more Aussie-centric sports like AFL and Rugby League to dominate the publics attention.
Plus there’s always at least one set of happy fans celebrating a win, unlike all the Aussie fans who watched the weekend’s matches of Super Rugby Trans Tasman.
And while Rugby has been successful here in the past, if we think we can simply rejig what worked in the golden era of Gregan, Larkham and Eales, then we’ll just wind up back where we were 12 months ago.
We need to do something different, and the one thing I can think of is for the code to “think further into the future” than any other code and the other Rugby playing nations.
If most Rugby nations are primarily focused on the 2023 Rugby World Cup, and we do the same, we’ll lose.
Also most codes here in Australia are focused on this season and perhaps next, leaving an opportunity for Australian Rugby to plan further into the future, by capturing more of the streaming market and other long term initiatives.
Now I’m not saying RA doesn’t think into the future, but parting ways with Foxtel was done out of necessity, rather than it being a bold move to best ride the streaming tidal wave that’s fast approaching.
An example of RA planning for the future was building a 3rd tier of professional Rugby with the Australian Rugby Championship in 2007, and was my stepping stone into professional Rugby.
But with the benefit of hindsight, RA just threw money at the competition without long term financial outcomes in mind, and it was scraped after just one season.
Had the more fiscally responsible version (that was the National Rugby Championship) being introduced then instead of 2014 and been allowed time to grow, I think we’d have a successful national tournament similar to Super Rugby AU.
Build for 2027
Now I appreciate it’s hard to think long term when the primary focus is (rightly so) on the short term financial survival of the professional game.
But casting our minds further into the future is cheap and will allows us to adapt to changes quicker, as we’ll be more likely to see them coming.
Apart from long term thinking off the field, I believe it applies on the field as well as all planning from player selection to coaching appointments, should revolve around hosting and winning the 2027 World Cup and win the Lions Series in 2025.
Allowing ample time to build cohesion and combinations between players is something former Wallaby Ben Darwin has been shouting from the rooftops about.
When Rugby was last at it’s peak, we’d won the 2001 Lions series and nearly won a home World Cup. Not mention we already had the 1999 World Cup tucked away in our trophy cabinet, and we have time to prepare for when the Rugby calendar repeats itself for the first time in 24 years.
And all this is not to say we shouldn’t give the 2023 World Cup in France a red hot crack, but I think we should take pressure and expectations off a young team and just let them rip in with the knowledge most of them will get a 2nd crack.
But this time, they’ll be on home soil and with the confidence that comes from taming a Lions side full of the best players from the Northern Hemisphere.
Next week, I’ll discuss what I think the game needs to do off the field in order to succeed: Unite the Rugby community and build tribalism.
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