This is a fantastic development which was floated to the NRL in 2013 when rugby was again broke prior to the 2015 broadcast deal. There are a number of important aspects to this.

The benefit for rugby is greater access to funds and players, and for the NRL global opportunities to promote their game.

My biggest issue with both codes is the tendency to forget that these are sports, not businesses. The player should be constantly at the centre of any strategy. Before the NRL was flooded with more money than it can spend, the successful clubs were those that did not lose sight of that.

I would be surprised if many players on both sides of the fence did not want to have a crack at the other code. This type of arrangement will smooth the opportunities for transition but I suspect will be only on a season to season basis, not within seasons. It would also work better if there was one owner of both clubs.

Possibly existing NRL clubs would resist any move to unsettle carefully planned rosters. This won’t be a problem with a new club that will struggle to attract enough players. If this comes to fruition the main point of interest is whether such an opportunity attracts players to the club who might be interested in having a crack at rugby, playing full internationals globally, 7s and the Olympics.

What would help is more competitive games for teams 11-32 including a 32 team world cup played with two sixteen divisions. The top 16 playing for the RWC would have a majority of competitive games. As would the second division of sixteen.

The last financial assets owned by RA and NZR subsequent to the 2027 RWC, assuming the 2029 WRWC is a breakeven proposition, are the SRP franchises.

The logical sequence would be to pump investment into SRP so it can attract quality players from the Pacific Rim and subsequently build commercial value into the competition through quality and broadcast reach into the home countries of the international players attracted. Then sell the franchises into a commercial market when it has matured.

Instead we have World Rugby second guessing themselves as to whether they made a bad decision. Then trying to figure out if there is sufficient support for rugby in the USA or whether it is going to provide a competitive team for the competition. They send a couple of blokes over for a weekend to tell them how to organise themselves better, and figure out which low rent competition won’t mind bearing the cost of making the US competitive.

Reactive, amateur and clumsy. Welcome to rugby administration.

Governance continues to be a major issue with board selections largely remaining in the hands of the Board and its Chair. Maybe a few more apples from the 2012-2013 crop still need to be binned. Having said that I am curious how Queensland RA board members get to meddle. Were they urging RA to pay compensation and get Kiss on board now, or urging the board to move on and pick someone else?
Qld and NSW still only have three votes each, one more than ACT and WA because they are larger states with > 50000 registered players. Demanding that all states have equal votes (two) won’t sound as attractive if NT, Tasmania, SA and Victoria then have equal standing with NSW, Qld, ACT and WA.
JON designed the Constitution to centralise power with the Board, who he expected to control as CEO. That did not quite work out for him, but I do not see that the voting rights of the states are relevant. In all of the rolling disasters of the last decade, the states only once took a position against the Board, and only when RA reached rock bottom. Even then they needed the Board to sack Hamish.
While ideal to have financial voting members at all levels of the game would be great, if you could negotiate around the Constitutional challenges to stability, and if there was any existing culture in the game encouraging financial membership. Most clubs make little or no effort and it goes downhill from there.
I am probably mostly worried about Queensland’s financial security. Historically bouncing between billionaires and paupers, they currently seem to have money to burn. Blocking Kiss’ advancement probably pushing me more towards my existing concern that this is one shot strategy with a few trimmings.

A dream run if we deserve to be in the top six there are plenty of games against higher ranked teams to make up the difference.

A big problem for the Tahs is that a big proportion of SRP players and school and U20 stars come from NSW. They all want good contracts now and the Waratahs get a belting whenever a player comes good elsewhere “the one that got away”. Sadly often as you say, they get there first foundation seasons in NSW then get better offers to go somewhere else, which is where they mature and get match experience under their belt. A draft for SRP players who have no games would probably help everyone. As would a NRC.

My other concern is that we are seeing that the main differentiating attribute of Les Kiss is that he can work with Joe. My concerns are amplified.

If Joe has a winning 2025 (there is some expectation for that) and the Reds fail to advance far in 25 and 26 then Kiss is a dead man walking in the dressing room. As I have said all along, a big gamble for RA.

At that stage they will be forced to Cheika, Lancaster or some other proven international coach for an 18 month campaign. Not that much different to a 24 month campaign, but it will put doubt over SR coaches being advanced to the Wallabies in future.

Just goes to show looking at the big picture works much better when you analyse the pixels. I thought Kiss was a risk and Harry, you have given me no comfort. Having all the choice in the world, we have come back to the favoured, if not proven top performing, coach in SR.

I was disappointed with 2024, a top coach should have done much better with the team he inherited from Thorn. He has not nailed 2025 as yet either.

A lot of moving parts looking forward to 2026. If the Reds are not outstanding what then? Joe will only be a hop and a step away from the RWC and his family will also have gone that far on the journey.

If RA have agreed anything but an option over Kiss when his current contract expires, they have not learned a thing.

I went for ‘ignore’.

I was really commenting on several of the posts rather than the article. Harry’s analysis for me is more a deeper view of why it is foolish to form a partisan opinion on how good your own competition is.

😱

Quite possibly cs but could you point me to the articles comparing the NH and SH competitions where this rigorous and intellectual analysis takes place? I must have missed them. Even so, I suspect my suggested approach of waiting to see how the NH and SH teams play against each other as a better analysis tool.

Rogers is probably just protecting his client from unreasonable expectation. The facts are also pretty much as stated. Just how controversial the statements are I could only judge after seeing the actual show.

A couple of points have far deeper context. I think RA has set the women up to fail in 2022, 2025, and probably 2029:

-Yet to address the relative standing and contractual reward for 7s and 15s players. For a 7s player to be outstanding at the WC will be an enormous achievement. As Rogers says, there should have been separate pathways this year.
-After so long we still have not progressed to a H&A format. To think we reduced the number of teams and failed to increase the number of games played this year from four to eight is just inconceivable. A step up from five games in 2024 to eight this year was not a big step. It would have given the sevens players juggling the two formats significantly greeter opportunity.
-Lack of investment in FT XV players. The sevens players will obviously struggle with the physicality but so will our XV players when we match up against FT players.
-Presumably money is the excuse (I don’t think it is acceptable, why can’t these business superstars, deigning to offer their time to the game for free, raise funds?) so next year we will start to look at FT and try and play Kiwi sides. An even bigger jump on the number of games.

Too little too late but hopefully 2029 will be OK and with luck a far more even playing field in 2033.

I do hope Yapp gambles on a few of the game breaking 7s players and that they can make an impact, if just off the bench

I certainly think so Harry and if the games go the way most are tipping the top four should break away. Having said that, a question mark goes up on either team if they lose.

The Force and Waratahs are the teams to fall away, certainly a problem for both in recent seasons. If they stay consistent both should finish in a tightly packed 5-8 I guess.

All is academic until we see how we go against the Lions and France (assuming they send a real team). I agree with you, I am concerned the new faster SRP is not a good preparation for these internationals.

I suspect this has been my most satisfying achievement on The Roar. Educating a winger about the intellectual hierarchy of a rugby team is Nobel Prize winning stuff.

I encourage it cs, but as often is the case, useless activity is rarely intellectual in nature.

I wish people would shut up with the competition comparisons, about as useful as comparing teams and players from other eras.

The big risk for SRP is that NZ no longer challenges Australia to step up, but slides down itself. It is not just the reduction to 4 Oz teams, but the many changes in rules and refereeing to speed up the game which will become relevant.

Will the Australian teams slide out of the six as the season draws to a close? Will one of them make the final? Will the Wallabies beat the Lions? What will the results of the EOY tours bring? Then we can assess the SRP standard, but not before. Unless it all starts to go pears shaped quickly I guess.

Today’s story on Len Ikiteau demonstrates how important contract flexibility is to align player and RA/NZR interests.

Absolute indictment on a system that allows SR clubs to warehouse depth. SR clubs need some autonomy but warehousing players being topped up by RA is too much. A player many felt had the potential to be a Wallaby just deprived of the opportunity.

Absolutely agree, the only exception being younger players, either pre or rookie SRP. The player gets most of what they desire and RA not really worse off. If this had been the norm in 2023 Noah could have stayed the season at Toulon and I think he would be a far better player for it.

The problem of permanent contracts overseas is that it is just very difficult to keep a Wallaby integrated unless there is some stability, in coach, playing style or established combinations. None of which has applied in the last ten years.

The other big issue that we desperately need a solution. Why do players come back better, but then gradually go backwards.

100%. The female demographic is so important. Girls that play the game may keep playing into adulthood, but they are far more important commercially. You are more likely to be a supporter if you have played. What game will their children play?

The problem with RA since 1994 is their obsession that rugby is a business and must be run by businessmen. It’s a sport that must be run with commercial discipline. The quality of the “businessmen” has been serially poor. A businessman would have looked at the commercial opportunity and recruitment necessity and gone out and raised the money to fund womens rugby.

I hope we will look back in twenty years and recognise the downturn that started in 1994 when we imported a businessman and an upturn that started when we got rid of the last one and appointed rugby people with some commercial nous and a lot of common sense.

RA lost this RWC a long time ago. Forwards with raw power and skill don’t fall out of trees, they are developed in a full time professional environment. RA was not prepared to borrow, or just beg, for the money they needed to invest in the women’s game. This was both a commercial and rugby disaster.

Catch up for 2029 is possible but we have given other countries a huge start. The investment required will be significantly greater than what it could have been. This has to be a priority use of Lions/RWC money and it cannot wait until 2028.

As others have said, the trick to humour is to sail along as close as possible to the truth. However RA and its performance promoting the game since 1995 are too easy a target. Each barb thrown is attached to a significant problem. It is solvable, but like you Ben, I am not seeing any sign of RA learning any lesson from the last 30 years. I do remain hopeful that Daniel and Phil are going to take us in a new direction.

JON had no plan for the post RWC period. Just spend more money to make rugby the number two winter sport by attracting non rugby supporters, mainly from the NRL. Simple fact, if you never played the game and don’t know anyone who did, you are highly unlikely to become a rugby fan. RA did one better than just wasting a whole lot of money chasing non rugby people, they alienated rugby people.

The only public solution aired for post 2027 is that we tie the money up in a special future trust. Probably something brain dead like the current fund being promoted that donates one percentage of its capital to rugby every year. If the money is not substantially diminished by market volatility, or bad investment, it will out live RA and its successors.

Maybe I will get some discussion on my post yesterday, which I could mostly have written at any time over the last six years. Oops, that’s right, I have.

“These are the big issues facing Australian Rugby and well worth some discussion.

Strategic Plan

I agree it was a little unremarkable but a huge step forward from the glossy brochure of 2016 and the vacuum since 2020. A little more practically focused but of course will become totally useless if there is no transparency over achievements or accountability for failure.

At the minimum I would hope there is now a far more detailed plan up until the World Cup in 2027 and the year beyond. I certainly believe that such a plan should be much widely discussed so that there is more brains going into the input and the commitment of the broader Rugby community to achieving outcomes.

Financial Investment

RA has been impossibly fortunate to have a 12 yearly Lions tour and probably our last World Cup land right now. The reality is that the Lions money is pretty much gone if the loan is to be repaid and some investment made into women’s Rugby for the World Cup and next year.

This should not really be a problem as Rugby needs to survive on its own income. Past weaknesses caused by the failure to increase the revenue or decrease the costs of professional Rugby must be eliminated. Increasing revenues will not be possible as long as community Rugby remains unloved, they purchase memberships, merchandise, sponsors products, match tickets and TV subscriptions.

RA must stop thinking that it is smart to put RWC proceeds into an investment fund. As Geoff says windfalls must be invested into the financial sustainability of the game. With $100m coming in 2027 and loans now repaid the key is to borrow money and start investing now, to maximise interest in the World Cup, and establishing recruitment pathways off the back of that promotion.

With investment in pathways and promotions, women and community rugby by the end of 2029 there should only be, say, $20m, left as working capital, while the game is sustainable on an annual basis. It won’t become sustainable without investing money, and the game won’t survive on a drip feed of money from some locked up fund.

The investment fund fallacy

The biggest failure of 2003 was that there was no plan for what to do with the surplus. The focus was in running the World Cup, and perhaps winning it. Nobody gave a thought to what else should be happening. There is nothing in the public domain to indicate anything has changed in regard to 2027.

Unless you count creating an investment fund as a good idea. The theory is that instead of wasting the money because you had no plan that we just lock it up and let someone look after it in case we need it in the future future. We could perhaps look to clubs like Randwick, Manly and Eastwood to get their advice on how well that works. The fact that the preferred government strategy currently is to create a special fund in substitute for a policy maybe should allow us. Or so after you watch the Hollowmen come up with the idea.

Competition structure

We have suffered badly from Hamish BS. We would have been better off with 3 SR teams and a proper NRC that truly connected community and professional rugby. Right sizing SR participation and meaningful connection between professional and community rugby with a NRC that serves both is critical. The old system was a trial for contracts that interfered with club rugby.

Is four the right number? Clearly better than five but we won’t really know until the competition is over and Australia and NZ have played sufficient games to check on our international competitiveness. Many have expressed a view that the gap has closed because of relative NZ standards.

The non participation of Melbourne cannot survive past this year, it is too important. If people do not think there is value for rugby there, ask yourself why the NRL is pouring so much money into it. For the first time more RL clubs than rugby, and far better located in growth areas.

TriTag Rugby

I could not finish without a plug. A non contact sport that is purely a rugby game, is to be administered by rugby by clubs, and has a pathway to XVs. A no brainer gold mine that Mark Gasnier has had to crawl over glass to get RA interested. Rugby is a players game, not a spectators game. If you want to promote it then you need to attract more players.

Non contact is becoming a bigger issue every day, not just because of concussion but today’s economic environment will no longer allow for amateur players to risk injury and expect to be financially supported by employers and customers. We are all going to look stupid if Quade Cooper makes flag football the premier non contact sport in Australia.”

I probably have a different view of sabbaticals. In particular after the Silver Lake deal NZ Rugby will have limits on how much money you can offer players, or offer any flexibility around the super rugby and All Black seasons.

Currently, sabbaticals offer an option to provide a higher income stream than the Super Rugby season, a change in the annual routine, but retain the player for the majority of the contract term. A far better place than Australia which is essentially losing players and the option of them from the northern hemisphere but Wally games is not that realistic.

I do not see Barrett and Ioane going to Ireland as a negative. While they may be just sampling an Irish lifestyle, it still looks like they are choosing to challenge themselves as footballers, hoping to return as better players.

These are the big issues facing Australian Rugby and well worth some discussion.

Strategic Plan

I agree it was a little unremarkable but a huge step forward from the glossy brochure of 2016 and the vacuum since 2020. A little more practically focused but of course will become totally useless if there is no transparency over achievements or accountability for failure.

At the minimum I would hope there is now a far more detailed plan up until the World Cup in 2027 and the year beyond. I certainly believe that such a plan should be much widely discussed so that there is more brains going into the input and the commitment of the broader Rugby community to achieving outcomes.

Financial Investment

RA has been impossibly fortunate to have a 12 yearly Lions tour and probably our last World Cup land right now. The reality is that the Lions money is pretty much gone if the loan is to be repaid and some investment made into women’s Rugby for the World Cup and next year.

This should not really be a problem as Rugby needs to survive on its own income. Past weaknesses caused by the failure to increase the revenue or decrease the costs of professional Rugby must be eliminated. Increasing revenues will not be possible as long as community Rugby remains unloved, they purchase memberships, merchandise, sponsors products, match tickets and TV subscriptions.

RA must stop thinking that it is smart to put RWC proceeds into an investment fund. As Geoff says windfalls must be invested into the financial sustainability of the game. With $100m coming in 2027 and loans now repaid the key is to borrow money and start investing now, to maximise interest in the World Cup, and establishing recruitment pathways off the back of that promotion.

With investment in pathways and promotions, women and community rugby by the end of 2029 there should only be, say, $20m, left as working capital, while the game is sustainable on an annual basis. It won’t become sustainable without investing money, and the game won’t survive on a drip feed of money from some locked up fund.

The investment fund fallacy

The biggest failure of 2003 was that there was no plan for what to do with the surplus. The focus was in running the World Cup, and perhaps winning it. Nobody gave a thought to what else should be happening. There is nothing in the public domain to indicate anything has changed in regard to 2027.

Unless you count creating an investment fund as a good idea. The theory is that instead of wasting the money because you had no plan that we just lock it up and let someone look after it in case we need it in the future future. We could perhaps look to clubs like Randwick, Manly and Eastwood to get their advice on how well that works. The fact that the preferred government strategy currently is to create a special fund in substitute for a policy maybe should allow us. Or so after you watch the Hollowmen come up with the idea.

Competition structure

We have suffered badly from Hamish BS. We would have been better off with 3 SR teams and a proper NRC that truly connected community and professional rugby. Right sizing SR participation and meaningful connection between professional and community rugby with a NRC that serves both is critical. The old system was a trial for contracts that interfered with club rugby.

Is four the right number? Clearly better than five but we won’t really know until the competition is over and Australia and NZ have played sufficient games to check on our international competitiveness. Many have expressed a view that the gap has closed because of relative NZ standards.

The non participation of Melbourne cannot survive past this year, it is too important. If people do not think there is value for rugby there, ask yourself why the NRL is pouring so much money into it. For the first time more RL clubs than rugby, and far better located in growth areas.

TriTag Rugby

I could not finish without a plug. A non contact sport that is purely a rugby game, is to be administered by rugby by clubs, and has a pathway to XVs. A no brainer gold mine that Mark Gasnier has had to crawl over glass to get RA interested. Rugby is a players game, not a spectators game. If you want to promote it then you need to attract more players.

Non contact is becoming a bigger issue every day, not just because of concussion but today’s economic environment will no longer allow for amateur players to risk injury and expect to be financially supported by employers and customers. We are all going to look stupid if Quade Cooper makes flag football the premier non contact sport in Australia.