NATIONAL COMPETITION

There's another interesting debate going on over at my favourite Rugby website, The Roar, about getting a national competition up and running.

This was my contribution .....

I've postulated my theory before on this website and, despite the brilliance of many of our contributors and the very informed debate that always takes place, I've seen nothing to change my mind.

To get a truly NATIONAL competition going, you have to have TRIBALISM, and this means one team per state that everyone can get behind, or possibly two in the larger states of NSW and Qld, that are definable brands - ie Nth Qld - Sth - Qld etc.

IF YOU DON'T WANT TO HAVE IDENTITY CLASHES WITH S14 FRANCHISES, then brand them with their capital cities - Sydney, Perth, Canberra, Brisbane, Hobart, etc - though I think that the State is the identifiable brand that you want to go with.

The most successful and identifiable competition in Australia is the Sheffield Shield, and this is the OBVIOUS MODEL!

It took Tassie many years to get into the competition, and nobody expected them to be immediately successful. ACT has been trying to crack it for many years and may one day. But it is a strong competition and one that every Aussie fan can identify with.

OK, if we did this in Rugby there would be strugglers - but as we have seen with the Western Force and with the Melbourne Rebels (remember them?) you can transplant players. There are enough quality players here and overseas to form seven franchises, or even eight if you wanted to include the NT.Even if there are weaknesses, these will improve over time. Obviously 8 is a much better number than 7, but from a scheduling point of view, it might not be a bad idea to have a bye each round. You could always have a player draft to even things out.

It seems to me that the biggest problem we have in this country is a form of 'cringe" that says, unless it's 100% right on Day One, we can't take the risk - I take issue with that - we can develop a national comp over time, starting with an "amateur-semi-pro-pro" mix.

A state based system makes it easier for the States to develop their game through the Premier club structure.

Again, use Cricket as your model.

In Cricket, you can't get into the state teams unless you have come through the grade system, and it helps if you have been through the Academy system, and there is always room for the elite guys to jump the queue, but, by and large the feeder system IS the system and it works.

You need to ensure uniformity in all states in the way that players are developed through the club systems, and you need to ensure that the Premier clubs are setting up Academies of their own to feed into the top-tier. I know that that is happening in Canberra, but don't know what happens in other states. If we can do it here, surely we can adopt the same model everywhere else. As an example, my boy plays for a school, but has been picked up by a premier club's Academy. He is happy to sign an Agreement that he will play for that club when he leaves school, in a year's time and they are spending a small amount of money on his training and gear etc in return. In turn the club keeps tabs on him and the others and feeds that data into the Brumbies setup.

This is a completely replicable concept, and would work in Tassie, SA, NT, NSW, Vic or anywhere else. You just need TV coverage to get the word out.

In the bigger states you may have tiers such as Premier Rugby and Subbies etc. Those states just need to work out a tiered system so that everyone feeds into one of the Premier Club regions. In the country areas you need to work out how that is going to happen, but you could adopt the system that AFL uses in having allocated recruitment regions.

So, for example, you could have the Central West feeding into Parramatta, or the Central Coast feeding into Norths or Gordon etc. You put the onus on those clubs to set up the Academies and make it work. The same principle would apply in Qld.

That's the concept and I think it is brilliant in its simplicity -NOW YOU only HAVE TO FIGURE OUT THE LOGISTICS

Sheek in his well informed article gave a history of the attempts to get a competition going. The overriding message of that is that if you don't do something then nothing will happen. If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always got!

It seems to be the case that people are saying - "well, unless we can get a fully professional competition going, with huge crowds at all the games, then it's not worth doing"..that will not happen immediately no matter what model we adopt.

In my view, we should forget about trying to fit all of this in around Super 14. That is a professional competition that should be looked at as not part of the fabric of the Australian Rugby scene, but more as part of the international Rugby scene. By that I mean, we should get on with developing a national competition as though S14 didn't exist.

If we are worried about crowds, then play games at smaller venues - it's all about TV anyway!

How do we organise the logistics of it?

1. Start the club competitions as early in the year as is possible. No club player enjoys turning up for pre-season in early January and not playing a competitive game until late March or thereabouts. Bring it back to late February.

2. Start the State comp at the end of the S14 in May, and let it flow into and through the Test Season - you are only going to lose 30 players to the Test Squad anyway. If there are State games clashing with Tests there should not be that many that you couldn't schedule them for mid-week fixtures. This is only likely to happen a couple of times during the season. The Provincial Comp could run from June to October, so you would have approximately 18 weeks to play the rounds - you only need 7 out of the 18 weeks for an eight team comp plus, 2 or 3 weeks for a finals series, so you could easily get these in, given that you would finish the Club competitions in late August or mid September at the latest - so you could easily transfer everyone's interest to the finals.

3. Play the state games around the club competition and, if necessary have bye weekends in the Club competition to enable windows for the state games. Thus, if a player is playing in the Canberra comp, but representing Tassie or Vic, he can be spared to travel for training and playing - in the first few years do it this way, and not worry about fully professional state squads that have to be together all the time - even if coaches would prefer to have their squads together, too bad - IT'S AT LEAST A START!

4. Don't put players on expensive contracts - just guarantee match payments and all out of pocket expenses, travel, accommodation, daily allowances while in camp, and gear etc - at least that's a step up from what many club players are used to. So what if players still have to have jobs? - I bet that still happens in the Currie Cup and the NPC?

BUT THE COST??!! - I hear you say - What about the Economic Crisis? How will we pay the cost of moving the teams around? etc etc

The answer is - the State unions need to get busy and find their sponsors - the ARU needs to help where it can and ensure that it maximises the opportunities that it can set up with airlines, and accommodation providers - again, find out what Cricket does and replicate it.

Maybe one answer is to play the rounds in a conference/ pool situation, where the Eastern States compete in one pool and the others in another - maybe that leaves Tassie having to play SA, WA and NT, but someone has to suffer.

What about the disparities of player quality? - Maybe we need to have a draft that evens out the standard?

Some of these ideas may be anathema to some, especially those in Sydney or Brisbane who think that the Rugby world revolves around them, but unless we go into this with an open mind, it will never happen.

All the other ideas - national club comps, manufactured franchises etc have failed, and the only model that works in this country is a state or city based idea. Let's give it a shot. If the ARU wants my help, I'm available!!