ARU to kill Club player payments
Sydney clubs will have their funding cut if they pay players because the Australian Rugby Union plans to return club rugby to its amateur days.
Under watershed reforms being considered while top club teams Sydney University and Eastwood prepare to play in the Shute Shield grand final this weekend, the ARU wants to make its funding levels of about $60,000 for each premier club contingent on stamping out player payments, which can be up to $10,000 a season.
The ARU is also poised to formalise the rights of Super Rugby franchises to prevent contracted players from returning to their Sydney and Brisbane clubs at any point during or after the Super season.
The proposed changes are part of a broader plan to build Australia's so-called third tier around a ''national club championship'' that would run from August to October, after the end of the premier club competitions.
It appears the ARU wants to try once more to form its own iteration of New Zealand's ITM Cup and South Africa's Currie Cup but is not looking at the Sydney and Brisbane club sides as the automatic basis of the proposed competition.
Fairfax Media understands the ARU is considering fielding teams from the top echelon of club rugby plus an amalgamation of others, based around regions and available infrastructure.
ARU boss Bill Pulver and his general manager of development, Ben Whitaker, will meet with the Sydney club presidents on Wednesday to discuss the proposals. But the reforms are already causing waves in clubland; several are divided over player payments, which vary wildly, but most agree over player availability.
Sydney clubs say they continue to provide the bulk of Australia's Super Rugby playing stocks and should not lose out in their local competitions.
''We just think it's really important that ultimately clubs in Sydney have access to players they've been nurturing since they were seven years old,'' Manly president David Begg said. ''The system being proposed is effectively asking Sydney clubs to support national clubs and franchises where players don't have the same level of connectivity as they do with the clubs that developed them.''
The Brumbies have quarantined their players for the past two seasons and the Rebels and Force have been moving into that regimen. The ARU believes the key to building successful franchises and depth in the country's playing stocks is to give all Super Rugby teams a legitimate pathway to develop their own players.
Randwick president Bob Dwyer said there was a genuine desire on the part of club presidents to work constructively with the ARU for the betterment of rugby but that the contribution of the Sydney competition should not be overlooked.
''It continues to provide the bulk of Super Rugby players and if you add in Queensland club rugby, then easily the vast majority of players come from those competitions,'' Dwyer said. ''No one knew who [Manly player] Michael Hooper was three years ago and he was a star in his first season at the Brumbies and in the Wallabies two seasons later.''
The ARU's proposal includes giving each Super Rugby team an academy of up to 15 players on about $10,000 a year. Academy development teams would play in a competition at the start of the regular Super Rugby season.
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