Good call John - now to win the stoush
By Andrew Slack
He's on the money here. SA & NZ people are really into the domestic rivalry of their inter province championships. No one could blame them for wanting to preserve them. JO'N will have to present some compelling financial case for either of them to even consider expansion of S14. They probably don't care a lot about our unique circumstance where RU is in a high stakes sporting market with 3 professional competitors.
Personally I'd love to see it. I'd also be happy to see the Tri Nations scaled back & possibly timed as a lead-in to Oct/Nov touring season.
NOW here's a surprise: Australian Rugby Union chief executive John O'Neill has been in the news a bit of late, being seen and heard, Andrew Slack writes.
Whether it was in Hong Kong announcing the date for the first Bledisloe Cup match to take place outside Australasia, or glued to Kevin Rudd's left shoulder as the Prime Minister spruiked a very worthwhile campaign, supported by all the major sporting codes, aimed at reducing binge drinking by our youth, O'Neill has been doing what he's very good at: Being seen and being heard.
Types like him always create enemies and sometimes they deserve them, but any Australian rugby fan who can't see the merit in O'Neill's plan to expand the Super rugby program has lost their objectivity.
With the first round of the NRL kicking off this weekend, there is no better time to float the idea of an expanded provincial rugby competition that at least gives the code an opportunity to compete with the giants of league and AFL.
Brumbies chief executive Andrew Fagan spoke for all local administrators: "In order to be effective in the most competitive football market in the world we need to go head-to-head on quantity as well as quality," he said.
Spot on. There are two responsibilities and the primary one is quality.
For rubbish rugby badly refereed, which we saw too much of last year, a fortnight is too long a season.
But when the game is played as it should be, a guarantee of only 11 games for your team in the Super tournament is far too short. You need quantity.
"With such a short season, it is hard to capture the hearts and minds of our supporter base," Fagan continued. "We need to make some changes to freshen up the competition.
"We've had the experimental law variations this year, which have helped, and we've got to continue to look at new things, and this proposal would enable us to go head-to-head with rugby league and AFL."
The inclusion of a Tokyo-based side, stretching the tournament from February to August and concluding with a six-team final series is the canvas from which O'Neill wants to work.
While the response from interested Australian rugby parties is overwhelmingly in favour, the detail that bedevils it is the same one that confronts us every time a significant change is suggested from Wallaby territory.
The rest of the world often don't think like us and, in fairness, if we had their circumstances we mightn't think like us either.
As a rule, the northern hemisphere rugby nations, which hold major sway in the running of the game, view things far differently to those south of the equator.
Witness the opposition to the experimental laws which, apart from the odd dissenter in South Africa, have been greeted warmly in this part of the world.
However, the north versus south debate doesn't mean that the southern powers of New Zealand, South Africa and Australia are always like-minded.
Rugby is a comparative minnow in Australia compared to our two Tri-Nations partners and, as such, our need to compete with other codes is a far tougher one than in either of those countries.
With their own traditional and well supported season-long provincial tournaments, South Africans and New Zealanders don't have the void in their programming that affects Australian rugby lovers.
New Zealand officials, already wary of the O'Neill factor after he snuck the 2003 World Cup away from their shores, are not about to genuflect before him.
"We wouldn't dismiss John's thoughts out of hand," said NZRU boss Steve Tew, "but there is also a considerable amount of talking, thinking and analysing and assessment to be done before we would favour one or other of any expansion of Super rugby."
Love him or hate him, nobody could accuse O'Neill of disliking a stoush.
Just as well, because he won't get this good idea off the ground without one.
