East Coast Thinking

I found this on a Rugby Facebook page I am a member of. "WTF is with Australian Rugby?" This page has 12,100 members.

I did not write this post. It has been written by a Sydney based Moderator of the page.

I have cut and pasted this here because I thought that there might be some interest in what the current attitudes are in Sydney and Brisbane.

John Barkley
Moderator
It simply stuns me that the same people who whinge and whine about how being locked in to a 'Closed Shop' deal with Fox Sports for Super Rugby since 1996 are now having a bleat about the fact that Castle has been the first CEO to take Aus Pro rugby to the open market (yes, that includes seeing what FTA deals might develop (that's the first time we've ever gone to the open market. Since 1996).

In other words, the same people who are demanding FTA coverage are losing their minds because for the first time ever, Aus Rugby has opened up Pro rugby broadcast rights to bids from FTA.

Fox Sports can still put in a bid, but perhaps they might actually prefer to be part of a Broadcasting consortium. Maybe a couple of FTA games per week with a cable channel providing coverage of the rest of the games. Sound cool? It's certainly a shit tonne better than what we've got now.

Castle has also managed to get the Professional part of Australian rugby back in to the black financially. No small achievement considering the performance of our SR sides, and the Wallabies recent woeful outcomes.

On that note, there's also been a major clean out of people at RA; people that Castle inherited from the Pulver years.

Particularly in the marketing and promotion of rugby across the nation.

There's also been a major effort in to prodding the state unions in to getting their players out and about the regions to raise the sport's profile.

She's also sorted out the pathways programs which have seen major changes (improvements) to the U18's and U20's sides, resulting in our next gen Pro rugby players having real time experience in beating New Zealand teams, and not just once in a blue moon.

The expansion and improvement of the Pro women's game, both 7's and 15's has also been a great success, and they are getting bigger every year!

Castle is the first ever professional Sports Administrator to hold the role of CEO at RA (ARU). Every other CEO has been a Corporate. Mostly from the banking sector. Same goes for the Board members.

Prior to the game going Pro in 1996, the then ARU (now RA) had pretty much zero to do with Aus rugby outside of the Wallabies and the Australian Schools teams.

They have never manged the grassroots of Aus rugby. The NSWRU ran the game in NSW. The SRU ran the SS. The QRU ran rugby in Queensland. Country rugby; Subbies rugby; GPS rugby, all ran their own races. If the ARU gave them anything, it was usually nothing more than a bunch of posters for clubs to hang on the club room walls saying stuff like "I wanna wanna be a Walla Wallaby underneath a photo of David Campese.

Nothing much has really changed in the last quarter of a century.

RA still run the elite level, and its supporting pathways, as they have always done. It's just that now, that level is professional, and involve's a hell of a lot more work.

If you live in NSW, and think that rugby in your state is crapping itself?

Don't blame RA; they don't run NSWRU. Same again in Queensland.

Same again in every amateur rugby competition in the entire country.

Don't look to RA to run your local comp - they've never, ever run local comps in the past; why would you expect them to do it now?

Find out who runs your local comp; your regional comp; your state comp. That's where the majority of your problems are.

RA have got their own stuff to sort out. They fix that? Sure, there will be some coat tails to ride on. But if your junior clubs are losing their players as soon as they hit the U13's? Then you need to sort that out yourselves.

RA have already got their hands full.

Well, that's fantastic to be said and it's very clear but it covers over the fact that the self interest groups that run the grass roots game are the ones who empower and direct RA through being voting members at the agm.

The virulent self interest infects rugby at every level were exposed to. Clubs elect state boards, schools elect schools rugby boards, states elect national and RA chooses its representative to sanzaar and world rugby. Not a one of them give a fuck abut anything other than pork barrelling the level below them that keeps them on the gravy train. So the big clubs in the powerful states continue to milk everything they can out of the code.

Until the governance model changes, nothing will change

No better example of east coast thinking than the scheduling of AO matches between 9 and Gem around 9 news hour this week. :mad:

Everyone knows sport has priority over news. Dead Set.