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Extract from The Australian (23/02) by Wayne Smith, copied from Sea of Blue so no link sorry
SANZAAR and Rugby Australia are about to begin formal work on what guise Super Rugby will take in the future, whether it will remain in its present 15-team form or enter a new expansion phase or whether a trans-Tasman competition will replace it.
A SANZAAR draft proposal was approved by the Rugby Australia board last week, as it was recently by the directors of New Zealand Rugby, and it is expected that all four partners — South Africa and Argentina being the other two — will have signed off on it within the next 10 days.
It is understood the SANZAAR proposal prioritised making the existing 15-team model work, which is understandable given all the angst Australia — and to a lesser degree South Africa — were put through last year to scale Super Rugby back from its 18-team iteration. For the first time since 2005, Super Rugby will kick off in Australia tomorrow without the Western Force.
But other options also will be up for discussion, including moving to a more stable Anzac-based competition based on Australia and NZ or, conversely, expanding Super Rugby further to include the potentially lucrative North American market.
Certainly SANZAAR and its members would need a lot of convincing to go back down the expansion path again. It was always intended that the 18-team competition was merely a stepping stone to making Super Rugby into an almost-global competition — with only Britain and Europe excluded — but it was done in such a rush that no one considered how unwieldy it all was.
In the end, the Force in Australia and the Cheetahs and Southern Kings paid the price for SANZAAR’s rashness, although the two South African teams succeeded in relocating to the European Pro14 competition where they achieved mixed results — the Cheetahs coming third in conference A, the Kings seventh and last in conference B.
Only the Force remain out of the loop, although it is planned they will play a series of exhibition matches later this year, followed by the National Rugby Championship. It is understood Canberra Vikings coach Tim Sampson has signed a letter of intent to coach the Force through their warm-up matches and into the NRC.
RA chief executive Raelene Castle noted yesterday that she was uncertain whether the Force would again become part of Super Rugby. “I don’t know,” Castle told The Australian. “And I don’t know because we are at one end of a process and I don’t know what will fly out the other end of the process.
“I’ve spoken with John Edwards (the RugbyWA chairman) that it if it looks like there will be an option for Super Rugby to change its structure, that we would have a conversation with the Force about bidding to be a part of that changed structure. That’s the commitment that RA has made to the Force.”
Meanwhile, Castle and SANZAAR chief executive Andy Marinos will meet with the four remaining Australian Super Rugby CEOs to outline the SANZAAR plan as a starting point for discussion and debate.
“We’re 36 months away from a new broadcast deal,” Castle said. “This is the time we should be having conversations about the future as well.”
Waratahs boss Andrew Hore welcomed that initiative but said NSW had already started down the track of exploring the future of rugby in Australia.
“We felt it was important we play a prominent role in this,” said Hore. “We’re defining our position but we’re still at the preliminary stage. We’ll be discussing this at our board meeting next week.”
Castle pointed out that, independently of SANZAAR, Australian rugby needed to work out what was important to it and to its partners, sponsors and Fox Sports.
Last year, the then Australian Rugby Union sent its delegates off to the London meeting at which the decision to cull the Force was taken armed only with “flexible” advice. The design was well-*intentioned, to give the delegates the ability to be agile, but it surely left the ARU looking like it did not know what its core beliefs were.
Castle’s announcement should ensure that never again does Australia go to a SANZAAR meeting without a fixed idea of what is non-negotiable.