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The way I read this is no PNC, no ARS and no ARC = A big announcement re Australian Rugby Comp.
Or..maybe I'm just being hopeful, have my head in the sand and really we're only going to keep getting more poo poo.
if they just had a rugby carnival with a heap of players on the east coast somewhere cheap between sydney and queensland and then had a month long training camp and played 3 or four games, just as super teams without wallabies, it would at least be something!
Chuck Norris has the greatest Poker-Face of all time. He won the 1983 World Series of Poker, despite holding only a Joker, a Get out of Jail Free Monopoly card, a 2 of clubs, 7 of spades and a green #4 card from the game Uno.
Better than nothing. The ARU should help facilitate touring sides to come to Australia (I know Georgia is already coming to Perth and I for one and hoping they snag a S14 development player from them). That would mean we can watch some rugby. If we had the training camp too for a month (2 games each between each side- Brumbies, Force, Tahs and Reds- every 5 days) it would give those players a bit of an opportunity while the 3Ns is on.
Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast.
yeah way to hopeful..
what we are looking at is, Vodaphone and Ford dropping sponsorship worldwide, two of the biggest sponsors for Australian Rugby are pulling out of contracts all over the world, i expect some sort of announcement in regards in the next few weeks.
That means a massive loss of revenue for Australian Rugby, if the ARU were to continue with the spending they had planned prior to these losses then they would be facing a massive defecit in 2009..
At best i think we may see a mini round robin tournament between the 4 australia sides, similar to what we had in 2006? in which the Brumbies won, but i highly highly doubt it will be anything more then that.
With respect to the PNC, much as I enjoy it, we are inevitably going to drop out of it once S14 expands anyway. C'est la vie, take the opportunity to blame something other than our own self interest.
But I think they are taking it a bit far. S14 attendances are irrelevant to the ARU, so they don't count year to year, up or down. Pissweak teams from the NH do and would have hit our finances, but there is no way the fourth Bledisloe and Baabaas game didn't cover that. Losing sponsors sucks, but it was not like they were naming sponsors - were they even on the jersey any more?
BUT the money SANZAR receives is in USD and has therefore gone up 40% from last year - where has that money gone?
Seems to me the ARU is essentially taking pre-emptive action because they expect hard times next year. But being better insulated than any of the other sports, a good CEO would be looking for opportunities, not just battening down the hatches.
On the upside, no A's program means we can keep more top players for taking on Georgia and the NH clubs in Singapore. I wonder if the PNC would let the Force play as a team...?
It could end up like AFL where 2,000 people show up to watch a training session.... because there is no rugby.... So it looks like the S14 championship should have been extended...
huh?
im confused, the PNC has being around for what 2 years? on top of that each year is only 4 games! 2 of which are in another country!
I think some of you are forgetting this, its hardly the great loss it has being made out to be, 4 games per year. Who gives a shit, seriously i would rather see the 30 players that were are in the AusA squad returned to club rugby and improve those matches. If anything is going to bridge the gap between club and super rugby, it would be returning super14 players to club rugby in the off-season. Not putting them in another competition.
Expansion of the S14 is a whole other topic, if it were up to Australia it would have being done already, NZ and RSA wont get as much out of it as Aus, and RSA arent even affiliated with the PNC so no point bring the S14 expansion up.
I can understand this decision by the ARU but don't like it.
Yes Australian Rugby needs the money and John O'Neill proved he knows what his doing by the turn around the ARU got this year, but as far as developing depth within Australia and helping the Pacific Nation teams goes it's not the greatest idea.
Teams like Fiji, Samoa and Tonga don't have alot of money and gain the most from playing teams like Australia and New Zealand, people come to see those games and i think it's the least we can do to help them out, plus these teams also gain experience from playing higher level nations.
As far as depth for Australia well that one is pretty obvious. We compete with NZ, SA and the UK for the top spot in rugby, all of these nations have another step up from club rugby were people who don't make the national team can play, however we don't. The ARU tried to set up the Australian Rugby Championship but that failed money wise however the players loved it and some good up and comers were found.
Taking Aus A out of the Pacific Nations cup is just like the cancelling of the ARC, but worse. Now we have absolutly nothing for other players to compete in (excluding club rugby) so players will suffer from limited experience, which is especially bad if someone in the Wallabies gets injured and they need to call someone up. Plus what about players who get injured just before the international season? Once they have recovered they weren't selected but they have no way of proving their selves in an attempt to get back into the team for later test matches. It's like Drew Mitchell last year he had a great season but then got injured at the end, he recoverd and played a couple of matches for Aus A, Deans went to the games and watched and decided he was good enough to get back into the Wallabies.
Last edited by Amy91; 19-04-09 at 22:10. Reason: Spelling Mistakes
The problem with this is all the players will play in Sydney, like we had seen on Saturday...not good for Rugby