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Thread: ARU Rebranded? Wayne Smith has a good take on this story

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    ARU Rebranded? Wayne Smith has a good take on this story

    Story in the Australian today. Apparently the ARU are looking into changing their name and Wayne hits the nail on the head
    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/spor...f1701345d42b99

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    C'mon the

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    ARU rebranding itself so it’s not on the nose, but save the money
    The Australian12:00AM June 5, 2017
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    WAYNE SMITH
    Senior sport writerBrisbane
    @WayneKeithSmith

    “Wot’s in a name?” she sez, and then she sighs An’ clasps ’er little ’ands an’ rolls ’er eyes.

    “A rose,” she sez, “by any other name Would smell the same.”

    Wot’s in a name, as CJ Dennis once asked? Well, plenty, if the Australian Rugby Union is to be taken as a guide because it apparently doesn’t like its name and is attempting to change it.

    The ARU is in the early stages of rebranding itself. It’s not exactly clear what it intends to become but something different would be nice. Something that doesn’t sound quite so incriminating as “ARU”.

    “RugbyAU” looks to be the leading contender at present.

    To be fair, this process — there’s that word again — predated the attempt to get rid of one Australian Super Rugby team, which is the main reason the ARU is now so vilified. But it certainly wasn’t halted in any way once all the trouble started. Indeed, the rebranding work has gone on all the way through this culling process, unseen until today. It is one of the few areas where the ARU could be said to have made progress lately.

    Putting a new name on an old body is a time-honoured trick in the world of sport. Cricket’s governing body went from the Australasian Cricket Council (1892) to the Australian Board of Control for International Cricket (1905), to the Australian Cricket Board (1973) to the streamlined Cricket Australia in 2003.

    Swimming has also had its share of monikers. It was the Amateur Swimming Union of Australia that decided to ban Dawn Fraser for 10 years and it still clung to the name until 1985 when it morphed into Australia Swimming Incorporated. Then, unaccountably, it swapped the names around and became, in 2004, Swimming Australia.

    And in the wider world, observe the many attempts of the James Hardie company to put as much distance as possible between itself and the word “asbestos”. Well, no one is suggesting that rebranding is a cure-all for organisations that somehow have come to be very much on the nose. There has always been an ARU or thereabouts. Except that in days past, up to around 1985, it was known as the “Australian Rugby Football Union”. It was much like an offshoot of the “Rugby Football Union” which was and still is the governing body of the country that invented rugby and which has spent the past 131 years pretending England still makes waves in the sport, and not World Rugby — which is what the International Rugby Board rebranded itself in 2014.

    Inevitably, though, the word “Football” would be dropped, which led to all manner of confusion as the Australian Railways Union also was in the news in those days. Rugby folk became quite knowledgeable about industrial affairs matters when they would see “ARU” in the headline and would be lured into reading stories about striking railway workers.

    In the early days, the ARFU was a fairly benign body, when it wasn’t banning for life anyone who even flirted with rugby league. It was even fairly carefree about the name of the national team and what jersies it wore. The Wallabies came into being only by a vote of the touring 1908-09 team, which luckily chose a small, bouncy marsupial found only in Australia, over an animal that basically doesn’t exist here at all, the wolf. When a Test was played in Sydney, the Australian team wore the sky blue of NSW. When the Test was in Brisbane, they wore maroon. It was not until the 1961 tour of South Africa that Australia first wore the colours we now associate with the Wallabies, gold shirts, green shorts.

    They were chosen, can you believe it, not to necessarily distinguish Australia but to avoid confusion with the Springbok colours — green shirts, gold collars. Over time, the ARU began to play a more pivotal role in the life of Australian rugby and by the 1990s, when the Wallabies won the World Cup not just once but twice, the ARU was regarded as being at the very cutting edge of the sport.

    Those were the days ... when a coach needed only identify himself as Australian to be pursued by countries and provinces all around the world. Pretty much exactly like it is at the moment, except that now the magic word is “Kiwi”.

    Sadly, the ARU brand has taken a savage hit this decade as it aimed itself at the top end of town and at the elite level of the game.

    In many respects, Australian rugby missed its chance when the game went professional, even though it would still win one more — one last? — World Cup in 1999.

    It was forced to learn survival techniques because rugby league — which funnily enough caught on when all those players banned for life decided they had to play something — was so virulent. It was often said of Australian rugby that it was the most professional in the world during the amateur days. Now, unfortunately, the opposite applies: it has become the most amateurish of games in the professional era. Why? Because the ARU turned its back on what once made it great — devotion to the grassroots and a reliance on dedicated volunteers, in order to chase “excellence” at the very top.

    So there were legitimate reasons for the ARU pausing to reflect that maybe a rebranding process would set it back on the right path again.

    But sadly, they won’t be the reasons that will resonate with the Australian rugby public.

    They’ll only see an organisation that has made a complete hash of reducing five Super Rugby teams to four, trying to tart itself up. They’ll be intensely suspicious of the timing of the exercise. They’ll wonder about the costs of the “makeover” and question why the rebranding money wasn’t spent on grassroots rugby.

    But mostly they’ll wonder why any of this is necessary. It’s not a new Australian Rugby Union they want. They want to have the old one back again, making calls that are for the good of the sport in Australia, making decisions that will help the code grow.

    So, don’t waste your time, ARU. Save yourselves the money. Save yourselves the hassle of launching the new name and new logo and all the corporate gizmos that convince people that a rebranded organisation is anything other than mutton dressed up as lamb.

    That’s not what Australian rugby wants of you.

    It’s not what Australian rugby needs of you.
    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/spor...f1701345d42b99

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    The ARU board have some mates in the marketing and promotion arena that are short of a few bucks so they just doing what mates do propping them up at the expense of the grassroots rugby.. I bet if you looked it up the marketing and promotion company would be from NSW and have connections to the NSWRU.. As Said it money wasted.. Amazing they knocked players for wanting a brand now they doing it to themselves.. The best thing the ARU Admin could do is get on Greyhound coaches and travel coach class around the country and attend Saturday club games and be seen.. The only brand an ARU show be seen with is the one on is / her forehead saying I was 1 of the ARSEHOLE RUINED RUGBY

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    Immortal jargan83's Avatar
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    Can we nominate FUARU?

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    Quote Originally Posted by jargan83 View Post
    Can we nominate FUARU?
    FUBARU

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    what's this I hear about Pulver being in town tomorrow?

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    Shouldn't it be RugbyES not RugbyAU?!

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    I heard he was in town Sat night for the Canes game

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    Quote Originally Posted by travelling_gerry View Post
    I heard he was in town Sat night for the Canes game
    Lucky he did not show his face in public as it may have got rubbed out.. No doubt there are a few that would love to do it ..

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    Doubt he was there as he would have been in the box with Sinderberry & the Board, and he wasn't.

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    Proudly Western Australian; Proudly supporting Western Australian rugby

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    Legend Contributor Alison's Avatar
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    While we're on the subject of the abject excuse that is the ARU, I saw on FB this weekend that Soccer Australia (or whatever it's called) has secured FTA TV coverage for the next A-league season on Ch 10's ONE channel.......

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    At least the ARU recognises that it has trashed the Rugby Union brand in Australia.

    An interesting comment by Cheika on the ABC's OffSiders program yesterday, about rebuilding Rugby Union in Australia.

    I understood him to say that he believes Rugby Union will rise out of its present regression in Australia and that a step in the rebuilding process will be to unify the states (as in bring together), which is an interesting comment given that the ARU is deliberately exploiting inter-state rivalties in its attempt to push through the cull of either a Victorian or a West Australian SR team.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Alison View Post
    While we're on the subject of the abject excuse that is the ARU, I saw on FB this weekend that Soccer Australia (or whatever it's called) has secured FTA TV coverage for the next A-league season on Ch 10's ONE channel.......
    Saw that over the weekend as well.

    Simulcast of the Saturday night game on One, the A-League finals live and simulcast of Socceroos internationals live.

    Reports have suggested that it's not the massive pay day FFA we're looking for but getting fat exposure would be a pretty good deal even if it is only a on secondary channel.

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    Veteran sittingbison's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by travelling_gerry View Post
    I heard he was in town Sat night for the Canes game
    He was the TMO yellowcarding DHP

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    Immortal GIGS20's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by travelling_gerry View Post
    I heard he was in town Sat night for the Canes game
    Must have been offering the Barrett boys all the savings from cutting a team to play for the Waratahs. That's grass roots isn't it?

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