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Thread: Has rugby’s Melbourne experiment failed?

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    Has rugby’s Melbourne experiment failed?

    From TheRoar

    I recently read the term ‘viewership’ in a Roar article and almost queried the author about why he used that term rather than simply ‘viewing numbers’.
    Much to my surprise, a google told me that ‘viewership’ is actually a word recognised by several dictionaries. It means ‘the type or number of people who watch a particular television program or station’.

    Apparently it was invented by someone in the USA in 1952. It is not needed. The English language is more than adequate to describe the concept. Just as when Gilly says, “Thanks for your viewership” at the end of the cricket, what he really means is, “Thanks for watching the game on Fox”.

    Back in the 1980s there was another invented word, ‘Reaganomics’, a term coined to describe what was also referred to (and not in a good way) as ‘trickle-down economics’. Supposedly the benefits of government contracts and tax cuts enriching large corporations were going to flow down to the workers. It didn’t really work out that way.

    Rugby, or at least SAANZAR rugby, took the path of American-style ‘franchises’. They deliberately removed the geographic identifiers from the team descriptions. I gather this was done to engage fans of the minor provinces, which became a part of the Crusaders or the Stormers and the like. Perhaps some fans from those provinces can tell us what they think of that – I can only say that I have heard many a New Zealand or South African say (and write online) that they prefer the NPC or Currie Cup to the ‘soup’.

    Many Australian rugby fans were indifferent to the NRC for the same reason. Even though its Sydney teams were built from coalitions of longstanding clubs, they didn’t care. They spent their rugby-watching time and money supporting a Shute Shield team, their Super Rugby team and the Wallabies.

    Trickle-down rugbynomics didn’t work either. When rugby administrators cut costs by reducing funding for community rugby – particularly in Sydney’s west and other similar areas of potential participation growth – and continued spending at the elite level, the grassroots game was damaged. Hopefully it was not damaged beyond repair.

    It just goes to show that not everything new is a good thing, nor is every new concept necessarily useful in any or every setting.
    Now private equity (or at least part ownership) is being suggested as the way forward or part of it. The danger of treating rugby teams as commodities is their becoming portable between different geographic locations and portable between different competition leagues. That appears to work for the US sports market. It may work in this country in the round ball game or for the occasional move of an AFL team to expand the market.

    I do not think it will work for rugby, at least in this country. Rugby in Australia may or may not be a ‘second-tier’ sport, as some TV suit deprecatingly referred to it recently, but its geographic footprint is limited – and also crucial. The support is tribal, based on longstanding affiliations – New South Wales, Queensland, Randwick, Gordon, GPS et cetera.

    In the last 30-ish years the emergence of the ACT and later the Brumbies has been built on a parochial rugby community in Canberra. The Force was built on a growing rugby community in Perth.

    Rugby Australia should recognise that tribal affiliation and build on it, not alienate its members by imposing on them new teams bereft of any history and geographical connection. Nor should RA invent teams in places that do not have an existing rugby tribe. Any new ‘provincial’ competition can be populated by teams with history.

    I remember well sitting at the old Sydney Sports Ground with my father in 1975 when Sydney beat England and in 1978 when Sydney beat the touring Welsh Five Nations champions. I also remember the ‘up the jumper’ move from NSW Country to defeat the city slickers back in that decade.

    There are two provincial teams from this state, and along with ACT – the so-called ‘Brumbies Runners’ – three teams with a history and an established following. Readers will query the relative competitive strength of country teams, but if the country sides have first pick of country-origin players (such as Ned Hanigan) that should alleviate that concern. With teams from Brisbane, Queensland Country and Perth (and possibly the Fijians) you have a six or seven-team provincial competition that people can actually identify with.

    That brings us to the ticklish question of where Melbourne and the Rebels sit in all of this.

    Unfortunately, there is no significant tribal support in Melbourne for the Rebels. I say that not as a personal observation – my son, who lives there and has played and follows rugby there, tells me that while there is some grassroots rugby, the support for the franchise is mostly expats from north of the Murray and across the Tasman and the odd Saffer.

    He attended the last Rebels game in 2019 and says there were possibly 1750 people there, and most of them were supporting the Chiefs. I tried to check that figure at Austadiums, but that attendance figure and others for Rebels home games are listed as TBA. They must be rather embarrassing.

    Added to that, he says most people in Melbourne don’t know the difference between rugby union and rugby league. On the other hand, the Storm get plenty of paying customers in the stands and there is an adult league competition at grassroots level.

    The Rebels have no tribe supporting them. If I won the lottery, I wouldn’t buy the Rebels franchise from Rugby Australia; I’d rather buy a new franchise for a team in either Parramatta or Townsville to build a team that can engage with the local rugby community and is accepted by the tribe.

    The question has to be asked: has Rugby Australia’s trickle-down experiment of imposing the Rebels on an uninterested mob failed? Is it time to redeploy diminishing resources in the tribal heartland where they arguably belong? Or do RA persevere in Melbourne?

    As Einstein said, continuing to do things the same way and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. Something needs to change.

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    I read the first comment on roar and was instantly annoyed.

    "There must be some local ‘tribal’ interest in Melbourne, as you put it, because attendances to Rebels matches are not that different to what the Waratahs get these days. They certainly always exceed what the Perth Force and Brumbies gets(maybe even the Reds)"

    Back in 2017 I tracked attendances when going through the spreadsheet.

    I used 4 different websites to get attendances. Some cases none were found so I used an average of what was available.

    2016
    Tahs - 166,806
    Reds - 131,478
    Brumbies - 100,418
    Force - 75,278 (3 averages)
    Rebels - 74,882 (1 average)

    2017
    Tahs - 101,499
    Reds - 105,806
    Brumbies - 69,122
    Force - 78,120
    Rebels - 64,040 (4 average)

    I never kept track after the cull but remember noticing how well the Force's attendance was compared to super rugby.

    2016 both teams were similar, 2017 was tough on both clubs with a lot of fans disengaged. But to say the Rebels have a decent attendance is crap and is why they have withheld from ausstadiums as mentioned in the article.

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    Immortal jargan83's Avatar
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    I blame Dan Andrews.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Leo86 View Post
    I read the first comment on roar and was instantly annoyed.
    Maybe. But Sluggy the "Roar Guru" can't be given much credibility either. He's based his anti-Melbourne slant "not (even) on personal observation" but on statements made by his son. Gimme a break. One observation implies that, unlike the Mungos, there is no "adult grassroots competition". Well I spose there isn't - if you ignore the Dewar Shield which has only been contested for 111 years. The VRL was founded in 1952.

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    Quote Originally Posted by shasta View Post
    Maybe. But Sluggy the "Roar Guru" can't be given much credibility either. He's based his anti-Melbourne slant "not (even) on personal observation" but on statements made by his son. Gimme a break. One observation implies that, unlike the Mungos, there is no "adult grassroots competition". Well I spose there isn't - if you ignore the Dewar Shield which has only been contested for 111 years. The VRL was founded in 1952.
    This is true, just irritated me a comment saying attendance was better than most clubs. Fair enough I havent looked deeply like I had years ago. But the stats I had, show equal if not less with the Force. Who were less compared to others. The other points brought up about marketing and FTA I agree with except remove the Rebels focus and apply across all Australian Rugby. Grow the game

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    First job Marinos needs to do his job get hold of the Rebels’ finances and look at how much money goes there. If they refuse to show the books cut off their funding and tell them to fund themselves.

    There is also a player retention issue there and most of it seems to go overseas rather than to another Australian team.

    The RA should have brought Ballymore off the QRU years ago rather than pump all that additional funding in to the Rebels (which was supposed to come from private money) so we have an asset the game owns and use the pitches as a training base so the rental costs the game has would disappear. As far as I know France are the only team that has the luxury of owning its own training base.

    The Force get no funding, the Tahs are fielding a squad that is a million below the salary cap, NSW have made all their development officers redundant so I take it the clubs will have to find people who have time to get in to the schools to attract kids to play the game and there is still a pay divide that sees a lot of forwards leave Australia.

    Twiggy is willing to pump money in to Australian Rugby if he doesn’t get his voting changes put through put funding of junior development up as bait. Beggars can’t be choosers. NSW clearly can’t finances theirs and Qld can’t cover their own vast territory due to lack of resources. Far North Queensland doesn’t have enough Development Officers on the ground. The Cowboys struggle to sign their local players and they don’t have the alternative of going to Rugby as they have never played the game.

    These are big issues.

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    Last edited by Bakkies; 29-12-20 at 17:29.

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    Quote Originally Posted by jargan83 View Post
    I blame Dan Andrews.
    Yes or climate change.

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    https://omny.fm/shows/the-alan-jones-breakfast-show/cameron-clyne

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    https://www.change.org/p/rugby-australia-petition-for-cameron-clyne-to-resign-as-chairman-of-the-rugby-australia-board

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    The only development officers in NSW are AFL. They are gifting equipment to schools. Hosting clinics. Doing everything that all the sports should be doing.

    Its a take-over attempt and no-one is trying to stop them.

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    Just read the comments. You cannot argue that the Rebels where brought in at the wrong time. Australian Rugby was in a rut, the players weren’t coming through and there simply wasn’t the money to pay for them. The Wallabies were regressing so the interest dropped and Super Rugby apart from the Reds was losing support in Australia.

    They needed a proper businessman owning them not an Andrew Cox or Harold Mitchell consortium. We never got the chance to see if Winney could fund them long term. They needed marketing big time which the Storm had from the start. Couldn’t afford it so the brand awareness wasn’t there.

    Melbourne needed a winning team off scratch. That was never going to happen with their first recruiting batches.

    From the start due to poor player development their initial squad had ten imports. Most who couldn’t stay or were retirement bound. Mortlock was on his last legs and only went there due to the Brumbies concerns over his injury record to offer him a longer contract. Gerrard admitted he lost motivation after playing second division Japanese Rugby (he is better than that) and they still signed him.

    They over compensated by signing players like Beale and O’Connor.

    Matt Toomua made a comment that it takes players an hour and a half to get to training. That would get tiring and would make it difficult to stay long term. Given that the Rebels are in their 10th year what have they done to address it? If it is the case that they moving training to Bundoora that would further exasperate it if there is a core living near Richmond which is closer to HQ. Bundoora is nowhere near the core clubs and Rugby playing schools.

    The Storm on the other hand had News Corp ownership to fund their losses which the Rebels never had it. That made it easier for the governing body. They also came in after Super League where five clubs folded. SQ Crushers, GC Chargers, Mariners, Perth Reds and the Adelaide Rams. Picked the bones out of those teams to recruit from the existing player base. Due to Super League restructure there wasn’t really a defined salary cap.

    They also had the right people to work with the backing they received from News Corp. Anderson was a Premiership winning coach and clearly good enough to coach Australia, Chris Johns and John Ribot. They got the front office and coaching right from the start.

    There were some games on free to air and a couple of pages in the Herald Sun back when people read papers.

    Yes the Rebels had Macqueen and Ross Oakley pulling strings but they didn’t have the marketing, overall finances and playing budget to deliver a winning side that would attract people to follow them. You need that to supplement the die hards.

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    Last edited by Bakkies; 29-12-20 at 18:34.

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    Quote Originally Posted by .X. View Post
    The only development officers in NSW are AFL. They are gifting equipment to schools. Hosting clinics. Doing everything that all the sports should be doing.

    Its a take-over attempt and no-one is trying to stop them.
    It is hard to stop them without money and clubs don’t have the resources. That’s why we need Twiggy’s RugbyRoos rolled out across the country.

    Cricket and AFL had the backing from Milo and McDonalds to fund the likes of KangaCricket and Aus Kick.

    Tuggeranong Vikings and maybe Sunnybank are the only Rugby clubs that could pay for their own full time development officers that don’t need to combine full time work with getting on the ground to schools. It takes a couple of hours out of the day just to do one school.

    This was mentioned on The Roar by Rob.

    ‘ Are you trying to suggest US teams don’t identify with a particular geographic location? If so, that could not be further from the truth.’

    Well they just abandoned St Louis, San Diego and Oakland. The Raiders couldn’t get a stadium development up in Oakland so moved to Vegas an area as far as I know have not had an NFL side. They have played in LA previously. I doubt Oakland NFL supporters are going to jump to the 49ers after losing their side. Apart from being rivals Santa Clara is difficult to get to within San Francisco let alone from across the bay in Oakland. Oakland is a completely different demographic.

    The Rams’ owner pissed off fans in St Louis by upping sticks to go back to LA.

    Chargers moved from San Diego to LA and didn’t have a stadium to play out of. Their crowds are small and they aren’t really wanted. Fans in San Diego who loved their team will feel aggrieved.

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    Immortal Contributor shasta's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by .X. View Post

    Its a take-over attempt and no-one is trying to stop them.
    Is it at all possible that a suggestion made over a decade should be reconsidered? Two high profile coaches, Alex Evans- The Scrum Doctor - and Wayne Bennett called for the two codes to put aside differences, devise a safe game for children and share personnel and funding to develop them. Then let the players decide which code to play when they mature.

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    Quote Originally Posted by shasta View Post
    Is it at all possible that a suggestion made over a decade should be reconsidered? Two high profile coaches, Alex Evans- The Scrum Doctor - and Wayne Bennett called for the two codes to put aside differences, devise a safe game for children and share personnel and funding to develop them. Then let the players decide which code to play when they mature.
    That would take nearly a generation to implement. Rugby is played in a lot more countries than league is so it would amount to a take over.

    Coaches and players will have to be retrained. Rugby wouldn’t sacrifice the scrum and none of the league players will have scrummaged like they did in the 80s.

    If it just happened here they will be playing to different laws to a later age. We are losing enough tests as it is.

    Some of the experimental laws in SR AU were nonsense particularly held up, goal line drop outs and the 40-22. Referees got it wrong and the players made bad kicking decisions in the tests. Our centres were kicking it away in the opposition’s 22 no doubt they got used to the goal line drop outs in pretend Rugby.

    While there is a top down system dependent on the success of the Wallabies don’t implement law trials will never make it to test Rugby.

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    Last edited by Bakkies; 29-12-20 at 19:41.

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    Immortal Contributor shasta's Avatar
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    That is the type of response the proposal got originally. And look how much things have improved. With a person like Evans making the suggestion and helping develop a game, I doubt scrumaging would suffer too much. Solutions are needed specific to the situation we are facing here. Not a list of problems. The situation in other countries is irrelevant. Rogby Roos is a great suggestion. Implementing it country wide is the issue

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    Last edited by shasta; 29-12-20 at 20:08.

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    Quote Originally Posted by shasta View Post
    That is the type of response the proposal got originally. And look how much things have improved. With a person like Evans making the suggestion and helping develop a game, I doubt scrumaging would suffer too much. Solutions are needed specific to the situation we are facing here. Not a list of problems. The situation in other countries is irrelevant. Rogby Roos is a great suggestion. Implementing it country wide is the issue
    There is a big difference still. Shane Webcke had the right body size for loosehead but you wouldn’t put him in a scrum against Califano, Leonard, Os du Randt, Meuuws from that era untrained. Let alone lift a 130kg lock in a lineout. Referees wouldn’t allow him on the park to go in to the front row as he would get destroyed.

    We have had a generation of poorly trained front rowers who came from Rugby backgrounds. These blokes will be further behind.

    None of the league forwards could play in the second row in Rugby. Yes Thorn played lock but his lineout work was his weakness. The ABs got away with it due to opposition backs not putting the ball in to the stands which allowed quick throws. He was originally trialled as a flanker.

    Re the issue with Rugby Roos nationwide it comes down to money, that’s why Twiggy is needed. The unions don’t have the money that’s why we have very few development officers. He will get the sponsors to support it. He will also have more to spend on indigenous development which the RA is about 20 years behind League and AFL.

    What we need is getting out to areas in Rugby states where the game has been held back. There’s too much talent being missed due to lack of accessibility. Look at the development of the Irish game. Tadhg Furlong is from New Ross in Wexford, barely produced a pro player let alone a world class tight head, Sean O’Brien farming background from Carlow and now in Munster the Wycherley brothers come from Bantry in west Cork (a GAA area) along with four others are from that region under the age of 23 in the squad. Josh gave Slimani a hard time after he got a lesson in the first scrum on his European debut. Munster also have two players from Waterford and one from Kerry.

    This happened due to the IRFU getting on the ground in to clubs and schools. More so clubs in Munster where it is geographically spread and less elite schools. We haven’t done that here. The RA blew our RWC and two Lions tour profits on league players, elite player salaries, executive administration and lawyers while cutting our player development. Referee and coach development also has clearly suffered as reflected by the lack of Aus referees on the tier one panel and the appointment of foreign head coaches.

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    Last edited by Bakkies; 29-12-20 at 21:27.

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    Immortal Contributor shasta's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bakkies View Post
    There is a big difference still. Shane Webcke had the right body size for loosehead but you wouldn’t put him in a scrum against Califano, Leonard, Os du Randt, Meuuws.......... RA is about 20 years behind League and AFL.
    You never know, Webcke may have become a 100+ Test Wallaby and quite conceivably a captain, had there been a hybrid junior game.
    The NRL is in almost as bad a shape as RA re the struggle with AFL for juniors. Years of neglect of the regions, as well as raiding their kids to stack city based elite competitions is just bringing a slow decline in participation. Kids ought to be encouraged to play for fun - not to be cannon fodder for the delusions of wannabe senior coaches. Whatever way either or both codes go, the clock is ticking faster and faster.

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