Were the Curran brothers involved?

A friend just sent me the link to the media release on the great new strategy. A load of rubbish tipped into a thought bubble and released at 7am, with an undertaking to start rolling it out in the next few weeks. Whatever ‘it’ is.

What was pathetic was the lineup of SR guys and RUPA each with a non-committal paragraph singing the plan’s praises. These are the shareholders supposed to be holding the Board of RA accountable.

His fitness and discipline were a big step up from the NZ game, so hopefully Hartley is right, the discipline will improve with more match fitness. Let’s hope so, three sloppy penalties.

I was really concerned at TT on his own rehabbing for 12 months, I did not believe he would be back, let alone fit enough to play. Good on him, and as you say, the two training together has probably been the best thing that could happen to either.

Bell is up there with Angus Crichton, having body parts surgically removed to prevent further injury. Neither will get near Peter Mortimer though.

Probably par for the course as far as club rugby goes. Went to Brisbane GF – QLD community rugby (tick)

Presumably went to Sydney GF too. RA CEO should be everywhere, visiting every state each month, turning up at club training, attending functions. No idea about building rugby from the ground up.

His big ideas, running a super GPS day at Allianz (would rather see that usage given to Waratah women 😡 ) and creating super clubs in Sydney and Brisbane as a 3rd tier, just show just out of touch, and bereft of ideas, he is.

Not so much of a problem for me JD, they lost all credibility years ago.

Are they playing a long game so that NRL clubs wont take them seriously? Seems a bit too strategic for RA.

Cameron Murray is certainly a good player, and I guess could be a very competent 12. Was an Australian Schoolboy I think, although possibly courtesy of a NRL scholarship to a GPS school, or similar.

Definitely worthy of discussion, but I 100% agree with him. RA is an embarrassment and this is utterly disrespectful, ego stroking for the media and sponsors.

I suppose we just disagree on this.

I will repeat myself though. 😂

ARC/NRC has never worked running post season. One thing I eventually figured out is that, geographic logistics aside, if you cant get someone to a game in a particular competition, then they won’t pay to watch a game in that competition either.

The biggest fundamental weakness of professional rugby administrations, they cannot sell tickets to rugby games.

Too lazy to type East Coast Aces. Now look what you made me do.

RA is an embarrassment. Look at Cam Murray’s comments today. I get where he is coming from. These blokes are just disrespectful while they chase headlines and positive media clicks.

Tooly how is there a NSW ? Qld centrally controlled model? Maybe there is a cabal of Mosman/Shore people running the joint, but they are on the board. NSW and Qld rugby unions have almost zero real power. The Board is supreme and unaccountable.

What disproportion?

One vote per state, one vote per SR franchise, one vote for over 50,000 registered players, one vote for RUPA. 19 in total.

What is disproportional about NSW/Qld having 3 votes and ACT/WA/Vic having two votes?

The real problem is that the RA Board is virtually unaccountable under the current vote spread. Upsetting their grip requires a pretty public lobbying for 12 votes (75%). Ask the Force how well that works?

With usually a couple of states on a financial lifeline, and the rest financially dependent on RA, there is no chance of change unless they are forced to appoint an Administrator.

You already know the answer BF, leave Ace alone 😱

Business as usual

Another thought bubble announcement.

There has been obviously no consultation to date. At least in 2013 they could announce that Queensland can run the back office operations for the other states. Presumably this is what Waugh means by “around the business”. Very hard to make this succeed without complete buy in upfront. Even if forced upon them some franchises will be waiting for mistakes to happen.

Again accountability for player and coaching development left with the existing SR franchises and unions. Australia’s biggest area of failure, but no change, I guess leaving the hard part with someone else makes sense at least.

While there is merit in influencing player and coaching movements, straight out direction is a potential problem. Lets see how that plays out with players when that happens. It will probably mean a general rise in salary cap, or top ups will be required. Or players will head overseas.

I thought Waugh wanted to use existing clubs to cut out the beating heart of club rugby?

Creating four super clubs just destroys the clubs in the bottom half of the competition. There is no way are those clubs’ supporters going to support the competition. Even the top clubs will have unhappy supporters resenting ‘blow ins’.

My issue remains that late season has never worked with NRC/ARC. Club supporters have tuned out and cannot be sold tickets face to face. Sydney and Brisbane players are scattered across the country.

Say there are five Eastern Suburbs players in the squad and they are rotated in and out of the NRC back to SS. Club supporters are out in force at home games and also well represented at away games. You sell them tickets like raffle tickets, and supporters will talk each other into heading out there next Sunday.

I just can’t see how you engender interest unless you are in season and players genuinely represent the local competition.

None of this addresses the major problem that we contract players before they are ready to play SR, and make them Wallabies before they are ready to play test rugby.

RA will not do the hard yards of admitting their mistakes and publicly committing themselves to accountability for driving a ten year plan.

Phil Waugh’s only solutions are quick fixes done by other people with other peoples’ money; promoting GPS games, clubs becoming 3rd tier teams, construct a Western Suburbs Academy, Wallabies winning.

The season needs to run parallel to domestic competitions and SR. Probably on Sundays not to clash with local competitions. A competition that runs outside of the club season cannot be effectively marketed on the ground.

Squads will need to be large enough to accomodate some rotation of players back to their clubs for a minimum number of games. Focus would be on selling tickets at all rugby grounds the weekend before, at each club game. Ticket cost needs to be pitched to affordable and a percentage to the club selling the tickets.

Outside of Sydney and Brisbane we need to look at eligibility rules. One suggestion might be that young players need to move to the other cities the season before and be playing in the local competition. Perhaps with restrictions on jumping ship back to Brisbane or Sydney once they are established.

I am in favour of a new Western Sydney District, rather than pretending Penrith is an answer. Again a future NRC team could only be selected from players in that competition.

I am not sure of the real practicality of having country sides. Maybe more investment in country representative competitions to enable identification of players that could be selected into a 3rd tier competition.

I think the reality is that mostly people are playing for fun and enjoyment, or chasing a professional career. Structuring competitions to identify the occasional amateur who is good enough, and might be persuaded, to play for a professional contract, is a low return investment.

Phil Waugh was the favourite for the CEO position because he was the most influential director, Hamish’s main man etc. Now he has lots of new (albeit dumb) ideas that will turn rugby around.

The amateurish approach of our supposed business oriented board is best summed up by Daniel Herbert. I don’t think that any Roarer disagrees that Rugby Australia CANNOT afford not to be running a high quality 3rd tier competition.

It is beyond belief that there is no Director who can phone a friend and find out that when you need funding for a vitally necessary initiative, you prepare a prospectus or a strategic plan and go to market. Maybe they did but then found out we don’t have one.

There is still so much financial support that could be accepted from the rugby loving public, if only there was a good story to go with it. There is ample security for repayment of debenture funding, from the Lions tour and the RWC. Any balance can be secured with the temporary securitisation of commercial rights.

Sadly the easy, no accountability approach is to securitise the commercial rights and sell them to Private Equity in perpetuity. That will be a fraud on grassroots rugby and, at that point, clubs and associations will need to take action.

Phil Waugh says that grassroots are the owners, and I believe they are in equity. While the states and SR franchises are the legal owners, the community assets (including Waratahs, Reds, Wallabies etc) built up over a century were given to RA in return for its undertakings to nurture Australian rugby. It has failed to do so, and seeks to sell them to a 3rd party, to absorb its losses.

RA issued a strategic plan in 2016 with no strategies and actions to support its grandiose objectives. They went backwards and never mentioned it again. It expired in 2020 and there has been no mention of any such strategic plan since. We might be breaking the cycle of short term thinking, but I doubt that long term is much more than a month.

Give me a break. The bloke had a fantastic 2021 but has hardly played for two years until he was 34. He was given ample opportunity by Eddie and you cannot seriously be suggesting his form in these four games is anywhere near his 2021 form. He is not the answer this year, and certainly not next year.

The problem is not Eddie but nor is he THE solution. He is RA’s scapegoat for when three decades of dismantling the game next become bleeding obvious to the faithful. One sign should be that you will struggle to come up with a list of 50 test capable players.

JON wounded Australia rugby, killed it and embalmed it. 1994 when he crashed the coaching and development scheme, 2003 when he had no plan or strategy for the game other than winning would cure all problems, and in 2012 when he set in motion the trainwreck of bringing in non Rugby people on to a Board that would no longer be accountable to anybody.

Incompetence since then has barely been able to manhandle the body into a coffin. Hamish has slipped the lid on and is confidently spruiking how great his snake oil is, and that he is going to bring it back to life in front of a live audience.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel. How brief and how weak is in the hands of RA. For all money the women’s soccer WC looked looked to me like a carpenter with a hammer, and a bag of nails. RA has not learned from 2003, but soccer does not seem to have noticed, so full of hubris at being the world’s number one game.

The hard work of planning and execution at ground level must start now to maximise the impact of the 2027 and 2029 world cups. The Lions Tour is unlikely to make much impact apart from financially, and creating interest for existing fans. The big lesson that soccer might teach us, is the importance of a post Cup strategy building on all the work done before the Cup.

Can we learn that lesson? So far it seems that the antidote for not having any plan or strategy and frittering money away, is to have no plan or strategy and lock the money up in a trust fund. That is all that we have learned looking at abject failure with twenty successive years of hindsight.

I am developing a theory about the proportional relationship of the distance between the centre of the scrum to the outer reaches of space (otherwise known as the wing) and the distance between earth and feet.

Cooper had a couple of games in second division and four test matches where he was neither poor or great. Eddie is desperately casting around for someone who will be great next month. Foley led his team to the first division championship, played good quality test match football just last year, and has been a consistent performer over his career.

It is a shocker that Australia has only 4 10s to choose from, but there it is. That even includes JD who has moved above NL, but not Donaldson. Hopefully there are a few ready to step up and challenge Gordon in the next couple of years.

Of course Donaldson may be a mercy pick, Eddie just was not courageous enough to drop Cooper for Foley.

More like Eddie’s transition plan. All incumbents were given ample opportunity to demand selection. Cooper was in on reputation, most relevantly based on what I think was his career best four test run two years ago. He was also woeful against Japan in the 5th game, without Kerevi.

He has not played much in the last two years and looked competent. I suspect he might have done better if Kerevi had played better, but he is also returning from injury.

If there were two more tests I think Foley would have been playing off the bench.

Harry you might not be ‘the Bard’ but you are ‘our Bard’.

I loved your identifying as some sort of modern rock star lyricist, can’t remember half of what you wrote, and not confident you understand the rest.

I will assume that you want to discuss my long overdue promotion.

My own latest conspiracy theory is that Eddie has been treading lightly due to the widespread acrimony and division around the circumstances of his appointment.

That theory explains my previous contention that he was selecting teams to allow popular incumbents to play themselves in or out.

Cooper had a wonderful four tests in 2021 and that is what he will be remembered for. In his defence it may well be that it was Kerevi’s form that hobbled him.