Some of the AFL teams in NSW and Queensland seem to do ok while just being a mid table team in terms of attendance. Surely an average Tahs or Reds should be able to match an average AFL side for attendance or are there just alot more AFL fans moved into those two states or have people just jumped sports to attend

For test players its great but for non test players either going to SS/HC or NPC probably not so great as a bit of a drop down for the second half of the season. Teams that go deep like Leinster and Glasgow would use over 50 players and build the squads accordingly. Why would clubs agree to move when the RC is the newer competition.

While the knockouts aren’t ideal few teams are going to be playing in all 5. In Soccer they can really add up which is why winning lots of competitions is hard. The issue again is that the first half the season is a game nearly every week while the end of the season they have lots of weeks with no test rugby and lots of players who don’t even get test rugby. URC has plenty of breaks during the season and for the last 16 or quarters or semis of the Euro Cups the weaker teams are getting rest weeks. Stormers will have 4 rest weeks now they are out plus the weeks when the 6Ns is on so team like Zebre have nearly 10 rest weeks between now and the end of Round 18 of the URC.

Agree. Not maximizing the market of the 2 big States meant the money was always going to be hard to come by. The IRFU struggled to keep Connacht afloat when it had three strong teams who were producing excess players to supplement Connacht’s smaller playing pool.

I would guess that the Black Fern and 7s will be ringfenced which means most like NPC and SRP will take the hit. I do wonder if NZR will carry on as normal and review it post SA tour. 2025-2027 will be interesting to see how loss of the RC works out. 2026 is the perfect time for RA to do a SR Au.

If Rebels were not worth keeping because they would cost to much money then NPC costs alot more and does not provide professional games of SRP standard. Having a squad of 40 players with an academy playing in SR will bring more people to a test standard. Right now 20% less players are getting SRP contracts in Oz. Giving the next 400 players under SRP part time competition won’t bring people to test level. How many players does NPC produce that where not already in SRP academies. Having the Academies playing at a higher level would be better money spent.

Sorry wasn’t implying that I am saying that people and RA officials have said that Rebels closing would not hurt the Wallabies and would make the Super Rugby sides strong like they did in 2018. But they didn’t make them stronger and RA did not expect to keep the players they needed. RA could have kept a team in Melbourne and would not have had to carry the $22m debt. We will see how much debt they took over between the Tahs and Brumbies. Because SR does not provide enough games the problem is not fixed by losing a team as it could be the broadcast deal would have $3m more if SRP had another game a week.

I guess that is part of the issue that needs to be resolved. Toulouse sent a B team in the Top 14 the week before they fly to SA for the Champions Cup but the T14 is only half way through so plenty time to catch back up. I think the problem is the test players have to many games Feb-July and not enough Aug-Nov so to little rest at the start and not enough games at the end (though the unions are trying to get more games for the second half of the season.

The distance between Eden Park and Waikato Stadium is 132 km. Can’t understand why they can’t fill out Eden Park for those two teams. Thomond to Aviva in Ireland is 207km. Brumbies is a bit furthur which is probably why that game gets more than most games. But teams get fans based on local support so not sure why Tahs can’t be 25k per home game. Across the regular season, Hurricanes proved to be fan favourites. The Blues v Hurricanes drawing in the largest regular season crowd of 25,873 and a further two matches sold out across regular season, Fijian Drua v Hurricanes (Round 9) and the Chiefs v Hurricanes (Round 14). That is from the SR website for last season. Same article More than 640,000 fans showed their support for their Super Rugby Pacific teams across the season, an increase of 9 percent on last year. I am going to guess that is only for the NZ sides because if that was across all teams it would be to low. Last season Reds got 2k more for the Cheifs game than they did for the Tahs which is sad.

it screams of being afraid that some big team might miss out. Last year it would have been Canes v Highlanders, Blues v Reds, Brumbies v Chiefs with the losers of Brumbies v Chiefs would have made it through. People give out about Europe playing the Champions Cup and URC alongside each other and confusing people. But imagine trying to explain to a fan that Brumbies lost a quarterfinal game but have advanced to the semi final. If I were the 4th place team I would consider sending a b side for the quarters and then be in the semis with a rested team, the risk is obviously if the 1st or 2nd ranked team lose you are out. If the home teams win the 3 quarters then 4th is playing first in the semis regardless if they lose by 1 point or 50 and 3rd is most likely an away game in Oz.

People seem to the think that a strong WBs will be strong SR teams were as teams like Ireland and Scotland have based it on Strong URC teams is strong national team. Oz SR teams are in financial issues because people stop watching them. That has put more pressure on the test income. Resting players in a 14 week competition seems overkill. The bigger issue around test players is the players called into the squad to travel to Europe in November was based off SR form 4 months earlier. Its like picking the WB squad for the Lions in March. Its fine to have a test camp last week or whenever it is but all those players are getting picked based on how they were playing in June last year and if they were lucky the to XV games. 6Ns have picked their squads based about 6 rounds of club rugby.

I don’t blame them and I think most people see that the Champions Cup is a step up for most teams. I think its hard to change a system that has spent 20 years primed to fill 4 teams with small squads for a short season to having to have massive squads for the whole season. Most new teams in the Champions Cup struggle the first few years. The year on of the SA sides win all 4 group games then it will start to take off. Not sure who will win the Challenge Cup but its 4 games with no massive team in it.

I no distances are bigger in SR than the URC or surely some of the derby games should be bigger. Tahs v Brumbies is often one of the biggest attendances in the league but surely Reds v Tahs, Tahs v Reds, Blues v Chiefs and Blues v Saders should be getting low 30k to low 40k for games. I also don’t know why MP can’t just find a 5k stadium. Benetton and Zebre have much smaller stadiums but because the crowd is all together is sounds and looks alot better.

Was an article last week saying that RA don’t expect to keep the players but hopefully get some of the players to improve it. Dropping the Force in 2017 was so good that only 1 Oz team made the top 8 in 2018 and 2019. In 2016 and 2017 they also had 1 team in the top 8. Yes the lower teams might have got better in 2018 but 2019 and 3 of the bottom 5 were all Oz teams. Cutting teams only works if you can keep the players at home, what Europe has shown is that players need contracts and there are less contracts so wages go down a little but on renewal the problem is just alot bigger and more players leave.

I do find it funny that around week 4-5 we will hear how the test players are being rested even though they have just been off for 2 months and have the longest rest between the last tests in November and first game of their domestic season of any of the Test sides. SR can build in a few more rest weeks and might have that with one less team but its so short not sure why they need it.

JRU/J1 have said they want a yearly competition with SR. 4-6 teams in a domestic competition is about 10 games.4-6 games v J1/NZ and you are already at or above SR levels. RA just need to do SR Au competition post SR in August/September. They atleast then have a competition that would have real world metrics, jumping ship and then setting up a new competition has not been great of SRP and atleast that was only a small change from SR.

One of the first things they would do is make it a home and away competition landing each team 3 more home games and a much better sell to the TV companies. As I have said on other threads Ireland and South Africa last season with 4 teams played 100 games or about 25 per team. Scotland was also about 25 per team. NZ with 6 teams only played 92 and this season if all 4 Oz teams finish top 4 and are the 4 semi finalist OZ teams will still only play 16.5 games each or about 66% of SA, Ireland and Scotland teams.

In Europe there is the debate over how much money teams in each league spend on wages. Of the 4 Champions Cup group winners Saints would be the lowest and least likely to make the Semis. While Oz and NZ sides have wage caps I think if the wages paid to players on every team was published the 5 NZ sides would be alot higher. Yes some of that money is for the test duties but without that money the players aren’t in SRP. People give the Force a hard time but how many of their starting 15 could you get for the money being paid for Thor and JS by the Tahs. Those two effectively are half a SRP wage cap between them at about $2.5m. BB would not be cheap at the Blues.

I would say it was the whole fight over creating SRP. I don’t think that losing SA was that big for NZ (it was for Oz as they lost alot of money) but when has SRP not had a difficult relationship between the two unions. It started off with NZR tell RA that they controlled the number of teams and were happy to talk directly to the Oz SR teams. Then the if you don’t accept we will find other teams then finally settling on the 12 teams. Until RA and NZR can work together like grownups they aren’t going to fix anything. You never really hear any of the Unions say anything about the URC it is always the CEO and he and his team give the same support to all teams so that unions can worry about other things.

JD how long ago was the URC semi, if its the Leinster v Bulls one where Bulls just got over the line it was in part to what happened the week before. Its a long time since a European team will send a second string side to a knockout game as cups matter to the fans (obviously Leinster are the exception but I think last year is the last year they will do it). SRP is 17 games and even the test players have been off for 2 months, not sure why SR needs rest periods for any players other than the starters for the test side who normally play 80 minutes. When players who are only in the AB/WB squad who might pick up 100-150mintues with the AB/WBs should not be getting rested.

While it is a stretch compared to people on the breakdown who rarely go against their SR team they played for and will call 5 NZ sides in the top 6 with MP pushing hard for the 6th spot he will say it like he sees it. He has no issues saying honest things about former teams and calls them out when doing things wrong.

Why is SR struggling the lucky loser semi finalist kind of sums it up for me. Sr wants to be new and cutting edge but they end up rarely working. Just play and the 3-6 play in the quarters and 1-2 go straight to the semis like most leagues. Get teams playing in smaller stadiums, they get simillar to the Irish, English and French but it looks like few people are watching because its so empty. As Marshall said it didn’t use to be a development competition, last year I think it was the Brumbies who travel to NZ and rested players, RA aren’t helping their teams by not letting them play the big games, so what the Brumbies will lose to the Blues etc with a full team in NZ but the WBs are atleast learning and adding fuel to their desire to beat them, giving them the week off does nothing. Maybe have a longer season so fans aren’t waiting 7 months between seasons.

That is always going to be the way and Jake does not help when he complains all the time. For Europeans playing two competitions is common in nearly every sport you watch. In Soccer there can be 4 competitions going on at once (league, 2 domestic cups a a Euro Comp). For SA fans they joined the URC so that is the new SR. As the French teams/fans say if they can’t win the T14 they have no hope v the the top teams of other leagues. I also think that people like Jake assumed that they would just win their home games but like last year playing at Loftus is not an assured win and all the teams that did well won their home games and picked up BPs away from home. If teams like Munster and Benetton can do it then Bull can (they just can’t send B sides). Fans want cups and while the Challenge Cup is not as good as URC to win Sharks were still the only SA team to win a cup with that and the Currie, everyone else got nothing. When Fans know they are losing their away games its hard to get excited for home games. The issue with not being in the competition (as we saw in year 1) the SA sides then have lots of rest weeks especially during the business end of the season and wouldn’t need as big a squad as their URC competitors. If there is a Club World Cup Jake would take it more seriously as would the fans, I just feel they don’t want to try.

Yes and in the mid 00s NZR tried to do it so that only the PIs would be able to represent second countries not Georgia or Chile etc. What would have been better is ask themselves why were the PIs needing help in all this when other T2 nations with alot less players were not having issues. The number of T2 players who play for the 6N, SA or Arg unions is very low (probably under 5 in the last 20 years). So maybe they should fine out why so many PI players were ending up in the NZ and Oz systems who were coming over at 14-20 and not representing their home nation.

I believe that teenagers moving to NZ and Australia for schooling are the same as moving to another country as a professional player. When Finau, Sititi etc moved as a teenager was the whole family moved over to NZ. Were the players moving for rugby purposes or where they excelling academically and that is why they where recruited. People like to say that every OS born player for NZ and Oz were just little kids whose family moved but that is not backed up. Finau, Sititi, Reece and Tu’ungafasi all moved as Teenagers and Frizell moved as an adult, none have a blood connection to NZ. If a child moves to France at 18 why is it worse than moving at 14 or 16.