Wally the Fly

The restructuring of the Super rugby competition will make or break rugby union in Australia.

Big call but it’s true.

Rugby is going backwards in Oz; crowds are down and TV audience is down. The standard of Super 14 this year is the worst it has ever been and the side with the biggest market share, NSW Waratahs, are a horrible team to watch.

All rugby fans would know that there is a big debate going on now between the SANZAR nations over what to do with an expanded series.

The South Africans are being portrayed as the recalcitrant side because they insist on keeping their Currie Cup. They want the competition to start in early Feb and end in time for their domestic competition to commence in July.

At least the Yarpies have a domestic competition to protect and good on them for doing it.

BUT getting back to the Super rugby restructure for a minute. Here are the principle issues; people seem to prefer watching their team play teams from the same country Australian crowds tend to be much better when Aussie sides play Kiwis rather than the Saffas.

Also, we need the Saffas more than they need us. Why? Because Super Sport television in South Africa provides a heap of money into the SANZAR coffers as they operate in the biggest market (there are around 50 million South Africans and they’re in the right time zone for Europe too).

O’Neill is talking about a Japanese club because he wants to tap into the potential Asian honey pot.

How can all these things be brought together?

Enter Wally’s grand proposal:

South Africa commence their Currie Cup in February (RSA Conference)

• Australia and New Zealand commence ‘Asia-Pacific’ tournament in March.
• In Asia-Pacific there are two conferences consisting of;
  • NSW, QLD, ACT, WA, VIC (no foreign player restrictions, focus on getting Argentineans and perhaps Pacific Islanders) and Tokyo (no Aussie players just Japanese players but also try and get American and Canadians.)
  • Auckland, Wellington, Crusaders, Highlanders, Chiefs and either a Pacific Islands team or a sixth New Zealand team.

• They play each other once in this conference
• They then play every other team once (including teams that were in their own conference again). This is a total of 16 games (8 home and 8 away).
• Then in late July early August a six or eight team finals series that includes the top two/three/four South African sides against the top Asia-Pacific sides.

Why it could work:

v     Hopefully keep the South Africans on board which means the TV rights will be worth a LOT more.

v     More local derbies (keep up the crowd numbers).

v     Very limited games against South African sides which aren’t as popular but when we do play them hopefully it’ll be rare enough to grab attention anyway.

v     Most regular season games will be within prime time or a couple of hours out either way. It’s hard to follow your team when they’re playing at 3am in the RSA.

v     Brings in a new market in Asia which could develop into a big earner in the long term.

v     Could bring in Argentineans and Pacific Island players from Europe thereby making it easier to eventually get them playing in an expanded Tri-Nations.

I said it could make or break rugby in Oz because rugby is looking poor at the moment, if officials don’t get this right, if we can’t give rugby a new lease of life and get more people tuning in and going through the gate we’ll be swamped by the other codes. 

It wasn’t circa 2005 with Aloisi’s dramatic penalty against Uruguay but it’ll more than do. Australia have put themselves into an almost unassaliable position to qualify for the FIFA World Cup.

The next missoin for the FFA? Getting good games for the national team between now and heading to Africa.

We have signed up to play the Republic of Ireland in Limerick in August and have Asian Cup qualifiers in November but have four more FIFA dates to fill in September and October.

The FFA have two things on their mind; firstly getting good sides that we’re not used to playing against (i.e. non-Asian) that we may come up against in the WC and secondly to get big enough sides to generate enough interest to get punters through the turnstiles.

There’s talk of the Dutch coming over which would be huge but who else should be on the hit list? The Sideline Eye has one name on the list: ENGLAND.

Australia playing England at home at football would surely get the media into a frenzy and sports lovers of all codes would have at least one eye on the contest.

Is this being pursued at all by the FFA? It definitely should be. The only other side that would turn the heads of non-soccer infidel here would be Brazil, which would be another huge coup for the FFA.

Both matches would tick both critera for the national body; its in the Socceroos interest to play against them and their style of football and it will get plenty of attention from the public.

Ok ok this might be pie in the sky stuff but its worth a shot.

Why would they want to come over here you say? Tell them Australian conditions are similar to South Africa and teams like England and the Netherlands should get out here to get used to it.

The next thing is getting decent World Cup warm up games in May 2010 which will be a lot tougher. Firstly, we won’t have a snow balls chance in hell in getting European teams over here because they’ll want to stay in the similar time zone that Africa shares with Western Europe.

Asian teams as I said above aren’t really in our interest to play against.

While South American sides could come over to base themselves in Australia where weather conditions are similar to South Africa and it is a more ’comfortable’ environment. It’s the long way to South Africa but you never know, its worth a shot! 

So get busy FFA, get us Joe Public some serious opposition. Let’s bring out some heavy weights and bring on the World Cup!