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Details of planned new professional New Zealand competition revealed - report
By Online Editors
A New Zealand-based competition featuring up to eight professional teams, including the five existing Kiwi Super Rugby franchises, is being reported as the potential future of rugby in the land of the All Blacks.
The New Zealand Herald reports it has been told by sources within New Zealand Rugby that Super Rugby as we know it is destined for the history books as officials scramble to create a new competition to allow some form of rugby to be played this year.
The Herald report states that teams from Australia and Fiji "may or may not" be involved in the plans, but long-haul flights to South Africa and Argentina will no longer be on the agenda.
Despite NZR's newly-announced Aratipu review into Super Rugby, the report indicates that there is a concession among officials that the competition has run its due course following a plummet in fan interest and engagement stretching over a decade-and-a-half.
The Herald attributes the decision to withhold New Zealand's top All Blacks from the opening two months of Super Rugby in 2007 as the catalyst for the downfall in viewership figures, with the competition seeing a drastic TV audience dip of 29 percent that year alone.
NZR sources told the Herald that the desire to keep All Blacks playing in New Zealand is at the forefront of discussions surrounding a competition reboot.
"We don't want the Brazil [football] model," an NZR official said.
"Where all your top players are in clubs offshore. We're determined to keep as many of our All Blacks here as we can."
"We can't, and we won't, turn provinces like Canterbury into fully amateur Heartland sides," they told the Herald. "But we do need to work out just how many professional teams New Zealand can afford."
No date has been set for an announcement of any form of rugby competition in New Zealand, although the preliminary findings from the Aratipu review will be presented to the NZR board by the end of June.
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Latest Comments
Nah, that just needs some more variation. Chip kicks, grubber stabs, all those. Will Jordan showed a pretty good reason why the rush was bad for his link up with BB.
If you have an overlap on a rush defense, they naturally cover out and out and leave a huge gap near the ruck.
It also helps if both teams play the same rules. ARs set the offside line 1m past where the last mans feet were😅
Go to commentsYeah nar, should work for sure. I was just asking why would you do it that way?
It could be achieved by outsourcing all your IP and players to New Zealand, Japan, and America, with a big Super competition between those countries raking it in with all of Australia's best talent to help them at a club level. When there is enough of a following and players coming through internally, and from other international countries (starting out like Australia/without a pro scene), for these high profile clubs to compete without a heavy australian base, then RA could use all the money they'd saved over the decades to turn things around at home and fund 4 super sides of their own that would be good enough to compete.
That sounds like a great model to reset the game in Aus. Take a couple of decades to invest in youth and community networks before trying to become professional again. I just suggest most aussies would be a bit more optimistic they can make it work without the two decades without any pro club rugby bit.
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