Rugby looks to NRL for guidance on the short-term future
The Rugby Union Players Association says it can learn from the NRL's ambitious competition restart plans but won't be pushing for a similar deadline.
RUPA, led by chief executive and former Wallabies lock Justin Harrison, is keeping a close eye on the NRL's targeted May 28 reboot.
But Harrison, who is part of Rugby Australia's Return to Play committee, says rugby union still has plenty of work to do before it will name a date.
While the NRL is domestic, with the exception of the Warriors, rugby has to start from scratch with the international nature of Super Rugby no longer workable amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
An Australian conference, with or without the Western Force and Tokyo-based Sunwolves, with finalists advancing to face New Zealand teams seems to be the preferred model with an early July start date.
"Every sport is looking to satisfy existing or new commercial and broadcast deals, so it's understandable there's a lot of rhetoric and energy around getting some sort of product and content and being able to provide a revenue stream," Harrison told AAP.
"The Return to Play committee has been working with a lot of involvement from players and administrators and member unions but in a large part the uncertainty around it is being governed by federal government health restrictions.
"There's training protocols, the mental health preparedness of players, providing a safe and healthy environment in line with what government recommendations are ... there's all sorts of things that are very difficult to put a timeline on."
Harrison acknowledged that setting a date could benefit the mental health of players and they hoped to have some solid information delivered to players within the next fortnight.
He said rugby could benefit from the NRL's implementation of health and cleaning protocols and management of isolation of players coming in and out of training.
"It will give us some sort of idea of a template but we will see have the intricacies of what is unique to rugby," the former Wallabies lock said.
He believed that the physical demands of scrummaging means players would likely need four to six weeks solid training.
The smoothest way back may be via club football, with Brisbane's club competition targeting a July 1 return and training from June.
Former Wallabies great Tim Horan believed that launch pad would also breath life into the code.
"That's where a lot of support has moved from Super Rugby," he told New Zealand's Sky TV.
"It's moved back to club land; the Shute Shield in New South Wales is a great competition, the same in Brisbane, the premiership's been really well supported.
"I think it's because people get back to serving behind the bar or a BBQ and you've got three or four thousand people at a club game and some club games in Sydney draw eight to 10,000."
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Turn it up. Give me your john A game would ya!
Go to commentsI didn't really get the should tone from it, but maybe because I was just reading it as my own thoughts.
What I read it as was examples of how they played well enough in every game to be able to win it.
Yeah I dunno if Ben wouldn't see it that way (someone else would for sure need to point it out to him though), I'm more in the Ben not appreciating that those close losses werent one off scenarios camp. Sure you can look at dubious decisions causing them to have to play with 14 or 13 men at the death as viable reasons but even in the games they won without such difficulties they made a real struggle of it (compared to how good some of their first half play was). This kind of article where you trying to point out the 3 losses really would most likely have been wins only really makes sense/works when your other performances make those 3 games (or endings) stand out.
There might have been a sentence here and there to ensure some good comment numbers but when he's signing off the article by saying things like ..
and..
I don't really see it. Always making sure people are upto date with the SH standing/perspective! NZ went through some tough times with so many different perspectives and reasons why, but then it was.. amusing how.. behind everyone was once they turned a corner. More of these 'unfortunate' results returned against SA and France at the start of the RWC which made it extra tasty to catch other teams out when they did bring it. So that created some 'conscious' perspective that I just kept going and sharing re thoughts on similar predicaments of other teams, I had been really confident that Wallabies displays vs NZ were real, that the Argentines can backup their thing against Aus and SA (and so obviously the rest), and current one is that England are actually consistent and improving with their attack (which everyone should get onboard with), and I'm expecting a more dominant display against Japan (even though they should have more of their experienced internationals for this one) that highlights further growth from July. 👍
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