It’s time to wrap it up, these commentators are terrible, how are they the most dull people in the box. Nisbo is a legend but he is done, Marshall sounds just as bored, let some younger voices take over and make the game sound at least interesting. Compare it to league, who could make the most boring try sound hype, but when a flankers kicks a chip over to a halfback, they couldn’t even commentate for the replays, geniunely washed
TLDR at the bottom
Mind any grammatical errors, I wrote this in between Uni lectures, Please give thoughts and opinions but keep it respectful, Thanks for reading
Over the past few years Super Rugby’s popularity has been on a decline, Teams failing (Rebels and Moana), and less teams maintaining a surplus, and the Force relying on a Billionaire to prop the team (Force currently lose $5 million a year). In the past few years Super Rugby has tried to make a marketing difference to get back into public popularity, hosting concerts, running super round and changing the rules for a better product. There is still one key defining fault with the league which will cause it to stumble into irrelevancy, The lack of fan capture. The number of teams that people can identify with is barely any, when you compare it to the NRL, Sydney has the same amount as all the super rugby teams in NZ and AUS. This captures everybody in a city when you compare it to just the Waratahs, its mainly just inner-city Sydney. Furthermore, when you try to identify with your team, its hard to when you have no connection, it’s genuinely hard to identify a culture to these teams that Fans can get behind. How does someone who is from Auckland connect with the Blues, a team named after a colour. A team who plays in a empty grey behemoth of a stadium, or fans connect with the Waratahs, a team named after a flower which the average person looking in from above doesn’t even know. People can’t identify with these teams, which means these teams don’t get the support they need for the league to be successful. This is also a reason why the Drua is financially the best team in Super Rugby right now, their fans identify with their team the same New Zealand connects with the Wahs, they feel a connection to the team culture.
So what can we do to fix this, what is the way to build back domestic rugby in Aus and Nz back to greatness. Unfortunately, I do not believe with the current fan capture, that this league is sustainable, and we must move to split the competition. While yes this is an extremely aggressive and potentially expensive move, it is needed for our domestic survival. In New Zealand’s case, we open 5 new Franchises, a second in Auckland, One in Taranaki, one in Bay of Plenty and a final one in Southland. We need to retarget in smaller communities and build up public support for Rugby Union and increase professional player pathways. To remain as unbiased as possible, I had (and unfortunately) to use AI write a pros and cons list about this proposal
Pros
The Pros: Why this could work
Cons
The Cons: The "Reality Check"
I know this is aggressive, but it also allows us to set up on our own schedule, run different NZ based events like the coveted North Vs South game, give more younger players a shot to become play more regular rugby like they do in France, England and South Africa. We could also set up a Champion’s League style competition with Australia, Japan and South America to prepare ourselves for more international competition. And finally, we can also add a proper draft and trade system which adds offseason hype and keeps super rugby on people’s mind during the offseason. This will also turn eyes to the NPC as the NPC becomes a feeder college football like competition for players.
TL;DR: The "New Deal" for Rugby