Wallaby EOYT 2016
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It's probably worse in QLD, as the QRU are flat broke, and are therefore applying an additional levy to every single player in the state. Which really fucks country rugby (affiliation fees are no longer by team, they are by player, and you have to be registered to take the field).
The rugby situation in Cairns is so bad, we have a 2 month junior season played after every other code is finished (Oct and Nov) just to get players. My eldest was playing U8s, and we had 26 kids in our squad (so we registered 2 teams). Most other clubs had between 5 & 8 kids. Because of the cost of registrations and insurance, despite charging $120 per kid for a 9 game season, the club couldn't afford to provide shorts and socks, or water bottles. So parents were forking out just so their kids could play, and then having to go buy gear as well. For 9 games.
Now, this is league heartland up here, so rugby is always up against it. But jesus, the junior AFL comp is flying, soccer obviously kills it, but rugby is a non-event. And the QRU do nothing. They can't afford it, and they aren't interested. I believe Townsville has a full-season junior comp, but i don't think any of the other QLD regional cities do.
Why do the ARU have no money to support the grass roots? Is it purely down to having to pay to keep players in the country? (something the other footy codes don't have to worry about?) It's not like the NRL or AFL guys are paid less, and there are a damn sight more of them as well.
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@mariner4life said in Wallaby EOYT 2016:
Why do the ARU have no money to support the grass roots? Is it purely down to having to pay to keep players in the country? (something the other footy codes don't have to worry about?) It's not like the NRL or AFL guys are paid less, and there are a damn sight more of them as well.
All the Super Rugby franchises are running on empty, some at a loss. The ARU is propping up too much of the game to keep fat salaries going for both players and executive.
The sponsorship dollars are also less than the heyday, and the $45M "war chest" from RWC2003 got pissed up against a wall, paying out JON and coaches and trying the original Australian Rugby Championship back in 2007, that none of the clubs wanted.
In short: politics.
Every fluffybunny in the rugby hierarchy think they have the answers, and no-one else does. None of them give a lonely fuck about the game outside:
- Their province
- Their Premier club
- The school they attended
- And maybe the competition that school was entered in
We've had so many low moments in the last decade, but its still not enough to get the Poidos of club land to look past their own interests or glory days to see we're not here to fuck spiders.
Hopefully the new TV rights deal settles a few nerves, and maybe the odd out-of-window test provides a boost.
But while we're throwing $4M over three years at Pocock to take sabbaticals, or a couple of mill a season at Folau to give dud short balls to his right, I don't see the overall situation improving.
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@NTA said in Wallaby EOYT 2016:
The bandwagoneers who jumped in their early 20s around 98-99 were probably the bigger issue. Hadn't been paying attention until we were successful, and that meant they were the first to leave when things went sour.
People tell us to fuck off when we talk about the challenges of league and AFL, but really you can't understand that until you've seen it in action.
Part of the problem is the grassroots game. I'm now President of a 10-year-old club in Western Sydney for Suburban Rugby - park footy. Strictly amateur, Saturday afternoon fun for 3 grades in our Division, and more grades + Colts in the higher divisions. I've been there since it was two grades, and there are some amazing highs and lows I could tell you about over a beer some time.
Beyond the fact that over half my players are blue collar, and work shifts (therefore can't make training) or weekends (therefore can't make some away games across town), we just don't have the clout to get a decent ground from Council. We take what we're given, and that means sharing with other sports, no facilities on our oval, a concrete cricket pitch on one side, and a shipping container to store our gear.
I met with council this morning who have generously put a demountable unit at one end of the field with power hooked up. Its more than we've ever had as a club!
Union is hardly getting "raped" by Wendyball at a professional level - crowd numbers are decent in the A-League, but their TV numbers aren't that hot. They put on a good show and have an international game to leverage, so like a frillneck lizard, look bigger than they are.
Their amateur game though is very competitive when we're talking local Council facilities. They're fielding dozens of junior and senior teams, and they're charging them upwards of $350 for player fees. They turn a profit, outfit the canteens, and Council let them "own" the facility in return for improving it.
In rugby a lot of blokes know clubs are desperate so skip out on paying.
Because league pays players, even at shitty 4th tier, recruiting players is hard. Last year we registered 131 players for three grades, and only 20% of them put in any kind of money. Only about a dozen paid in full, and its only $220! Most rugby clubs start at $250 and go up from there.
To put each grade on the field - just in entry fees and insurance - will be about $2500. But on top of that is the ARU "Participation Fee" which is $775 per grade this year, and $1000 next year. The club is looking at over $10K just to put our desired teams on the park, excluding any equipment costs, player kit, or sundries like annual club affiliation fees.
Basically if we register 60 players (20 per grade), it'll cost us about $270 to put a player on the field. So we're taking a bath there and relying on sponsors and raffles to make up the difference.
This year we're drawing a line in he sand - if players don't want to pay, then fine. Fuck off.
Its the only way to turn it around.
I remember when I played club rugby in Brisbane the treasurer was always at people to pay their subs. It was pathetic. It really wasn't that much and most of the fuckers who wouldn't pay spent that amount on piss after the game. The worst thing was the coach selecting these guys over others who paid straight away. I never got the attitude that they just expected to play for free and the club would just operate as normal.
I played for one particularly shitty club (which was closest to where I lived) that has a thriving junior club (where my son now plays and I coach). We were using the lights to train as well as all of the club facilities. The junior president came upon one evening to make the very reasonable request that we start contributing a bit more, i.e. pay our subs. When he left 3/4 of the players and coach slagged him off. A couple of us (the ones who had paid) spoke up to suggest that he had a point, to which these idiots obviously had no argument. I left that shitty team at the end of the season and they have, astonishing enough, since folded.
Hope you wipe that shit out Nick. Fucking freeloaders.
On the soccer thing it really is amazing what they can charge. Youngest son played soccer for a local team. He got a crappy team shirt (just a shirt not even a proper playing strip with that cool high-tech material) and that was it. You were also required to help out with working bees, ref etc etc. Eldest son played rugby and that covered insurance, subsidised mouth guard and a really farking awesome jersey which they get to keep. I think I paid 50-60 bucks more for the soccer which was an absolute bloody ripoff considering what you get back. But they have umpteen teams and are raking in the cash.
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@Rancid-Schnitzel said in Wallaby EOYT 2016:
Hope you wipe that shit out Nick. Fucking freeloaders.
It is goal Numero Uno for the Secretary and I. Previous administrations have been simultaneously playing, so they felt awkward demanding fees from the guys they were bleeding alongside. I get that.
But the club, despite clearing $22k in raffles this year, is still right down on funds because of all the outgoings.
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@NTA said in Wallaby EOYT 2016:
@mariner4life said in Wallaby EOYT 2016:
Why do the ARU have no money to support the grass roots? Is it purely down to having to pay to keep players in the country? (something the other footy codes don't have to worry about?) It's not like the NRL or AFL guys are paid less, and there are a damn sight more of them as well.
All the Super Rugby franchises are running on empty, some at a loss. The ARU is propping up too much of the game to keep fat salaries going for both players and executive.
The sponsorship dollars are also less than the heyday, and the $45M "war chest" from RWC2003 got pissed up against a wall, paying out JON and coaches and trying the original Australian Rugby Championship back in 2007, that none of the clubs wanted.
In short: politics.
Every fluffybunny in the rugby hierarchy think they have the answers, and no-one else does. None of them give a lonely fuck about the game outside:
- Their province
- Their Premier club
- The school they attended
- And maybe the competition that school was entered in
We've had so many low moments in the last decade, but its still not enough to get the Poidos of club land to look past their own interests or glory days to see we're not here to fuck spiders.
Hopefully the new TV rights deal settles a few nerves, and maybe the odd out-of-window test provides a boost.
But while we're throwing $4M over three years at Pocock to take sabbaticals, or a couple of mill a season at Folau to give dud short balls to his right, I don't see the overall situation improving.
For real? Fark that is a waste of cash. Considering that is one position in which you have some really good depth, paying that amount is ridiculous.
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@barbarian crazy? maybe. Didn't see them versus Ireland. I watched the Aus-England game late so maybe I confused him with Hodge. But the 9-10 axis was so dysfunctional the whole backline looks fragile.
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@Rancid-Schnitzel said in Wallaby EOYT 2016:
On the soccer thing it really is amazing what they can charge. Youngest son played soccer for a local team. He got a crappy team shirt (just a shirt not even a proper playing strip with that cool high-tech material) and that was it. You were also required to help out with working bees, ref etc etc. Eldest son played rugby and that covered insurance, subsidised mouth guard and a really farking awesome jersey which they get to keep. I think I paid 50-60 bucks more for the soccer which was an absolute bloody ripoff considering what you get back. But they have umpteen teams and are raking in the cash.
Don't forget you have to keep the FIFA hierarchy in champagne and hookers with that sub.
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@Crucial said in Wallaby EOYT 2016:
The obvious explanation for England's improvement is Eddie Jones. He may be a bit of a cock, but he does know how to get results as he has shown before. Without Jones England would probably still be as flaky and unsure of how they want to play as they were before him.
Where does this unsubstantiated rubbish come from?
Eddie Jones has been a devoted disciple and keen student of rugby all his life, from his time as a junior with Matraville High, with several who became the country's best, through a decade or more trundling around in Club with the Galloping Greens week after week as an essential part of one of the premium packs we've seen. They were like the Panzer Division, always rolling ruthlessly forward - if one dropped out with injury another clone from seconds took his place and they powered on seamlessly - one didn't get to be a part of that eight unless they had proven themselves as demonstrably able and genuinely tough. Cheika won his place in that group towards the end of Eddie's 147 games (6 grand finals with 4 wins).
He had the discipline to simultaneously complete tertiary studies as a teacher and deputy principal at the top end Sydney International School then gained coaching experience and enjoyed success in Super Rugby here and in South Africa, in local and international rugby in Australia, Japan and the UK. He has been smart enough to change his methods over time. He became less intense, less demanding and more measured ... "I found I was wrong so I changed my mind. What do you do when you find you are wrong?" is one of the rarest concepts in Australian management, especially among the young who fear that it reveals their inadequacy.
Do you know how much personal time and effort he put into trying to rehabilitate the genius of Andrew Walker as Wallaby coach and as Reds coach, and over how many years?
Eddie "a bit of a cock"? Yeah, sure, you know that to be so, eh?
And "get the Poidos of club land to look past their own interests or glory days to see we're not here to fuck spiders" (whatever in the sweet cheeses that is supposed to convey) is rubbish too.
Brett Papworth (53 years old) and Simon Poidevin (58) are not dopey dinosaurs who know nothing about rugby, who ought to be shunted out to the back bar to mumble and stumble about on their walking frames just because they are old. Sir Graham Henry at 65 years old and Steve Hansen at 56 should not have been allowed to go anywhere near the All Blacks and the World Cup by that reckoning.
They have earned their place in rugby on the field and off it since, and have earned their say in how the game ought to be run more so than the clever young cognoscenti. If you bothered to listen to them over the years you would know that their least favorite subject is themselves. You have them as similar to Andrew (sniff, snort) Johns, and his mates in League broadcasting, running endless replays of themselves at 25 years old as an essential part of their television show. Papworth went from the big stage straight back to his Epping Club to bring new young blokes on in rugby and cricket, chasing player registration and insurance fees just like you are now NTA, and he's been at it for 25 years.
Papworth was very publicly onto "the $45M "war chest" from RWC2003 got pissed up against a wall" three or more years ago and "the ARU "Participation Fee" which is $775 per grade this year, and $1000 next year" two years ago mercilessly stalking that buffoon Pushover for it on the Graham Hughes radio sports show.
The hard markers at Eastwood Rugby elected him President years ago because he is such a knowledgeable and passionate advocate - Wee Billy Pushover is so afraid of these once famous men that he attempted to belittle them just recently (and long term ARU Board seat warmer John Eales sat there and said precisely nothing) - not because he stands out on the verandah at T G Milner gurgling schooners and patting himself on the back with those hard markers who have put in before him ... Mick Mathers, Dennis Tutty, John Ballesty, John Cootes, Peter Fenton and so on (Never heard of 'em? A lot of the Eastwood juniors have.)
Not so long ago an ordinary Southport School father sold me raffle tickets at a TSS fund raising breakfast. We, strangers, had a few words and a laugh together - long enough for him to offer "By the way, you do you know I scored four tries against the All Blacks don't you?", but he didn't.
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And that's all great, Mick.
Except guys like Papworth - and all the Premier clubs - have their hands out more often than not. They can't even run their clubs profitably as semi-professional enterprises. Have you been to any of them lately? They're falling apart.
Yet, they think their clubs are the ones to build the third tier of a professional competition because "It won us two world cups" ?
Nope, sorry. That's living in the past. A great past, no doubt. But still, the past. And their achievements in that past, including Papworth running off to spend some time injured in league, will stay there.
I'm not questioning their effort or commitment toward rugby. I'm questioning their direction, prescience, and conflict of interest.
My club is in Western Sydney. We're beholden to the toffs who own the game in places like Mosman and Rose Bay.
Participation is down in many clubs as the structures they've held for years start to crumble, and running a club becomes too hard in the face of the ridiculous requirements and inability of rugby to stabilise itself because of internal squabbling.
If you want to go up a Division because you've been successful, then find another Grade to field, or an entire Colts side. What? That's fucking nonsense when there is no cohesive juniors plan or participation scheme. No wonder clubs go up a Division, get spanked, then freefall. Its idiocy.
Whole clubs have left the competition because they were being punished for societal change. Hornsby play on the Central Coast. Campbelltown play in the Illawarra. They tried to appeal to Subbies' good nature, and found they didn't have one.
The similarity between these eastern suburbs Suburban clubs and the Premier clubs in the east should not be lost on anyone. They don't give a single shit for anyone but themselves, and having little dick-swinging contests between the upper echelon to see who wins the premiership trophies.
They believe they're right. They have a vested interest in their clubs being top of the tree and getting some money from the ARU - an ARU which apparently needs $50 per player to keep itself afloat these days from amateurs like me, but apparently has the money to fund club rugby with massive handouts they've not earned.
While firing shots at Pappy et al, I'm not saying Bill doesn't need a kick up the arse, either. There are some serious bullshit deals going on at the top end.
The recent "Key Constituents" meeting was a joke, and just an attempt at placation when Papworth et al decided they'd get a rebel comp going.
Remember: a rebel comp run by guys whose clubs would go down the gurgler if it wasn't for ARU handouts.
From clubs who are part of a system that barely gets Channel 7TWO to cover it on a Saturday afternoon because of lack of interest.
Because the Premier Club scene only really means something if you were born into it, or you've got nothing else to do on a Saturday afternoon - as an aside: I'm out running a club on a Saturday afternoon, as are most people involved in rugby beyond general fandom.
This belief that people can be lauded at all levels because "they're good rugby men" is utter shit. This is, without a doubt, the worst offshoot of the private school mentality pervading the game; that's ironic because Papworth didn't attend private school but is right in there yapping away.
If they were actually interested in the game as a whole, they'd work with the ARU behind closed doors to influence the system. As it is, we still have the same basket case, NSW-v-QLD-v-Everyone-Else politics running the show because of loud hollering in the public domain by people like Pappy.
That has to stop.
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@Rancid-Schnitzel said in Wallaby EOYT 2016:
For real? Fark that is a waste of cash. Considering that is one position in which you have some really good depth, paying that amount is ridiculous.
I don't think the ARU is paying the whole of the $4M - that might just be the value of his earnings over the next 3 years including a stint in Japan.
But he'll be our highest-paid forward by some distance, in order to retain him under the new contract structures that are supposed to be about more than just money.
e.g. Foley played the last off-season in Japan. Folau was supposed to as well before injury ruled him out. A few guys are doing this in order to stay here but play there, and not piss off to Europe permanently.
Player burnout is the issue.
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You're both obviously passionate about your club rugby, which is great to see and your viewpoints are enlightening too. Very much enjoying your contributions here guys.
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Its a many-headed beast, @Catogrande
My viewpoint is that of a relative latecomer to rugby. I was from a very public school in a very league-dominated area.
I see sports like Aussie Rules, League, and Soccer embracing the wider public, while rugby tries to trade on old glories.
The kind of reform we need to put ourselves at NZ-like levels of consistency and performance will take a decade or more, and it starts with Olympic 7s and moves on to a wider schools competition that provides genuine competition for the peak, and uplift of other areas that aren't traditionally rugby.
The tippy-top of the private school system only has 6 participants, all with varying levels of strength in their program year to year.
And I'm not talking a top division - that is the entire comp. The same 6 schools. Every year.
That's fucking insane.
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The other issue with the schools thing, at least in Sydney, is these competitions are part of wider sports, not just rugby.
So in Sydney you've got a whole bunch of different school groupings with roughly a half-dozen schools in each (e.g. GPS, CAS, ISA) for not just rugby but pretty much all sports (team sports but also athletics, swimming etc).
What are the realistic chances of rugby being able to break that mould and have proper divisions for their school rugby?
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@NTA I've read the stuff Papworth puts out, he uses words like grassroots, but he doesn't really mean it. He means premier club rugby (if I'm generous, also including Brisbane). Yes he's a "proper rugby man" but he also has his own inherent bias. And that's fine, but people shouldn't pretend he's going in to bat for a rugby club in Mackay.
The ARU have a fairly unique set of challenges they need to overcome to not only grow the game domestically, but solidify it in it's traditional markets. The vigorous competition of 3 other football codes, all with better broadcast deals, more money, and greater market visualisation. Those same codes are also taking sponsorship dollars off the states/Super sides. Do you think the rabble at the Reds can compete with the Broncos? Hell, even the Roar? I had a yarn to Eddie Jones not long after his ill-fated job in Brisbane, and he said when he turned up, there was almost zero corporate interest in the Reds, there was no money from the big end of town coming in at all. One of his biggest jobs off the field was to try and turn that around. Success after he left did that to a decent extent apparently, but it all slipped away as the Reds slipped down from the 2011 high. Aussies love a winner, and unfortunately for any of the losers, your average sponsor doesn't have to turn very far to find one.
The ARU need more money to make the game strong. They can't get money while the game isn't strong and winning at the top level. The game won't get strong at the top level without a strong domestic game. Chicken and egg situation. It'll take some vision, and some fucking leadership, neither of which appear to be in abundance at ARU headquarters.
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For all the moaning, I think the ARU are in as good a state as I can remember.
Their commitment to the NRC is laudable, and they have done really well to capitalise on the growth of Sevens. The latest school participation figures are fantastic, and offer a real platform for growth.
The main challenge currently faced is the state of Super Rugby. It's a financial sinkhole which diminishes in profile and importance every year.
Unfortunately the ARU can't control the game to the extent the NRL and AFL can. We are somewhat beholden to other interests, whether that's World Rugby or SANZAAR.
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@barbarian said in Wallaby EOYT 2016:
For all the moaning, I think the ARU are in as good a state as I can remember.
Their commitment to the NRC is laudable, and they have done really well to capitalise on the growth of Sevens. The latest school participation figures are fantastic, and offer a real platform for growth.
The main challenge currently faced is the state of Super Rugby. It's a financial sinkhole which diminishes in profile and importance every year.
Unfortunately the ARU can't control the game to the extent the NRL and AFL can. We are somewhat beholden to other interests, whether that's World Rugby or SANZAAR.
You also always get a winner with those other codes. Someone is backing a winner, and has a dog in the fight come finals time. Super rugby, even with the conferences, can't guarantee that.
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@mariner4life said in Wallaby EOYT 2016:
You also always get a winner with those other codes. Someone is backing a winner, and has a dog in the fight come finals time. Super rugby, even with the conferences, can't guarantee that.
That's really underrated too. It's more likely than not that we will end a year without any major silverware. No rugby fan in Australia comes away with a smile. Everyone loses.
The AFL and NRL have the luxury of knowing that 10% of their fans (roughly) will be over the moon every year. There is always a winner. I wish we had that.
