Saffas going?
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@canefan said in Saffas going?:
@Bones said in Saffas going?:
@Stargazer said in Saffas going?:
Quite a lot (relatively speaking) of fans follow their national teams to 6N away games; that will be near impossible if they play in South Africa.
Wait... what? It's near impossible to get to SA from the UK?
It won't work without a major rejig of seasons
Ok...were you meaning to reply to someone else?
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@taniwharugby said in Saffas going?:
I expect if this happened, we would finally have no choice but to select players from overseas, although we'd probably just have to pick up those not snaffled up by the Euro teams.
Might not be the worst thing.
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Sooner or later SA will join 6 Nations and Heineken Cup, probably at expense of Italy. Too
much commercial pressure for this not to happen.My guess is that Super Rugby will be replaced by a new Aus, NZ and Pacific competition. The Rugby Championship will become a US, Argentina, Japan, Aus, NZ competition.
NZR will be forced to introduce their own version of Giteau's law.
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I agree about the Giteau rule. We’d have no choice but to select abroad.
But I think it’s optimistic to think that the Japanese and US will be keen to throw money at a passing concern for very long.
The ability to retain players will be based on money, we all agree on that. But the money will only be forthcoming if there is a palatable product for Asia and the Americans.
If NZ hammer everyone. If Argentina hammer everyone, who wants to see that? NZ and Argentina and no one else.
Anyone thinking the islands will be part of the plan is deluded. They aren’t part of the plan currently and there money around. How in the fuck are the remaining And soon to be much poorer RC unions going to prop up completely broke and corrupt Island unions?
Where we are headed in test rugby is meaningless games like football friendlies and only world cups mean something. The NH Club scene will become the be all end all.
Yes I’m being negative. Hoped to be proved well and truly wrong.
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I think I can speak on behalf of the majority of 6N supporters.
We neither want nor need SA in the competition.
And SA feel thesame way.
It's posturing.
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@MiketheSnow I've read the same reaction from French rugby fans on French sites and social media, but some are afraid it will happen because of the huge sums of money involved.
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If SA do this and dissolve the TRC it could be a blessing.
The NZRU could move to a model similar to what Notre Dame/BYU use in college football. Set their own schedule from start to finish and use the box office draw of the ABs to leverage better deals for their away games.
At least to start we would probably have to deal with a very weak slate of home fixtures to make that work.
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If this were to happen it'd hurt short term but we'd get over it. It'd mean an end to SANZAAR and Super Rugby involving SA teams due to the overlap, but that's not the end of the world.
We should sidle up to Japan and get a couple of combined Top League teams into Super Rugby, with the Top League running completely separately. This would replace SA's broadcasting revenue. As a sweetener to the Japan RU who'd previously not backed the Sunwolves, we release a quantity of NZ players to boost their sides and up everyones' revenue. Also takes the pressure off NZR's contracting monies, but we'd need to change eligibility rules so that these Kiwis were still available for the All Blacks. I think that model solves a number of problems.
The Rugby Championship becomes NZ, Australia, Argentina and Japan. JANZAR.
Meanwhile I'm not sure when SA think they'll be able to play NZ and Australia, unless they become an in-bound tour in place of a NH team, which in itself is a bit of a win as an occasional three test series vs SA would create huge interest. We could go there also, so lets say every two years we play them either home or away, or it could even be that two of three tests are played in one nation.
But for a start I'd flip SA the bird and not play them for a couple of years at all.
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The expression "where there is smoke" springs to mind, but I am still giving no credence to this supposed 7 Nations plan.
It doesn't strike me that many of the NH teams are in favour (and I base this on zero actual fact, more gut feel).
Equally, I am not sure there is that much unhappiness with The Rugby Championship from SA Rugby. The travel factor has long ago been accepted.
SA Rugby's possible, and most likely probable issue will be about cash. They need LOTS more of it as the player drain attests to. Maybe they can get more from a 7-Nations deal, maybe not. (I don't think it will resolve the exodus issues anyway).
Plus the seasonal timing doesn't work well. SA based players will end up having a 12-month season. Too big a workload, not much more pay.... can't see that going down a treat.Nah - I think we'll be staying put.
The trick for SANZAAR is to find a format / way to massively increase revenues for all the participating Championship nations. Because it's not just SA that is feeling the Euro / Pound pinch. -
Maybe some kind of cycle where the teams only play each other once and the whole tournament and it's hosted by one country, so each country gets it on a 4 year cycle? Or maybe 2 countries can host it at a time with a 2 year cycle?
Opens up more leeway for tours, etc, plus can also still have extra Bledisloes.
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@Billy-Webb Maybe we can play in both tournaments (7N & RC). There are 46 SA players in the English Premiership alone. Rassie can select the NH base players for the 7 N and the SH players for the RC.
Myself would love to see the old rugby tours. Pretty sure an All Black tour to SA will produce more money then the one off RC test.
We can return to CC rugby. We saw this weekend the best crowd in S15 when the Bulls played the Stormers. The PRO14 is another example. We saw the best support when the Cheetahs and Kings played each other.
The attendance at Ellis Park this weekend was shocking.
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All the talk seems to be about more rugby when everything but money seems to point to less rugby being the better option.
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@nzzp said in Saffas going?:
@canefan said in Saffas going?:
I'm not sure this move would make their rugby any better. How many players come back from the NH better?
Currently, most of them. Look at the standouts in the AUS and SA teams in teh RWC; a lot of them are coming out of the NH comps. They went away and got better. We have to do the same.
That said, SA always does this, and so far no joy. I'm not sure the 6/7N will compromise their travel for a few SA dollars. The big money is in England and France, and potentially Japan. SA is a medium earner in the scheme of things.
If they do go, it'll be curtains for us though. We just wno't compete with the big boys up north with the deep pockets if we can't get Japan up and running as a superpower.
Why would the 6N agree to include RSA, though? You rightly point out that most of the money comes from France and England, so it’s at best a marginal financial gain. But on the field, they’ve got a lot to lose, playing the 3x world champs every year. Plus there’s the travel factor. Plus there’s getting Scotland, Italy, Ireland and Wales to agree to it as they’re arguably the most at risk of this new team at least on the field
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Reflecting on this, and remembering that SA want to join NH as it's where the money is, the key road blocks have to be
- Seasons.
Playing summer rugby in SA would be a massive shift. It would be direct competition with Cricket (for instance), and out of step with the entire rest of the schedule (schoolboy, Currie Cup, etc). So you either have no pool of players playing footy during the 6N, or you have to rejig your entire calendar. Northern/Southern hemisphere calendar struggles exist for a reason.
1a. Seaons continued
You're now asking NH teams to go from what they had in Scotland at the weekend, to summer temperatures (high20's, low 30's possibly) in a week. Really not sure that's going to be feasible.- Travel
Similar timezone, but I think the 12H flight to Cape Town would be a real deal breaker. The longest trip at the moment would be Scotland-Italy; about 3 hours. Replace that with two or three flights depending on start/finish and it's a real headache.
The other factor in that is the fans. The reason the 6N is the best comp in the world (not the best rugby, but the best comp) are the fans, and the travelling fans in particular. Basically you kill that for one team completely.
- Buyin from Scotland, Wales (and maybe Italy)
Will they really sign up to playing a top team every year, and possibly getting humiliated? Not sure I see it, with marginal financial gain. Will SA really bring that much to the table?
This (http://archive.livewire.ie/international-rugby-union-revenues-reach/) from 2015 suggests not:
So overall, I'd be really really surprised if this happened. It's kind of like a developer offering to build a waterfront stadium - based on a lot of pie in the sky, hypotheticals.
- Seasons.
