With the introduction of a third tear competition in Australian rugby comes a sense of excitement and anticipation for the future and to see our youngest talent grow into something special – and hopefully one day Wallabies. This is a good step and one that was needed (obviously) but I am left to wonder if it is being done right or if there are some aspects of the competition that could be speeding up the process that simply aren’t happening.
One of these is blatantly obvious after the first week and a bit of games is the dominance of the Super Rugby players that have signed on for the local NRC franchises and are still playing every week. There will be the one or two standout youngsters who get the good runs and steps going, the things people watch the game for, but the stars of the Australian Super Rugby teams overshadow them all. This is not only bad for selection but also for the players’ confidence, skill levels and their visibility to the higher scouts and coaches from the top tier teams. There is just no way a team of no names will beat the likes of Christian Lealiifano and Jessie Mogg which makes for a boring and predictive competition.
We’ve seen the introduction of the 3-point conversion, 2-point drop and penalty goal and also the 3 tries or more bonus point but is it all too much? There wasn’t a big deal of fuss in the way rugby was going around the world and not enough tries being scored because in all honesty there were plenty. It is good to see the games that have 6 or 7 tries in them but if you get that every game you get flooded with them and the mental value of seeing tries go down and the crowd won’t stand up and go crazy for every try like they would in a normal game. Some games wont have many tries and it is a battle of the boot with penalties flying in from everywhere but that isn’t a bad thing. Just because one game is like that doesn’t mean that we needed to get rid of the old fashioned ways of scoring, all be it they have only changed about 15 times before. In the 6 games that have been played there have already been 41 tries, that is just a few too many for anyone’s liking.
The crowd also doesn’t have much to cheer for; this one can’t really be an easy fix though as there is no real incentive in 3rd tier rugby. Most of the spectators that go to the games are all there for family, or at least that is what it seemed like at the Melbourne Rising’s first game last week and it wasn’t the best atmosphere. Tickets are cheap and kids get in free but there still isn’t enough to get a fair weather rugby fan down to the game. There is a trophy and there are some big name players but during the Super Rugby season there is enough to watch that to last a year, well at least some people think like that.
We need to wait for this to grow and get bigger before anyone can make a full judgment and after all it is only in it’s 2nd week and the National Rugby Championship does have some good TV coverage and is getting on highlight packages for news channels so at least there is a future in Australian rugby!
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