Just last week I posted an article on the state of Australian rugby and how it needed fixing and that the National Rugby Championship would be the solution to all of the problems. I also stated that Australia would beat the All Blacks at some point in the next few years. But I fear after some Super Rugby fueled games over the weekend the sport might not be moving anywhere.
After the Melbourne Rising, who have filled their team with the most Super Rugby players of any of the new franchises, had already gone 2 for 2 with 100 points being put up and bonus points for tries in the two games. They went on and defeated Brisbane City 79-18 and I am left to wonder what is the point of all of the biggest names playing in this third tier competition?
Of course it isn’t all bad and some of the players who did score some of the ripping tries weren’t Rebels players but may be very soon. This does help obviously and that is what the competition was made to do. Some of the country’s best young talent is on offer, as the slogan says, and this is with out a doubt very good for the country but there will be a game one day were the winning gets more important than that.
Take the Melbourne Rising for example; they have signed Rebels captain Scott Higginbotham for the season. He didn’t play tonight because he was winning a game against the South Africans in Perth by one point and he probably wont play for the Rising all year. But this doesn’t mean that one day the team might want to win the premiership so badly or want to defeat a rival team so much that they chuck him onto the bench and he runs riot over the 20 somethings and teenagers on the field.
Still though the whole idea and third tier competition is very much what Australia needed and will need to thrive if they is any chance at some more global domination in rugby in the coming years. Other countries have had theirs for a while and people come to watch their young talent and that is what we need in Australia. Attracting more people to the games would be ideal but it is only the first year and we can’t have everything! The NRC will grow of course and the ARU just need to trust that.
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