RUGBY AUSTRALIA PROPOSES RADICAL IDEA FOR ALL BLACKS TEST AS CHAIRMAN SLAMS RUGBY’S ‘HALF-PREGNANT’ APPROACH
Rugby Australia chairman Daniel Herbert is looking to make an early impact in his role by moving one of the Bledisloe Cup Tests to April.
The former Wallabies centre took on the position after Hamish McLennan was forced out and has been tasked with turning their fortunes around.
One of Herbert’s ideas is to have an All Blacks encounter on or around Anzac Day – April 25 – in line with other sports in Australia.
Although Super Rugby Pacific will have an Anzac Round, it won’t quite have the same reverence as a clash with New Zealand.
Huge weekend for Australia
It has become one of the great sporting weekends in the calendar, but rugby union is often dwarfed by events held by the NRL and AFL.
However, facing their arch-rivals would change all that for rugby, according to Herbert, and make the Australian public more excited.
“I think it would be a no-brainer. If we could work it out and get the different parties on the page with it, it could be something that rugby has that is a little bit unique. It is not two clubs against one another,” he told The Inside Line podcast.
“It is a long-standing rivalry, but also a long-term partnership, and recognised through a flagship event like that, we could develop a really big event, a prestigious event around that.
“Rugby league already has State of Origin breaking up the season, so I don’t see why we couldn’t do it other than trying to get the Super Rugby schedule around it, and getting our New Zealand partners on side with it. For me, it would be a no-brainer.”
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Herbert also believes there is still “amateur baggage” in the game and that the sport needs to modernise in line with what the US are doing commercially.
‘Constant battle with tradition’
“People still have deep ties to their teams and their sports, but they know it is a mass-entertainment product,” he said. “We are half-pregnant sometimes with rugby where we are trying to hold on to the amateur ethos and traditions… whereas the reality is the professional game is now reliant on those that fund it. So you need to make sure we are building these mass-entertainment products.
“That constant battle with tradition is something rugby, given we are only professional less than 30 years, is still hanging on to. (There is) a lot of the amateur baggage, in my view.
“We need to break free of that, and start to look with a clean sheet of paper: how do we build the most commercial, entertaining products we possibly can, to attract the biggest market we can?
“And it’s no secret the sports that are doing this well, they’re working. The NRL are doing some good things, they started to operate like an American-type sport and it’s grown in its commercial appeal.
“Rugby, we love the tradition, we want to hold on to what we can, but we can’t hold on to it so much we choke the opportunity ahead of us.”
2024-04-25T09:09:26Z dg43tfdfdgfd