Do you remember the Australian Rugby Championship?
Chances are you don’t.
Basically it was a club competition the ARU set up in the hope that they could establish a third tier of Rugby Union in Australia that wasn’t a decaying relic that the various club competition dotted around isolated areas of the country have turned into. It was launched with much fanfare and it cost a lot of money and all up, it lasted a single season and lost nearly $5 million dollars.
It was such a disaster that the ARU was glad it was over, and they never looked at the concept ever again.
Now, Balmain Rugby Union club boss Warren Livingstone has rehashed the idea and said he will push for private ownership of clubs. He has also said that there will be a $1 million dollar prize for the winning club.
His idea is to start off small and look to build the competition over time. He wants to sell this competition to broadcaster and target players that are either young, or not contracted to any of the “Super” Rugby Union franchises. He knows this type of competition won’t sit well with the ARU, but he is determined to make it happen.
What he hasn’t thought about is this…
Who wants to sit down and watch a bunch of park footballers they don’t know play in made up teams in a tiny competition that is based entirely in Sydney when they could watch ANYTHING else!
This is the ARC all over again but this time, right from the get go, the competition is in a $1 million dollar hole because of the bloated prize money on offer. You then want to try and convince private investers to invest in a competition whose last incarnation lost $5 million dollars in one year?
Good luck with that.
What broadcaster is really going to want to buy this rubbish? You’re trying to sell them the leftovers of a sport that isn’t even healthy at its highest level. A competition like this isn’t even going to knock The Love Boat out of its time slot!
This has to be one of the most ridiculous, pie in the sky idea’s I have every heard of. I appriciate Warren Livingstone really enjoys Rugby Union, and I’m sure at Balmain Rugby Union club, he is a bit of a hero. He’s shown he is willing toi reach into his own pocket to pay professional players to run out in front of a few hundred people on a local oval. However someone needs to sit him down and utter a word he must not hear much of at Balmain….. NO.
He would be better off saving his money. Give some of it to charitry. Buy a flashy sports car. Take your family on a holiday. Anything, anything at all would make better use of his money than wasting it on a concept like this that has no chance of ever being a success.
