Dalton Papali'i, Roger Tuivasa-Sheck and Caleb Clarke during a Blues training session. Photo / Photosport
Dalton Papali'i, Roger Tuivasa-Sheck and Caleb Clarke during a Blues training session. Photo / Photosport
Newstalk ZB’s lead rugby commentator Elliott Smith analyses the latest talking points in the rugby world.
An observation...
In the words of Daryl Kerrigan from the movie ‘The Castle’, Rugby Australia chairman Hamish McClennan is an ideas man.
That’s what Super Rugby needs. Ideas, fresh thinking. The Super Rugby draftis a fine idea to float, but it sinks on further analysis. The concept has merit, but while the suggestion sounds good in theory – pull the best young talent the sport has to offer into the lower-achieving franchises and therefore give them a better chance of success - it’s flawed in the understanding of how talent is produced in New Zealand Rugby in 2023.
Some time ago the franchises were handed the keys to bringing through talent in their regions – hence the local academies named after their Super Rugby franchises and not the local provinces.
Fine - you might say...bin the academies and hand the development pathway back to the provincial unions – the problem being that many are simply no longer equipped to handle that or set players onto a professional pathway. And since we’re also told we’re no longer able to enjoy high school sport by a bunch of overzealous administrators, especially in Auckland, you wouldn’t be able to begin to profile players at that level into potential draft prospects and create hype like in the NBA and NFL. This isn’t America. The system simply isn’t built for a draft. Not without a fundamental change in how the sport operates.
Last week's NFL draft provided a model that Super Rugby could follow. Photo / Getty
A (few) questions...
The lure of a draft and spicing up Super Rugby sounds nice on the surface, but there are so many fishhooks as to how it would work. Would it encompass all 12 sides? Just the New Zealand-based sides? Just the five foundation New Zealand sides? And perhaps most importantly, who administers it and makes it happen. Besides, forcing some young flash Harry first-five straight out of school from Auckland to spend the early years of their career at one of the low-achieving Australian franchises surely violates some sort of human rights convention and if it doesn’t, it should. Much different from an established player heading across the Tasman either way to continue their career and still being eligible for the national side.
A suggestion...
One solution would be to go back to the future somewhat and cap the number of players Super Rugby franchises can sign or protect. Until the mid-2000s, New Zealand teams used to be able to protect a certain number of players from their catchment areas (remember those?) and then the rest would go into a player pool where franchises could patch up their sides with players from outside their border walls. It’s an idea that could potentially work again now – if squad numbers were capped at a certain point, it would create more discussion around protected players and the NPC would have another factor as players fight to retain their Super Rugby contracts or put themselves in the prime spot for a draft spot.
Teams could still contract players long-term, but like a salary cap, they’d have to crunch the numbers and plan to make sure they have the right players retained. Get it wrong and you could be handing talent over to an opposition. Give the bottom-placed New Zealand side the first two picks of the unprotected players then work your way down the list from there. Some players would be picked up by their local franchises, but there’d be gems that the big franchises couldn’t protect that end up elsewhere.
Adding back in the old-style draft and throwing away border controls on All Blacks/Wallabies players would give the competition an instant lift. Whether New Zealand franchises have any interest in Australian players outside genuine superstars is still up for debate, but at least the option would be there.
