Super shake-up on the cards

REACTION: The Australian rugby landscape could change dramatically in the next year, including the culling of another franchise.

The costly Israel Folau legal battle and settlement, plus the loss of Super Rugby fixtures and potential Wallabies Tests later this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic have left the game in Australia teetering financially.

Rugby Australia Chief Executive Officer Raelene Castle has revealed that there is much uncertainty over both the short- and long-term future of the game in Australia.

And she could not rule out axing another Super Rugby side in 2021.

Castle was quietly optimistic current measures would see Rugby Union through the next three months, but said a think tank would be assembled to discuss what the professional landscape might look like beyond that.

“In 2021, I think there’s a high probability the calendar won’t look exactly like it looks at the moment,” she said.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty around the cost of flights, how far players will want to travel.

“We all hope Super Rugby will get back to where it was previously and we are scenario planning for that.

“But I also think, in the wider game, we need to be having conversations about what a new calendar could look like from an international point of view, a SANZAAR perspective and also a domestic perspective.”

Castle and her executive are set for a crucial meeting with the players’ representative Justin Harrison on Tuesday.

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However, their talks would centre more on short-term than long-term solutions.

“We’re just not at that stage at the moment,”she said about the game beyond 2020.

“Survival for the next three months is the most important piece, then we can sit down as a sport.

“We proposed that we have a think tank that will bring together all the key stakeholders across the game and start thinking about some of those scenarios, about what options for the game could be considered.

“At the moment we’ve got contracts in place around delivering a Super Rugby structure, with four teams, and that’s the model that we’ll be working to.

“But it would be crazy for us not to be thinking about other scenarios that might roll out. Be that domestic, international or the SANZAAR product [Super Rugby].”

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