REBUILDING AUSTRALIAN RUGBY: Part One – The Case for Change

Why Australian Rugby Must Reconsider Its Super Rugby Model

The Question: Is Super Rugby still the best use of Rugby Australia’s money and resources?

For three decades, Super Rugby has been the principal professional competition beneath the Wallabies. It has produced outstanding players, champion teams and memorable rugby. But the structure has also required substantial and repeated financial investment while Australia’s results have steadily declined.

That is the central argument of this paper.

Not that Super Rugby caused every problem in Australian rugby.

Not that leaving Super Rugby automatically solves them.

And not that the competition hasn’t ever produced value.

Australian rugby is entering what Rugby Australia has itself described as a “Golden Decade.” The 2025 British & Irish Lions tour has strengthened Rugby Australia’s financial position. Australia will host the Men’s Rugby World Cup in 2027, the Women’s Rugby World Cup in 2029 and the Brisbane Olympic Games in 2032.

It is an extraordinary opportunity.

It is also the right time to ask a question Australian rugby has largely avoided for the better part of the 2020s.

Has Rugby Australia’s investment provided sufficient financial and high-performance return from Super Rugby?

To provide the answer to that question, we need to go back to the only other time Australia has hosted a Rugby World Cup tournament in its entirety: 2003.

The Financial Case

Australia emerged from the 2003 Rugby World Cup in an extraordinarily strong financial position.

The tournament generated approximately $44.5 million in surplus, while the ARU recorded an overall annual net surplus of approximately $32.9 million.

What followed was more than two decades of significant financial volatility.

There were profitable years, particularly around major events such as the 2013 British & Irish Lions tour, but substantial deficits repeatedly returned.

By 2017 the ARU CEO Bill Pulver told a Commonwealth Senate inquiry:

“Super Rugby is the most financially challenged part of the ARU’s operations.”

At that time approximately $6 million annually was being provided to each Australian Super Rugby team.

The ARU had also provided approximately $28 million in additional unbudgeted support to Super Rugby teams over the preceding five years.

Its modelling indicated that retaining five Australian teams could create a financial shortfall of between $13 million and $26 million by the end of 2020.

The Western Force was subsequently removed before eventually returning.

The Melbourne Rebels later entered voluntary administration and disappeared from Super Rugby after 2024.

Rugby Australia has since moved the professional operations of the Waratahs and Brumbies under centralised control. Another name for “Administration”.

Financial pressure also resulted in substantial borrowing. In 2023 Rugby Australia established an $80 million Pacific Equity Partners facility, with $50 million drawn by the end of that year, partly bridging the organisation towards future major-event income.

The significance of that borrowing should not be understated.

Rugby Australia had reached a position where substantial external financing was required to carry the organisation towards the next major injection of extraordinary income — most notably the 2025 British & Irish Lions tour, an event that visits Australia only once every 12 years.

Borrowing itself is not evidence of failure. But needing tens of millions of dollars in external capital to bridge the period between extraordinary major-event windfalls raises a fundamental question about the sustainability of the underlying professional model.

A sustainable professional rugby system should not depend upon borrowing against the next once-in-a-generation event to remain financially viable.

The conclusion does not need to be any more complicated than this:

The professional model has required repeated financial intervention to sustain it.

The Sporting Case

That investment might be easier to justify if accompanied by sustained elite success.

The results make that argument very difficult.

Since the 2003 Rugby World Cup Final, Australian teams have won three full international Super Rugby championships:

• 2004 – Brumbies
• 2011 – Reds
• 2014 – Waratahs

No Australian team has won the full international competition since 2014.

Over the same broad period, the Wallabies:

• Have not won the Bledisloe Cup since 2002;
• Have not won the Rugby World Cup;
• Have won only two Tri Nations/Rugby Championships since 2002;
• Have failed to progress beyond the Rugby World Cup pool stage for the first time in 2023.

The period has also included Australia’s first Test loss to Italy, Fiji’s first victory over Australia in 69 years, a 40–6 defeat to Wales at the 2023 World Cup and Argentina scoring a record 67 points against Australia in 2024.

Super Rugby cannot reasonably be held responsible for all of those results.

But Australia’s professional structure exists to develop players capable of succeeding at international level. Its long-term performance must therefore form part of any assessment of whether the investment has worked.

Who Does Australian Rugby Listen To?

There is another issue that should form part of any genuine examination of Australian rugby’s professional structure: who is invited into the discussion.

In a rugby meeting attended by the author of this paper a number of years ago, former Wallaby and long-time club administrator Brett Papworth made an observation that has remained with me:

“Rugby Australia only ever listens to the opinions of people who are paid by the game.”

Whether expressed literally or as a criticism of Rugby Australia’s decision-making culture, the point is important.

The people employed within Australian rugby possess considerable expertise and should be central to any review of the game’s future. But Australian rugby also contains an enormous body of knowledge outside its professional administration – within its clubs, coaches, former players, volunteers, sponsors, business leaders and lifelong rugby people.

A genuine examination of the future should draw upon both.

There is also an unavoidable question of institutional perspective. People working within an existing structure can understandably see its problems through the prism of how that structure might be improved.

Those outside it may be more willing to ask whether the structure itself remains the right one.

The people paid by the system should not be the only people asked whether the system should change.

The Case for Change

Australian rugby has spent more than two decades trying to improve Super Rugby.

It has:

• Expanded the number of Australian teams.
• Reduced them.
• Restored them.
• Changed competition formats.
• Centralised professional operations.
• Decentralised professional operations.
• Supported financially distressed franchises.
• And repeatedly restructured the professional game.

The question should no longer be:

• How do we fix Super Rugby?

It now needs to be:

• What could Australian Rugby build instead?

The evidence presented here does not prove that Australia must leave Super Rugby.

It establishes something more important:

The status quo should no longer be assumed to be the best option.

Australia now has a rare opportunity to examine that question from a position of renewed financial strength.

The Golden Decade should not simply provide enough money to sustain the existing structure for another cycle.

It should provide the opportunity to determine whether Australian rugby can build something better.

Part Two examines that alternative: a National Club Competition built around the strongest institutions Australian rugby already possesses – its clubs.