Pathways

The pathways tier of our rugby ecosystem is at the head of the underlying, amateur layers where alignment is vital to ensure the platforms are working together to push talent towards the top.

A healthy ecosystem is a cycle that relies on entertaining and engaging products across those ‘visible’ layers out the front, to draw participants in to a well-calibrated system doing all the behind the scenes work of identifying and adequately preparing talent to send up the chain.

This pathways strategy will make suggestions for useful platforms that aim to effectively identify and produce talent for the rigors of full time, professional rugby. With the removal of the Fiji Drua and Moana Pasifika, it will also provide an alternate strategy for Australia and the Pacific Islands to work together for the benefit of all parties.

A ‘third tier’ concept sits within this layer of the ecosystem and whether there is a need for one has been another hotly debated discussion-point across our rugby community. Understanding the expense and minimal revenue-earning opportunities for such a concept, I suggest it can add value but I’m stripping it back to serve almost purely player development purposes with some added goals of delivering a regional engagement tool and tightening up the pathway to inspire kids.

Australian Rugby Championship (ARC)

South Harbour New South Wales

North Harbour New South Wales

South River Queensland

North River Queensland

ACT & Southern NSW

Victoria

Western Australia

Pacific Islands

Eight teams play each other once for seven games played in a window immediately following the Indian Pacific Championship (see ‘professional rugby’ tab) and overlapping with the November tests.
No finals are played to ensure all players are involved in an equal number of games for their development, however the highest ranked team after the seven weeks of competition is crowned the ARC Champions.
The seven Australian teams are stocked with all non-Wallaby squad Trans Tasman Rugby players and supported by the best of the club talent that exists in each jurisdiction (see below for NSW & QLD club alignment with ARC teams).
These are ‘representative’ teams so they are exclusively stocked with players that fall within their associated area and there is no plucking players from outside their aligned leagues or clubs.

Pacific Rugby Academies

Central Fiji (Suva)

Western Fiji (Lautoka)

Samoa

Tonga

Instead of including Fiji and Pasifika teams in the TTR professional rugby competition, Pacific rugby academies and an associated competition would be established to develop local talent.
The best players across the Pacific will continue to be drawn to the higher wages on offer in the Northern Hemisphere, so these academies will provide a broader approach to identifying and developing players for professional competitions.
Each of the Pacific Island countries play their local domestic competitions with identified talent earning contracts to the academies in their jurisdiction.
Academies play against each other home and away for six games before the third and fourth ranked teams play off for third place and the top two teams play off to decide the Champion.
Each academy also maintains an U20’s program (that doesn’t involve playing against each other) and is used to identify and develop talent for the U20 Pacific Series with Australia, New Zealand and Japan.
Following the seven-week Pacific Academy Championship, a Pacific Islands team is selected from the four academies to compete as the eight team in the Australian Rugby Championship.

Domestic 7's Rugby

Events

City 7’s (Leichhardt Oval)

Ballymore 7’s (Ballymore)

Northern Beaches 7's (Brookvale Oval)

The seven ARC clubs are also responsible for identifying and developing open male and female and Under 19’s male and female squads for a domestic 7’s series that includes three events.
Teams train and play after the five local club rugby seasons in the September to October window (during the IPC). Squads are filled with players from the Australian 7’s program as they prepare for the 7’s World Series as well as players identified in local club rugby competitions.
Phase one of an event involves all teams playing each other once (six games) before the top four advance to the semi finals and the bottom three play off for 5th, 6th and 7th.
Each teams eight games are played between Friday and Sunday with the Open competitions held in the main stadium and Under 19’s competitions held in venues in the immediate or local area.

Australian Under 20's Championship

New South Wales Waratahs

Queensland Reds

ACT Brumbies

Western Force

Melbourne Rebels

Each TTR club is responsible for talent identifying and developing a squad to compete in an Australian Under 20’s competition.
The state/region that the respective TTR clubs represent is their priority for identifying talent, however quality players that haven’t been picked up by the club in their jurisdiction can be approached to take up squad positions and ensure the best Under 20’s players across the nation are involved.
Each team plays the others in the competition home and away for eight games over ten weeks.
This mirrors the first ten weeks of the TTR and these games operate as ‘curtain raisers’ for TTR games between Australian conference opponents.
There are no finals, however there is an U20’s representative game in the week following the ten rounds of the competition between NSW & Southern Unions vs QLD & Western Unions. This game would be the ‘curtain raiser’ to the senior clash.

Summary

The ARC would be positioned well-clear of the club competitions that the seven Australian representative teams pull players from to ensure these local leagues are able to run with minimal disruption.
TTR squad players that aren’t involved in their teams’ match day 23 can drop back to club rugby once those seasons have begun.
Non-Wallaby TTR players that play all TTR games are entitled to a five-week stand-down period (six weeks if they played in the Union of Origin fixture) at the end of their TTR season and before they filter back to club rugby to ensure they aren’t placed in a position where they will play more than 35 games per year.
Post seasons in the club leagues would be capped at a 2-week structure (1 v 4, 2 v 3) to maximise the number of weeks that all club players are active.
These five club leagues would play their Grand Finals on the final weekend of the Rugby Championship in late August for all TTR players to link back with their clubs for the Indian Pacific Championship (IPC) that kicks off in September.
Each Australian ARC team would select a club-based squad (at least 23) whose engagement would commence following the club Grand Final weekend to begin preparing for the ARC. Wider TTR squad players who aren’t regularly playing in the IPC would also begin their training with these squads. Non-Wallaby TTR players would link up with their aligned ARC team once their TTR club is eliminated from (or wins) the IPC and the initial squad of local club players would be trimmed back according to each ARC team’s needs.
The two teams within both New South Wales and Queensland play a trial against each other prior to regular TTR players filtering back to these teams and before club players are released. These teams rely most heavily on club players with Waratahs and Reds players being split across them, so this trial will help prepare them for the ARC season and give the players that don’t make the final squad an opportunity to play at a higher level.
With capitals getting a significant amount of rugby content, games involving the ARC teams from New South Wales and Queensland would be played in regional areas of those states to create ‘country rugby experiences’ (unpacked in the ‘Grassroots Representative’ tab).
The big stadiums would be avoided to minimise costs and the main expenses would be confined to travel, accommodation (one night per travelling team per round) and semi-professional contracts to secure the services of club players.
There’s no ‘bells and whistles’ and big marketing budgets here. While I’d hope this would provide an interesting competition to draw in the attention of our rugby public, these are rep teams that exist purely for player development and not an attempt at new mergers between clubs with long and independent histories. The ACT, Victoria and Western Australia pick the best players involved in their respective club leagues (which support their non-Wallaby TTR squad) while the four New South Wales and Queensland teams select purely from their aligned clubs in the Shute Shield and Premier Rugby respectively (again, supporting their non-Wallaby TTR players).
The Pacific Islands team that includes the best players from the four Pacific academies would provide talent from the Pacific with seven games of a semi professional standard and an identified development pathway.
Like the seven Australian teams in the ARC, this Pacific Islands team would also serve to supply talent to Australia’s five TTR teams. Pacific talent from this pathway wouldn’t be able to represent the Wallabies though and would only be eligible for their Pacific national team.
This would further help to close the gap between Australian and New Zealand teams to encourage a more even competition and these strategies involving our Pacific neighbours could underpin a business case to potentially access World Rugby and DFAT funding for supporting important rugby heartlands and strategically positioned allies.
An athlete’s early development through their academy before involvement in either an Australian TTR or professional overseas squad will also pay dividends for Pacific national teams.
While not reliant on mass fan engagement, the season would sit in one of the barest windows in Australia’s sporting calendar being wedged between the end of the NRL and AFL seasons and just overlapping with the beginning of the domestic test cricket season.
Previous 'third tier' versions have reportedly sourced some broadcast revenue to deliver a cost-neutral product and while mass-fan engagement is not imperative as a result of the minor outlay involved, operating in this window could derive some TV income to at least minimise losses associated with running the competition.
Teams would train on Tuesday and Thursday nights and games would be played on Sunday afternoons for Saturday to offer a travel day and captains run.
The ARC would be a short/sharp concept with no finals that deliver seven quality development games (at a standard somewhere between TTR and club rugby) to TTR squad members and the cream of the crop from club rugby.
The Domestic 7’s Series would use the seven ARC clubs to consolidate resources for these semi-professional and representative entities. This concept would also be minimal fuss with only three events held in central locations that provide a pathway for players to be identified for the national program.
Under 20’s players would be filtered back to their clubs following their 10-week U20’s season and the U20 State of the Union representative game.
This representative fixture will also serve as a selection tool for the Under 20 Wallabies squad who would have time together in a training camp and playing an annual Pacific series (involving New Zealand, Japan and the Pacific Islands) before competing at the Under 20 World Championships.
Any Under 20 squad player that proves they’re capable would also be available to play in the ARC to continue their development too.

Club Alignment in the ARC

While I think we need to be realistic about how much fan engagement a ‘third tier’ can achieve, adopting a ‘representative’ approach to sit over our five premier club leagues as opposed to creating new club entities or elevating some existing clubs (as all wouldn’t be possible) is the most conducive method for attaining ‘buy-in’.

Aligning existing clubs to new entities was a valiant effort in past third tier editions but they effectively operated as new, independent clubs. Representative teams that are exclusively picking players from their patch (and strategically distributing Reds and Waratahs players across clubs to ensure some balance in the two teams in those states) will carry across that tribalism that lives and breathes in club rugby.

Furthermore, replicating the ‘brands’ of these representative teams into other layers of the ecosystem such as the 7’s program and junior pathways (discussed in the ‘Grassroots Representative Rugby’ tab) will further solidify their identity and importance.