Australian Rugby Championship:

The Australian Rugby Championship or ARC (also known as the Mazda Australian Rugby Championship or the Mazda Championship for sponsorship reasons) was a domestic rugby union football club competition in Australia which ran for only one season in August-October 2007. The competition, similar to New Zealand's Air New Zealand Cup and South Africa's Currie Cup, aimed to bridge the gap between existing club rugby and the international Super 14 competition. The ARC involved eight teams: two from Queensland, three from New South Wales and one each from Australian Capital Territory, Western Australia and Victoria.

From its inception the ARC divided many in Australian rugby, with arguments over the structure and format of the competition and concerns that the creation of arbitary state-based teams undermined the strong club competitions in Sydney and Brisbane. On 18 December 2007, the Australian Rugby Union (ARU) announced that the ARC would be scrapped due to financial losses of A$4.7 million (US$4.0 million, € 2.8 million, £2.0 million).^[1]

Teams

The competition had eight teams. When first announced, possible locations of the New South Wales sides included Sydney's north, central-west and south-east, the Central Coast and Illawarra. It is understood that the New South Wales Rugby Union (NSWRU) gave up a fourth team to Victoria, in order to make the competition more national.^[2] The ARC was supposed to be expanded later to include further teams, for example from South Australia, who are hosts to the Australia Sevens.^[3]

Queensland Rugby announced on June 2, 2006 that one of the Queensland sides will be playing out of Ballymore Stadium in Brisbane.^[4] With this announcement, the other team had been speculatively linked to both the Gold Coast and Townsville.^[5]. In November 2006 the Gold Coast was confirmed as the location of the other Queensland team.

History

The official announcement on the agreement of a national rugby competition in Australia was made in mid-2006, following a 70-person three day summit in Sydney that agreed to an eight team competition. ^[7] However, the competition was not with out its share of controversy, with some of the clubs being against the forming of a new level of competition, claiming it could harm club and grass roots rugby.^[8] In September an ARU board meeting gave the competition an official green light.^[9] A month later the competition kicked off for its inaugural year, the Queensland teams performed poorly as the East Coast Aces & Ballymore Tornadoes finished last & second last respectively. The Perth Spirit performed the best out of the regular rounds winning 6 out of 8 games although due to bonus points finished third on the ladder behind Central Coast Rays & the competitions first minor-premiers the Western Sydney Rams. After the top four teams took part in the semi-finals the Melbourne Rebels and Central Coast Rays would compete in the first ever ARC Grand Final. The Rays took out the competition defeating the Melbourne side 20 - 12.

A review of the tournament was undertaken following the 2007 season. This review found that the competition had run at more than $2 million over budget and that forecast losses for the 2008 season came to a further $3.3 million. The ARU says that the cumulative loss of $8 million over two years would be fiscally irresponsible.^[1]

Format

Competition

The competition ran for eight weeks, with finals being competed over an additional two weeks - each side played eight games, with the top four teams qualifying for the semi-finals where the winners move into the final.^[10] The competition kicked off in August, after the Super 14 and the March to July club competitions finished, and avoiding a clash with Australian under-19 and under-21 duties and the Pacific Nations Cup (in which Australia A plays).^[10] In total, 35 matches were played in the ARC over 10 weeks from August 11 and October 14, with games played on Fridays and Sundays. It was originally planned that games would not be played at 'traditional' times for rugby matches, but this decision was changed when the ABC insisted that its televised games be played on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. The inaugural final was played between the Central Coast Rays and the Melbourne Rebels in Gosford. ^[10]

Players

The timeframe of the season ensured the availability of Super 14 players (excluding Wallabies). There was no draft, and players were free to choose their team, although there was a salary cap in place.^[8] Players came from local competitions (which includes Super 14 players). Each Super 14 franchise was aligned with the respective teams, except for Melbourne, as Victoria has no Super 14 team (though they have in the past bid for one).

It was planned that although 35 footballers will be on international duty for the Wallabies, over 90 Super 14 players would go into the ARC, leaving the way for over 120 footballers to step up from first grade club competitions.^[11]

It was also planned that each team would have one "marquee" footballer not be subject to financial restrictions of the player contracting protocol.^[12] The player could be either foreign or a non-contracted domestic footballer, and if a team signed an Australian as their marquee footballer, they would still be able to sign up a foreign footballer, though they would have to fit within the contract restrictions.

Rules

The ARU announced in June 2007 that the inaugural championship would adopt the Experimental Law Variations (ELVs), which were originally trailled at South Africa's Stellenbosch University and which aim to bring more free-flowing play into the game.^[13] The laws were trialled in both the Sydney and Brisbane club competitions and were well received.^[13]

Referees

The referees supplied for the tournament predominantly come from the Australian Rugby Union Panels.

Referees for the tournament included: Matt Goddard, James Leckie, James Scholtens, George Ayoub, Daniel Cheever, Brett Bowden, Andrew Lindsay and Geoff Acton.

Stuart Dickinson and Paul Marks did not referee in the tournament, as they refereed at the 2007 Rugby World Cup in France.

Media coverage

The championship was broadcast on free to air television during its only season. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) "secured" the rights to exclusively televise the competition from 2007 through to 2009 by agreeing to accept a substantial fee from the ARU in order to cover the matches.^[14] The fact that the sport's governing organisation had to pay a television station to broadcast the game arguably has worrying implications for a code struggling to attract mainstream interest in Australia. The ABC committed to broadcast 19 matches during the season on ABC1 and ABC2: two matches from each round, plus the semi-finals and the final. ^[15] The previous time that the ABC covered elite level rugby was for the 1991 Rugby World Cup (which Australia also won).

References

^ ^a ^b "ARC scrapped after $4.7m loss". FoxSports (2007-12-18). Retrieved on 18 December, 2007.
^ "New national rugby comp for 2007". news.com.au. Retrieved on 3 June, 2006.
^ Warren Partland (2007-04-07). "SA raises profile on rugby stage". AdelaideNow. Retrieved on 7 April, 2007.
^ "Queensland Rugby begins planning for new competition". rugby.com.au. Retrieved on 2 June, 2006.
^ "North's rugby chance". News.com.au. Retrieved on 2 June, 2006.
^ Two S14 players from each franchise will likely play for the Victorian team.
^ "Rugby Workshop agrees to a new eight-team National Rugby Competition". rugby.com.au. Retrieved on 21 February, 2007.
^ ^a ^b "Power clubs to oppose national competition". Rugbyheaven.com. Retrieved on 2 June, 2006.
^ "National comp given green light". rugbyheaven.smh.com.au. Retrieved on 21 February, 2007.
^ ^a ^b ^c "Fixture". rugby.com.au. Retrieved on 21 February, 2007.
^ "ARU Board approves National Competition". Rugby.com.au. Retrieved on 7 September, 2006.
^ "Competition FAQs". qru.com.au. Retrieved on 21 February, 2007.
^ ^a ^b "Mazda Australian Rugby Championship to Go All The Way with Law Changes". rugby.com.au. Retrieved on 15 June, 2007.
^ Poidevin, Dempsey square off over Championship 'farce' | The Daily Telegraph
^ "ABC to Broadcast Australian Rugby Championship.". Super14.com. Retrieved on 21 February, 2007.

Australian Rugby Championship

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