Richard Hinds reports it’s a vital season ahead for Super Rugby

HOW do you know Super Rugby is about to start? Lavish launches? Feelgood stories about budding stars and exciting teams? Richard Hinds tells:

The Waratahs and Wallabies will be relying heavily on Israel Folau’s talents this season. Picture:...

How do you know Super Rugby is about to start? Lavish launches? Feelgood stories about budding stars and exciting teams? A spike in the sale of herringbone jackets?

No, you know Super Rugby is about to start because there are screaming headlines proclaiming the game is broke accompanied, oddly, by pictures of the very well paid Israel Folau.

This is rugby union’s narrative. We have no money, we are struggling to compete in a ferocious sporting market but, well, if Izzy fires the ‘Tahs will be good, the Wallabies might surprise them at the World Cup and everything will be OK.

Beneath the surface the game is not so glib. ARU chief executive Bill Pulver would not have flashed the game’s empty wallet to the cameras if efforts were not being made to improve the bottom line.

And, as incredible as Folau’s first season was, Wallabies’ coach Ewen McKenzie and the Waratah’s Michael Cheika will obviously not hang their hats solely on Folau. Even if their marketing departments do.

Still, as the season kicked-off, you wanted to know why Super Rugby should tempt you away from the NRL, the AFL, the A-League the cricket or, this week, even the curling.

So you ring a bloke who’s been in and around the rugby since David Campese was goose-stepping, not making a goose of himself. Someone who has the game’s best interests at heart, but won’t sugar coat its problems. His advice is blunt.

‘’I wouldn’t be saying this is the season where it all turns around,’’ says this insider. ‘’But it should be the one where the game puts itself in a much better position to do that.’’

How? Well, notionally, there is the redistribution of ARU resources. An improved marketing strategy. A more meaningful presence on free-to-air television. The basics a sometimes smug game has botched, or simply ignored.

But still you want to know. Even if the shop window is now more like The Salvos than David Jones, surely Super Rugby has some good stories to tell?

Well, my insider concedes, there is a Waratahs’ backline that is so good it might need a nickname. The Seattle Seahawks Super Bowl winning defence was called the Legion of Boom. What do you call Nick Phipps, Bernard Foley, Kurtley Beale, Adam Ashley-Cooper, Folau, Peter Beetham if they fire? Sadly the Waratahs’ PR department is so notoriously tight-lipped they probably wouldn’t tell you.

Chemistry is the key. Is Beale the magic ingredient? Or, given his sad afflictions, the destabilising influence that means the ‘Tahs are, yet again, far less than the sum of their impressive parts?

Everyone knows what they think in Melbourne from where Beale and James O’Connor were expelled. A brave move from a nascent franchise yet to achieve on-field success or attract significant interest outside the rugby community.

So the Rebels are worth watching. If only because they are a social laboratory for a game confronting the behavioural problems that once only afflicted the despised Mungoes. New coach Tony McGahan is so old school he insists his players leave the field together and even clap the opposition.

Yet, at the same time, the Rebels are showing a bit of cheek. They published a Valentine’s Day message to Buddy Franklin, mocking his criticism of the club for their treatment of his mate O’Connor. The head-in-the-sand Waratahs could learn a thing or two.

Saint David of Pocock is in Canberra, but not yet Prime Minister. Otherwise winning is what makes the Brumbies interesting – if only marginally profitable. They must overachieve simply to exist which seems to inspire a success rate that shames larger franchises.

My scout says the Brumbies won’t do as well as last year. Which is what everyone says, before they do even better.

The Force? They have picked up every uncontracted South African except Kevin Pietersen under the development player rule. ‘’They’ll be the only Australian team singing the national anthem in Afrikaans,’’ says my man.

But the Force might also boast the most exciting young player in Australia. Twenty-one year fly-half Kyle Godwin is James O’Connor with table manners. And, according to his fellow Zimbabwean immigrant Pocock, ‘’one of the humblest guys you could meet’’.

Which is not the customary segue to Quade Cooper whose excellent form on the Wallabies’s summer tour only intensifies interest in how he performs with the Reds. It is a fascination that disturbs those who fret about Cooper’s maverick image; and which encourages those who believe he can still be the attention grabbing media superstar the game needs.

Is this enough to make your remote control finger itchy? As ever interest in Sydney will depend on whether the Waratahs are winning.

The ARU will pray for that. They need a good news season to buy time while they stuff that empty wallet.