Surgery on Sydney’s NRC teams should produce a healthier outcome

Cutting Sydney’s representation in the NRC to one club should actually improve rugby in NSW.

Amid the all-pervading sense of gloom hanging like a shroud over Australian rugby, it’s going to be difficult to present this in a positive light, but there is actually real excitement behind the likely move to cut Sydney’s representation in the National Rugby Championship from two teams to one.

I remember watching The 7.30 Report a few years back and seeing a friend of mine arguing that her bank, one of the big four, had just retrenched hundreds of staff in order to improve service. As soon as the interview was over, I telephoned her and begged her to get out of her job before she lost all credibility. “Don’t worry,” she replied. “I already have.” That was her last act before she resigned.

So, it is with a degree of trepidation that I am now arguing that merging the two existing clubs, the Greater Sydney Rams and the Sydney Rays, will actually improve the state of Australian rugby. The simple fact is Sydney has never grasped the ­importance of the NRC, and arguably with good reason. It never saw the need for it, given the strength and ­vitality of the Shute Shield. Where the rest of the country recognised the NRC’s value in terms providing a stepping stone from club to Super Rugby, Sydney followers regularly saw Shute Shield players making that transition in untroubled fashion.

So while four Sydney organisations originally tendered for NRC licences, only three were granted when the competition kicked off in 2014, remembering that NSW Country also was granted entry. In 2016, it was decided not to renew the Sydney University-aligned Sydney Stars and now the 2018 competition looks like kicking off with just two teams from NSW, Sydney and Country. Given there is currently a bye, the reduction from nine teams to eight won’t be of concern.

That used to be the way it was at the time of the Wallaby Trophy — Sydney and NSW Country. Way back in the amateur days, Queenslanders used to get awfully irked about the Maroons having to play Sydney one weekend and then — the only change being a switch from dark blue jerseys with gold bands to sky blue and the addition of a few worthy souls like John Hipwell, Greg Cornelsen and Peter Horton — NSW the next. It always looked like the southerners were having two bites of the cherry. If one didn’t beat you, the other one could.

It is still etched in the memory, Laurie Monaghan’s epic field goal for Sydney to beat Wales 18-16 back in 1978. Yet the following ­Saturday, a virtually unchanged Sydney outfit playing as NSW lost 18-0 to the Five Nations champions, which raised the question of whether playing for Sydney meant more than playing for the state. Perhaps it is nostalgia driving the move to again field the time-honoured entities of Sydney and NSW Country, and it’s interesting to note there is talk of resurrecting the famous old Sydney jersey.

No doubt, too, the good folk of NSW have taken note that in the four years of the NRC, Brisbane have won it twice and Queensland Country once, so the balance that the Queensland Rugby Union struck right from the start provides a workable model.

If a team was being trimmed anywhere else in the country, it would be indefensible — but not in Sydney. Those who opposed the creation of an NRC in the first place never came to terms with it. It’s only now, five years on, that it has become clear the answer was not an either/or situation — the NRC or the Shute Shield — but both. The rest of the country recognises the NRC for the vital role it serves as a stepping stone along the path to becoming a Wallaby but with Sydney … well, no one has ever gone broke giving the customer what he wants.

It’s a shame the Rams and the Rays will lose their identity. The Rays, for instance, had harnessed some wonderful backers in terms of Macquarie University, and even PLC girls schools through support of their women’s sevens program. Hopefully, if the decision is taken to merge, they will not be lost to the game.

It is understood the plan is to play some of the NRC matches in western Sydney which, given the news of the likely axing of Penrith from the Shute Shield, would seem the very least rugby can do for that virtually unexplored area of 9000 square kilometres — at least until the new Parramatta Stadium comes on line to provide an alternative Test venue for the Wallabies and a temporary home to the ­Sydney Sevens.

Bit by significant bit, NSW Rugby is getting its house back in order. The annual general meeting this week tipped the state governing body back into the black. Not by much, just $14,230 to be precise, but given the bad weather that ­accompanied many of the Super Rugby games last season, the poor performances of the Waratahs and the general malaise affecting the game because of the botched execution of the Western Force, any profit was welcome and ­unexpected.

The organisation now has a streamlined governance model, one that recognises the NSW Rugby Union and the Waratahs have returned to working as one entity, and while few people will get a buzz out of such changes, the fact is they allow for a more workable and efficient administration.

If any good at all has come from the demise of the Force, it has been the widespread recognition that for the game to survive and prosper, NSW — and indeed Queensland — need to start making decisions designed to advance rugby.

Until very recently, their driving motive had been their own survival. Staying alive might have been a worthy objective, especially given the alternative, but Australian rugby has been dormant for way too long and, as Brumbies coach Dan McKellar aptly put it the other day, you can’t win by sitting back on your heels.

Hopefully, with a new “captain” and “vice-captain” in recently installed president Marty Roebuck and vice-president Al Baxter, both former Wallabies, NSW can start scoring points again.