Fox Sports looks to televise schoolboy rugby

Rugby Australia and Fox Sports have begun preliminary discussions about televising Sydney and Brisbane GPS rugby.

Queensland GPS rugby superpowers Nudgee College could find themselves on national television screens.

Rugby Australia and Fox Sports have begun preliminary discussions about televising Sydney and Brisbane GPS rugby matches as part of a grassroots product that also will breathe new life into the previously discarded concept of an Australian club championship.

The approach was made by Rugby Australia to Fox Sports and is at such an early stage that GPS officials were not even aware that talks were happening until informed of them late yesterday by The Australian. Nonetheless, the concept has excited television executives, who recognise that GPS rugby is both enormously popular and customarily a brilliant, free-flowing example of the code.

“Fox Sports CEO Peter Campbell is working well with Raelene Castle (the RA CEO) and there is a lot of useful dialogue happening,” said Steve Crawley, head of television for Fox Sports.

“(Super) Rugby made a really good start for us on the weekend. The Tahs recorded good numbers (for their match against the Hurricanes) so it’s all positive. Still, it is a long way off.”

It would be highly unlikely for GPS rugby to make it to air next season but a new broadcast deal will come into effect at the start of 2021 and clearly RA officials are hoping to have it arranged well before then.

The concept of televising GPS rugby was raised at the RA board meeting in Sydney on Monday as part of a larger discussion of ways to get more exposure of the game, from grassroots level to the third-tier National Rugby Championship (NRC). And with RA chairman Cameron Clyne insisting that Rugby Australia underspends in all areas, the solution was not to reallocate priorities in how the limited resources were spent but to generate more money.

Players from TSS, The Southport School, take the field at Ross Oval, Nudgee College. Picture: Mark Cranitch

Rugby Australia clearly is hoping that the proposed World League is not shut down by those countries worried about relegation from the Six Nations because the World Rugby estimate is that the extra income could reach $18 million per country. But while it is working on the major income streams, it is also attempting to see how other competitions can be brought together in a critical mass that can then be “monetarised”.

“Given we are in a process looking at future broadcasting arrangements, we are keen to explore any opportunities to expand the promotion of the game across all levels as well as commercial opportunities,” Castle told The Australian. “We know that there is a huge appetite for rugby content and we will look at any way to expand our footprint.”

Schoolboy rugby plays a huge part in the television coverage of the game in New Zealand and the belief is that it can do likewise in Australia. Most GPS matches in NSW and Queensland are already live streamed and Doubletake Sports, which also has supplied the Brisbane club finals and Super W matches to Fox Sports, has built a growing audience from GPS rugby.

Yet before Joeys v The King’s School or Nudgee v Churchie are able to be televised, Rugby Australia would need to enter into negotiations with the GPS Sports Associations in Sydney and Brisbane.

Peter Fullagar of Nudgee College, the GPS chairman, stressed that there had been no talks between the association and RA over this proposal.

Riverview players celebrate played at Hunters Hill. Picture: Nick Wilson

“We would be open to discuss any such proposal with RA at the appropriate time,” Fullagar said. “Any such proposal would require agreement by all GPS member schools.”

Also under discussion at RA boardroom and Fox Sports levels is the NRC competition and whether it will be persevered with or whether RA should, after a slightly abridged Shute Shield and Hospitals Cup premierships, swap over to an Australian club championship-style contest in which the top five sides in Sydney and Brisbane and the competition premiers in other states compete.

A club championship would certainly solve one of the NRC’s main problems, the lack of tribalism, but at the cost of creating “haves” and “have not” clubs in Sydney and Brisbane.

Meanwhile, Rugby Australia today is expected to announce dual international Michael O’Connor as the third national selector, joining Wallabies coach Michael Cheika and RA’s still-to-arrive director of rugby, Scott Johnson.

It will be the second time O’Connor and Johnson have sat on the same selection panel for the Wallabies. They were both selectors at the 2007 World Cup, along with the then head coach John Connolly, who is understood to have made the final list of three candidates, only to miss out.

Joeys fans in the crowd celebrate the team's first try during a St Ignatius College Riverview vs St Joseph's College 1st XV's GPS match at Riverview, Sydney.