Rugby Australia boss Andy Marinos hopes to establish a new second-tier competition

Rugby Australia boss Andy Marinos believes the country is falling behind because of the absence of a strong second-tier competition.

Andy Marinos believes Australia is falling behind since the demise of the NRC

Rugby Australia boss Andy Marinos believes the country is falling behind its traditional rivals New Zealand and South Africa because of the absence of a strong second-tier competition and is hoping to get one up and running for 2022.

“New Zealand has done it well with the ITM Cup and South Africa’s done it really well with the Currie Cup and there’s no surprise that there’s always a factory of players coming through the system,” Marinos said.

The National Rugby Championship was cut, in large part, because of cost-cutting measures following the COVID pandemic. But its demise denied emerging players – and coaches – an opportunity to bridge the gap between club and Super Rugby.

Queensland Rugby used the NRC as the breeding ground for the Reds’ rebirth. Five years after being exposed to top-level rugby in the NRC, players such as Taniela Tupou, Lukhan Salakaia-Loto, Fraser McReight, Tate McDermott and Hunter Paisami are flourishing.

The Waratahs were always likely to be lambs to the slaughter in 2021 because, having lost 800 caps of Test experience over the past two years, they desperately need their next generation to spend more time on the field, learning their craft and building combinations.

While the Reds and Brumbies are benefiting from prioritising the NRC, they are anxious about the future now that it is gone.

It’s why Reds coach Brad Thorn put the governing body on notice last week by issuing a passionate plea to bring the NRC back.

“We had (Queensland) Country and (Brisbane) City and if you look at all our players who have come through that middle ground between club and Super; so not having that (NRC), to me, it’s a tough one,” he said. “Something has to be done.

“You’ve got the Currie Cup (South Africa), you’ve got the Bunnings Cup (New Zealand), you’ve got the Championship in England, everyone’s got (a second tier). Your Test players go away (after Super Rugby) and that’s awesome, but you’ve got to have that middle ground for guys to cut their teeth, even coaches as well.”

Marinos, who has been in the role since February, agrees and says getting a second-tier competition under way is paramount for Rugby Australia’s strategy of building the game up.

“He’s (Thorn) not wrong, he’s not wrong,” Marinos told foxsports.com.au. “If you look at any great structure in the world, there are those competitions and it’s a part of what I’ve been saying since I’ve come in. We’ve got to have a bottom-up approach, not a top-down approach to the game in this country if we’re going to be sustainable.

“As we start embarking on a new strategic plan and a new strategic direction, the competition structure of having a second-tier competition – for want of a better word – that underpins what’s happening at Super Rugby level is going to become even more important because we have a group of players who play Super Rugby and can drop back into the Shute Shield and Hospital Cup but then after those competitions finish there’s very little rugby for them.

There are a multitude of reasons why the NRC failed to ever get serious buy-in from all five Super Rugby clubs and the populace at large.

But in essence, it struggled because as the fed-up public abandoned the professional arm of the game, they instead cast their interests towards club rugby, which has since had a major resurgence.

Additionally, unlike the ITM Cup and Currie Cup, the NRC lacked history and the public struggled to feel a connection to the made-up teams to go along with meaningless Super Rugby names across multiple continents.

Marinos said it was too early to determine what structure the competition would take.

“At this point in time, we’re busy working on what that structure is going to look like,” he said.

“To start pre-empting what it’s going to look like is a little bit premature. But what it will be is a holistic program that will underpin the high-performance and provide opportunity for the next generation of players to come through and hopefully through that earn selection for the Wallabies.

Marinos added he hoped a competition will be up and running by 2022 but admitted it could take until 2023.

“I’d like to look at getting a second-tier structure underway in 2022 at least, so we can start building momentum.

“It’s also going to tie back to where we position ourselves from a World Cup perspective and the beginning of that sustainability plan and legacy plan around the World Cup. If we can have that by the time we have the World Cup in 2027 and we have a flourishing first, second and third-tier domestic rugby competition structure, I think that would be a really big statement for the game.”

FOX SPORTS