Well, I was going to post one a day during the crisis, but AndyS has rather put a scupper to that, having posted most of the better ones I was holding in reserve!
Here's one in bad taste:
Attachment 5564
Printable View
Well, I was going to post one a day during the crisis, but AndyS has rather put a scupper to that, having posted most of the better ones I was holding in reserve!
Here's one in bad taste:
Attachment 5564
https://youtu.be/7fOqE8ToGEY
Isolation...Week 1
That was a few weeks back. It's looking much more likely now. Malcolm Knox has put up a nice piece along the same lines. AFL and RL will go on regardless. So will Rugby and this catastrophe might give the game a more level playing field to move forward, even if it does provide a dysfunctional, incompetent board somewhat of a red herring.
Sport can be truly enriching and rewarding again – just not with money - Malcolm Knox
https://www.smh.com.au/sport/sport-c...26-p54ect.html
Good read Shasta :approve:
One of the best articles I’ve read. Especially like the sentence, the bad news is that this is the end of the world, and the good news is this the end of the world. His comment also about the community reverting back to supporting club memberships etc, reminds me totally of how the Sea of Blue community ditched the Wobblies/RA & threw more support behind our own community clubs. Makes me think where this leaves the like of Hooper et al? And the news that RA are now heavily in debt & will expect a ‘loan’ from World Rugby.
Twiggy must be pissing himself!
The Bank of Twiggy might bail out professional rugby union in Australia at some point, but I hope he keeps his head down and waits until they are begging on their knees, Then insists on real and permanent changes to stop the gerrymandering that goes on in Australian rugby administration. I am also a believer in the changes that GRR laws are introducing to rapid rugby, so I want the GRR comp and its changes to come out of this crisis alive, stronger and growing.
I don’t think Twiggy will want to buy out RA, nor take over the running of it. Why would he? He is a businessman who is interested in making money, and a philanthropist interested in making WA a better place and enriching Western Australians’ way of life. Pretty much all his Minderoo projects are WA-based. If he took over RA, he surely wouldn’t be doing it to make money, and why would he want to bestow such philanthropy on an organisation that does so little, and has shown such distain for, WA over the past decade or so?
He sees a money-making market for professional rugby in Asia, not in the traditional and well-established rugby nations. And it is now abundantly clear that the model rugby has used since the game went professional in Australia is unsustainable, whichever way you look at it.
It’s the same in the UK and France. Club rugby there is only where it is because of the deep, deep pockets of a few business people who also love rugby and have shelled out to buy a particular club. That isn’t sustainable either. Particularly as economic life as we know it will have to be recalibrated once we emerge from this public health crisis.
The salaries for those at the top of the game (not to mention the game’s administrators too) are also unsustainable. The players who are earning several hundred thousand dollars a year are going to have to realise that they are no longer worth that. They are only worth as much as the market says they are worth and if the current viewership figures are anything to go by, the market has tanked and, along with it, the players’ financial worth. All caused, in my uneducated view, by too many dollar signs in the eyes of the original SANZAR partners.
Rugby in WA will be fine. Rugby elsewhere in Australia is done for.
AGM tomorrow I can't wait. The full annual report isn't up on ASIC yet.
Has to be agreed to at the AGM first. We should get to see it, and all the spin, in a media release after the meeting tomorrow. The statutory filing of the financial statements with ASIC probably won’t be for another few days after that.
It’s going to make interesting reading. BUT we have to remember it will only reflect the situation as at 31 December 2019. The situation as at 30 March 2020 (the date of the AGM), would be looking much, much more grim.