By Wayne Smith
May 14, 2009 Wallabies coach Robbie Deans believes it is vital to the future of the game that the three SANZAR nations end their feuding and reach an agreement in Dublin on the future of Super rugby.

The meeting could determine whether Super rugby continues beyond the broadcast agreement that ends in 2010.

If the impasse over start dates and whether the planned expanded competition should continue through the June inbound Tests cannot be resolved, Australia and New Zealand have threatened to form their own separate trans-Tasman series, cutting South Africa adrift.

Certainly the preamble to the Dublin summit has not boded well, with ARU boss John O'Neill claiming on Monday that South Africa has been bluffing with its threats to defect to a northern hemisphere competition.
His comments prompted SA Rugby Union president Oregan Hoskins, holder of the rotating SANZAR chairman's position, to call O'Neill to order.

Deans, in Brisbane for the announcement of his two-year role as a Suncorp rugby ambassador, was suitably statesmanlike when asked about today's SANZAR's D-Day meeting.

"It would be great if it pans out, from everyone's perspective," Deans said.

"Any resolution would be great, any agreement would be great because it's important for the game."

But Deans wasn't advocating peace at any price, not when he knows the value of a trans-Tasman competition, himself having played in the earliest form of such a series, the original Queensland-Canterbury exchanges of the early 1980s, the forerunner to the South Pacific championship that evolved into Super rugby.

"To have a full rugby program is the priority," he said.
"I'll leave those permutations and discussions to others but obviously the players are only as good as the competition they come out of."

Deans issued an appeal to Queensland Wallabies Digby Ioane and Hugh McMeniman, both coming off contract with the Reds, not to opt out of Super rugby and cash in their Test jumpers for short-term financial gain.

"They're just getting started so I think they would rue the day they left if they did leave," he said.

"I wouldn't want them to be in the position of looking back and regretting a short-term decision or a decision that was motivated by short-term gain, pecuniary gain or something that doesn't have a whole lot of meaning."

Deans cited the example of 96-Test veteran George Smith, who last week re-signed with the ARU and the Brumbies even though he could have earned considerably more money in Europe, as a player taking a long-term perspective.

"He could have gone anywhere for more, but you only get one crack and one rugby career and he wants to know he can look back and know he has achieved something of genuine meaning. He'll get indirect benefit from that forever and the indirect benefits within the community are greater than any little stash you might end up with."

If that sounded commendably like an appeal to old-fashioned ways, Deans wasn't stopping there, also calling for a revival of the long superseded mainstay of the rugby calendar, the extended international tour.

Although the Wallabies tour to Europe each spring, they no longer play regular midweek matches, which in years past provided the ideal opportunity to blood young talent and to give fringe Test candidates the chance to press their selection claims.

Conversely, Australia's provincial teams no longer get to shoot for glory as, for example, did the 1962 NSW and 1980 Queensland sides that defeated the All Blacks.

"I've got no doubt it would capture the interest of the public. It would capture the interest of the players because the opportunity for a franchise or province to play international sides doesn't come along every day," Deans said.

He suggested the annual Tri-Nations series might be tweaked periodically to allow longer tours by the All Blacks, Springboks and Wallabies.
"Hopefully the opportunity will be created within the format," he said.
"Even if, not dissimilar to the (British and Irish) Lions series, it happens intermittently."



http://www.foxsports.com.au/story/0,...-23217,00.html