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THIS year's Sydney club premiership is set to become the most ruthless and fiercely contested in its 108-year history with places in a mooted 2009 national super-series hinging on performances.
The Australian Rugby Union, having decided to terminate the Australian Rugby Championships just before Christmas after virtually no consultation with the stakeholders, still has not specified what, if anything, will take its place.
But so spectacularly did the ARC fulfil its primary role of exposing fringe Super 14 players to the realities of top-line professional rugby that it seems inevitable the ARU will set up a new, more economically viable competition to fill the void. And the betting, at least in Sydney, is that it will take the form of a super-club series.
NSW Rugby Union boss Arvid Petersen confirmed yesterday that while the status quo of a 12-team Sydney premiership deliberately had been maintained this year to await developments, clubs have been warned that massive change is coming.
"We've put the clubs on notice that there will be a shake-up," said Petersen.
"We're very open-minded about what those changes will be but we accept that some tough decisions have to be made.
"We've told all clubs that they have to demonstrate that they can perform on and off the field."
Several factors, including infrastructure, financing, junior numbers and player development will figure in any evaluation of which clubs might be selected for a super-series. Those clubs left behind will presumably wither in a fourth-tier suburban competition. But the only non-subjective in the equation will be premiership standings.
So desperate will clubs be to claw their way to the top of the ladder, where their survival chances presumably would be better, that incoming Australia coach Robbie Deans is certain to be confronted by a problem his predecessor John Connolly never had to face -- demands from Sydney clubs to release their Wallabies for premiership matches.
Although the NSWRU appears reconciled to the Darwinian realities of professional rugby, with only the strongest clubs surviving, Queensland remains fiercely committed to club rugby. QRU chairman Peter Lewis insists a super-club competition would be the death knell of the game.
"We will defend club rugby to the death," Lewis said.
"Otherwise, if we go down that track, we'll end up like American football, where players leave college and find that only the very best ones have the chance to continue playing with a professional franchise, with the rest dropping out."
But before the battle is fought to determine what will replace the ARC, the ARU is about to discover that the now-defunct competition still could come back to haunt it.
As part of the deal to terminate the competition, the ARU agreed to meet the ARC-related debts of the NSW and Queensland unions. It was obliged to do so anyway under formal agreements entered into when the competition was established under Gary Flowers' regime last year.
To date, however, the ARU has not fully paid those debts, around $135,000 in NSW's case, $150,000 in Queensland's.
And while Petersen and Lewis are holding their fire until senior ARU bosses return to work next week and are able to clarify their intentions, neither state official would rule out the possibility of legal action.
Victoria is in an even worse position, with the ARU having indicated to the VRU that it will have to pick up the non-budgeted debt of $500,000 incurred by the Melbourne Rebels in the ARC.
"Yes, the three states have been short-changed but we're waiting for the top people at the ARU to return to work to fully establish what the situation is," said Lewis.
Petersen also insisted the NSWRU would hold off on legally enforced mediation until the ARU's position was clarified but he said fairness had to be part of the process and it was not fair for a basically amateur union like Victoria to be left in the lurch.
VRU president Gary Grey said the ARU might have had a case for recouping costs from future revenues but, following the shock decision to axe the ARC, there would be no future revenue.
"We had pro rugby, now we don't have pro rugby so we have no way of generating that revenue," Grey said.
The Australian
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