Not so Super: Blow up 18 team model and start over, says consultant

That's the view of the veteran sports consultant who designed the Super Netball concept and twice warned the Australian Rugby Union it was jeopardising its very existence by going down the expansion path with South Africa and New Zealand.

Colin Smith, whose firm Global Media and Sports warned the Australian Rugby Union about the challenges inherent in the Super Rugby model in 2009 and 2013, said rugby in Australia was at an "absolutely critical juncture" and would not recover if the game's administrators did not stand up for what was in the sport's best interests at home.

With a cone of silence enveloping the four-nation SANZAAR joint venture and speculation strengthening that the agreed position was a reduction to 15 teams, Smith said he had not seen rugby in worse conditions since his first involvement with the code in 2005.

He said there was merit in calls for an independent Super Rugby commission to replace the SANZAAR joint venture as competition administrator.

"The [Super Rugby] competition has a fundamental design problem. It should never have gone ahead," he said.

"There's an argument in my view that an independent commission running Super Rugby, as opposed to each country having a veto, needs to be considered. In addition to this Australian rugby should be considering going it alone with a revamp or re-casting of the NRC. That's controversial but all options have to be on the table. How do we make Super Rugby work for Australia?"

Smith's thoughts are not news to the game's administrators. He first warned then-ARU boss John O'Neill in 2009 that growing competition for broadcast rights in the northern hemisphere meant Australia and New Zealand would become a hunting ground for European clubs. Four years later he advised O'Neill's successor, Bill Pulver, and Pulver's New Zealand Rugby Union counterpart Steve Tew, in a joint-ARU and NZRU-funded report, that broadcasters and fans in both markets wanted more local derbies.

In 2014, with expansion talk on the cards for the then 15-team Super Rugby competition, GMS compiled a 100-page report for the Rugby Union Players' Association. It warned that a proposed 17- or 18-team model would affect television ratings and stadium attendances and recommended pursuing a 10-team Australasian competition.

RUPA handed over the report to the ARU, but in the following months it became apparent that southern hemisphere rugby would be a major beneficiary of a bidding war between UK broadcasters BT Sport and Sky Sports, which promised to rain down cash on the SANZAAR joint venture. It did just that, but true to the predictions of Smith and others, the ARU's record $275 million broadcast deal only papered over the cracks.

The 18-team Super Rugby format, which features fewer local derbies than earlier iterations, has resulted in weaker domestic television ratings in Australia and South Africa and, most damagingly, less revenue for the five Australian Super Rugby clubs. With more money than ever before flowing into the game from cashed-up overseas broadcasters, clubs are still going broke. The ARU, obliged to operate five licences under the terms of the SANZAAR agreement, is still the lender of last resort.

In the meantime, Smith was commissioned by Netball Australia to plot netball's strategic future. He looked at the Trans-Tasman Netball League's television ratings - weaker when New Zealand teams were involved - and results - a New Zealand team won the competition just once in its nine years - and recommended Australia go it alone.

The result was Super Netball, a $3.4 million per year, five-year broadcast partnership with Nine, a new naming rights sponsor in Suncorp, three new teams and a groundbreaking new pay deal for Australia's professional players. Early in its first season, the competition is drawing crowds and rating strongly nationally.

Smith characterised as "gutsy" Netball Australia's move to re-imagine its future and said it was time the ARU did the same. He warned the forthcoming SANZAAR strategic review would not have Australia's interests at its core.

"We've got across the ditch from us the most powerful rugby nation in the world, in New Zealand, and they are utilising this to their advantage to maintain that," he said.

"This is a 'now' problem, not one over which we can adopt the ostrich management style and hope it goes away."