RA CEO said that the body needs to consider what is important to partners and sponsors.GETTY IMAGES
SANZAAR and Rugby Australia are "about to begin formal work on what guise Super Rugby will take in the future, whether it will remain in its present 15-team form or enter a new expansion phase or whether a trans-Tasman competition will replace it," according to Wayne Smith of THE AUSTRALIAN. A SANZAAR draft proposal was approved by the Rugby Australia board last week, as it was recently by the directors of New Zealand Rugby, and it is expected that all four partners -- South Africa and Argentina being the other two -- "will have signed off on it within the next 10 days." The SANZAAR proposal reportedly prioritized making the existing 15-team model work, "which is understandable given all the angst Australia -- and to a lesser degree South Africa -- were put through last year to scale Super Rugby back from its 18-team iteration." For the first time since '05, Super Rugby will kick off in Australia without the Western Force. But other options will also be up for discussion, including moving to a "more stable Anzac-based competition based on Australia and NZ or, conversely, expanding Super Rugby further to include the potentially lucrative North American market." SANZAAR and its members would need "a lot of convincing to go back down the expansion path again." It was always intended that the 18-team competition was "merely a stepping stone to making Super Rugby into an almost-global competition" -- with only Britain and Europe excluded -- but it was "done in such a rush that no one considered how unwieldy it all was" (THE AUSTRALIAN, 2/22).
