‘It’d be enormous’: Waugh keen to welcome All Blacks onto Aussie Super Rugby teams

Rugby Australia boss Phil Waugh says a potential overhaul of Super Rugby to create an NRL-style, open borders competition would be “enormous”, and is keen to fast-track talks with New Zealand counterparts to help revive the competition and make it more attractive to investors.

As part of an overall recommitment to Super Rugby, New Zealand Rugby announced on Thursday it was open to discuss a change of its eligibility policy to allow Kiwi stars to play for Super Rugby clubs in Australia, while still being able to play for the All Blacks.

New Zealand Rugby currently doesn’t allow any overseas-based players to be selected for the All Blacks. Australian rugby altered its policy in 2015 and now allows for the selection of three offshore players per series.

New Zealand still counts as overseas for RA, but under a possible shift to “open borders”, both national unions would view playing for any club in Super Rugby as playing at home.

That could potentially see Wallaby star Angus Bell packing down for the Crusaders, or All Blacks maestro Beauden Barrett reuniting with Vern Cotter for a season at the Queensland Reds, but then returning to their respective corners come Bledisloe Cup time.

“It’s on the table, as are a whole raft of things,” NZR chief executive Steve Lancaster said. “One of the things that we’ve talked about internally and with Rugby Australia is that as we look at the future of Super Rugby, we want to be really ambitious and bold about the competition.”

Lancaster was speaking after the NZR board reaffirmed its commitment to Super Rugby and the NPC, after the option of the Kiwis walking away from both was floated at a summit last month to address gloomy financial forecasts and ways to cut costs.

While NZR discussing “open borders” in Super Rugby – similar to the cross-pollination of trans-Tasman players seen in the NRL – is still very tentative, it is still a big step. Rugby Australia has pushed for the change for years, but NZR weren’t interested due to a lack of trust in the high-performance systems in Australia.

Waugh said on Friday that “the relationship with New Zealand Rugby is as strong as it’s ever been” and that there was now a shared understanding that bold thinking is required to revive the loss-making Super Rugby.

“It’d be enormous,” Waugh said of the potential impact on Super Rugby. “Just the mentality of having a one-competition narrative rather than what has been historically, which is five New Zealand teams, a Fijian team, four Australian teams, and everyone talking about an Australian team versus a New Zealand team.

“And if we can elevate ourselves above that and focus optimising it as one competition, that is really powerful. Ultimately, you’re looking at it as you’ve got 10 clubs in the competition, and you’ve got an open market.

“If you think about the number of All Blacks fans that reside in Australia, and equally the Australians who are living in New Zealand, it’d add additional spice and interest – and that ultimately leads to a more successful product.

“Everyone [at RA and NZR] is looking at rugby and how do we elevate rugby in our region, and we are very conscious we need to do that together with a positive focus … and not so much around a defensive mindset where we’re just protecting our own backyard. It’s very much around actually having a very open mind to what is possible.”

Given no Australian side has won Super Rugby since 2014, or even had reached the grand final, an “open borders” shift stands to help the Aussie teams more than the other way around. But balancing out an increasingly predictable competition, and reintroducing an element of jeopardy, would still benefit both.

Waugh said there would need to be safeguards about ensuring such a shift didn’t come at the cost of opportunities for young homegrown talent.

“You need to ensure that the opportunity for Australian players is there to come through the system, you’d definitely need to ensure the balance is right,” Waugh said.

Though traditionally conservative – and loath to imperil the success of the All Blacks – New Zealand Rugby’s financial struggles have opened the door for more progressive thinking, as seen by them agreeing to an Anzac Day Bledisloe Cup next year. All Blacks coach Dave Rennie was a key figure in supporting that event, and the former Wallabies coach might be influential around the open borders idea, too.

Lancaster said Rennie would be one of the Kiwi contingent to consider the “pros and cons”, and along with Cotter, Simon Cron, Mike Cron and Joe Schmidt, there are now multiple respected Kiwi rugby figures with insights into Australian rugby who could give comfort about the high-performance environments.

“There’s absolute alignment with us and New Zealand Rugby around the fact that the Super Rugby competition needs to be investible in its own right. And for it to be investible, it’s got to be the best competition in the world. It has been historically, and it certainly can be again,” Waugh said.

“Overlaying all of that is that we know that they want to ensure that their teams in black need to continue to win, and our focus is our teams in gold winning and being in the final weekend of the Rugby World Cup. We want to be in the top three teams in the world as well.

“So, yep, you need to have a competition that’s underpinning that performance element. But equally you need to have a competition that stands on its own is really interesting and attractive for audiences to follow.”

Waugh said he hoped to “move as quickly as possible” on pushing through the change.

“We’ve been working with New Zealand Rugby closely across our executive teams for some time, just around what this could look like,” he said. “I’d much prefer, now that we are in a sort of position of certainty around the direction of travel, that we accelerate those conversations to get to an outcome.”

News, results and expert analysis from the weekend of sport sent every Monday. Sign up for our Sport newsletter.