Australian Rugby Championship

The Australian Rugby Championship, often abbreviated to the ARC and also known as the Mazda Australian Rugby Championship for sponsorship purposes, is a now-defunct domestic professional men's rugby union football competition in Australia, which ran for only one season in 2007. It was the predecessor to the current National Rugby Championship. The competition, similar to New Zealand's ITM Cup and South Africa's Currie Cup, aimed to bridge the gap between existing club rugby and the international Super Rugby competition then known as Super 14. The ARC involved eight teams: three from New South Wales, two from Queensland, and one each from the Australian Capital Territory, Victoria and Western Australia.

From its inception the ARC divided many in Australian rugby, with arguments over the structure and format of the competition, and concerns that the creation of arbitrary state-based teams would undermine the strong club competitions in Sydney and Brisbane. On 18 December 2007, the Australian Rugby Union (ARU) announced that the ARC would be shut down due to heavy financial losses: the ARC lost A$4.7 million during the 2007 season, with projected losses of $3.3 million for 2008.

On 10 December 2013, Bill Pulver, the CEO of the Australian Rugby Union, announced a new competition along similar lines, the National Rugby Championship, to include 8 to 10 teams in "major population centres".

History

The official announcement on the agreement to create a national rugby competition in Australia was made in mid-2006, following a 70-person three-day summit in Sydney that agreed to an eight team competition. However, the competition was not without its share of controversy, with some of the strong state-level clubs being against the formation of a new level of competition, claiming it could harm club and grassroots rugby. In September, an ARU board meeting, after hearing these concerns, officially approved the new competition.

A month later, the competition kicked off, however the Queensland teams performed poorly as the East Coast Aces and Ballymore Tornadoes finished last and second last respectively.

The Perth Spirit performed the best out of the regular rounds winning six out of eight games, but due to bonus points finished third on the ladder behind the Central Coast Rays and minor premiers the Western Sydney Rams.

After the top four teams took part in the semi-finals, the Melbourne Rebels and Central Coast Rays would compete in the first and last ARC Grand Final: the Rays defeated the Rebels 20–12 to win the premiership.

After a review of the ARC was undertaken following the 2007 season, it was found that it had run $1.3 million over budget and had lost $4.7 million for the 2007 season, with forecast losses for a 2008 season coming to a further $3.3 million. The ARU, concluding that a cumulative loss of $8 million over two years would be fiscal irresponsiblity and that it was likely there would be further heavy future losses beyond 2008, immediately decided to shut down the competition.

Format

Competition

The competition ran for eight weeks, with finals being competed over an additional two weeks - each side played eight games, with the top four teams qualifying for the semi-finals where the winners move into the final. The competition kicked off in August, after the Super 14 and the March to July club competitions finished, and avoiding a clash with Australian under-19 and under-21 duties and the Pacific Nations Cup (in which Australia A played). In total, 35 matches were played in the ARC over 10 weeks from 11 August and 14 October, with games played on Fridays and Sundays. It was originally planned that games would not be played at 'traditional' times for rugby matches, but this decision was changed when the ABC insisted that its televised games be played on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. The inaugural final was played between the Central Coast Rays and the Melbourne Rebels in Gosford.

Players

The timeframe of the season ensured the availability of Super 14 players (excluding Wallabies). There was no draft, and players were free to choose their team, although there was a salary cap in place. Players came from local competitions (which includes Super 14 players). Each Super 14 franchise was aligned with the respective teams, except for Melbourne, as Victoria had no Super rugby team at the time.

It was planned that although 35 footballers will be on international duty for the Wallabies, over 90 Super 14 players would go into the ARC, leaving the way for over 120 footballers to step up from first grade club competitions.

It was also planned that each team would have one "marquee" footballer not be subject to financial restrictions of the player contracting protocol. The player could be either foreign or a non-contracted domestic footballer, and if a team signed an Australian as their marquee footballer, they would still be able to sign up a foreign footballer, though they would have to fit within the contract restrictions.

Rules

The ARU announced in June 2007 that the inaugural championship would adopt the Experimental Law Variations (ELVs), which were initially trialled at South Africa's Stellenbosch University and which aim to bring more free-flowing play into the game. The laws were implemented in both the Sydney and Brisbane club competitions and were well received.

Referees

The referees supplied for the tournament predominantly come from the Australian Rugby Union Panels.

Referees for the tournament included: Matt Goddard, James Leckie, James Scholtens, George Ayoub, Daniel Cheever, Brett Bowden, Andrew Lindsay and Geoff Acton.

Stuart Dickinson and Paul Marks did not referee in the tournament, as they refereed at the 2007 Rugby World Cup in France.

Media coverage

The Championship was broadcast on free-to-air television during its only season. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) secured the rights to exclusively televise the competition from 2007 through to 2009 by agreeing to accept a substantial fee from the ARU in order to cover the matches.

The fact that the sport's governing organisation had to pay a television station to broadcast the Championship arguably left worrying implications for a code that was struggling to attract mainstream interest in Australia. The ABC committed to broadcast 19 matches during the season on ABC1 and ABC2: two matches from each round, the semi-finals and the final.

The previous time the ABC had covered elite-level rugby was for the 1991 Rugby World Cup (which Australia won).

Regular season 2007

The eight teams played four home games and four away games each during the preliminary competition rounds, consisting of a single round-robin with each team playing each other once plus an additional return match for the "derby" fixture played in the first round (these fixtures were matches between the closest neighbouring teams in most cases). The top four teams at the end of the preliminary competition rounds qualified for the title play-offs with semi-finals and finals.

Standings

Competition rounds

Round 1

Round 2

Round 3

Round 4

Round 5

Round 6

Round 7

Round 8

Title play-offs 2007

The top four sides in the regular season advanced to the knock-out stage of semi-finals and final to decide the Australian Rugby Championship title.

Semi-Finals

Grand Final

Players 2007

Leading try scorers

Source
rugby.com.au
ref name=aru-stats-2007>

Leading point scorers

Source

ref name = aru-stats-2007/>

Squad lists

Team squad lists for the 2007 ARC:

:

:

:

:

:

:

:

:

See also

* National Rugby Championship
* Australian Provincial Championship (defunct)
* Australian Rugby Shield (defunct)

References

External links

*
*
*
*

{{Southern Hemisphere Provincial Rugby Competitions

2006 establishments in Australia
Defunct professional sports leagues in Australia
Defunct rugby union leagues in Australia
Sports leagues established in 2006