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Coronavirus and Olympics delay expected to severely hamper Rio champions

By Online Editors
The Australian Womens Sevens team.

Rugby Australia’s Olympic sevens program could be downsized as the code forecasts long-term financial pain caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

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The World Series is currently on hold and the Olympics postponed until next year, where the women will be defending their Rio gold medal.

But with deals struck around the originally-planned 2020 Games, many players will be off-contract before then.

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Rugby Australia faces a potential $120 million revenue hit if no games are played this year, with players agreeing to an average 60 per cent wage cut on Monday, 75 per cent of RA staff stood down and those remaining on reduced pay.

Castle expects player salaries to be reduced over the long term too, while she admitted the full-time men’s and women’s sevens high performance environment in Sydney may no longer be viable.

“There is an absolute commitment from the RA board for teams to compete in the Olympics and HSBC Sevens,” she said.

“But for the program to get there … a more decentralised program that’s going to be more cost-effective (could be the solution).

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“Those are all the types of discussions we’ll be having with the sevens players to make sure that they can defend gold medals at the Olympics … we are going to make some decisions that will be different to a pre-COVID-19 world. ”

Hoping to rekindle broadcast deal talks in coming weeks, Castle says the cost cuts and expected financial support from World Rugby would see the organisation through until September.

Castle is treading carefully around a return of any sort, with a domestic version of Super Rugby on hold and Wallabies Tests in July unlikely.

Tests and Super Rugby games between Australia and New Zealand later this year are an option that “makes sense”, but Castle has forecast more suffering to come regardless of how quickly they return.

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“The world is not what it was and there is going to be reduced revenues coming in and ultimately we have to … cut our cloth to match our revenue,” she said.

“So there are some difficult conversations that need to be had but they need to be had with a plan in place.”

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J
Jon 9 hours ago
Jake White: Are modern rugby players actually better?

This is the problem with conservative mindsets and phycology, and homogenous sports, everybody wants to be the same, use the i-win template. Athlete wise everyone has to have muscles and work at the gym to make themselves more likely to hold on that one tackle. Do those players even wonder if they are now more likely to be tackled by that player as a result of there “work”? Really though, too many questions, Jake. Is it better Jake? Yes, because you still have that rugby of ole that you talk about. Is it at the highest International level anymore? No, but you go to your club or checkout your representative side and still engage with that ‘beautiful game’. Could you also have a bit of that at the top if coaches encouraged there team to play and incentivized players like Damian McKenzie and Ange Capuozzo? Of course we could. Sadly Rugby doesn’t, or didn’t, really know what direction to go when professionalism came. Things like the state of northern pitches didn’t help. Over the last two or three decades I feel like I’ve been fortunate to have all that Jake wants. There was International quality Super Rugby to adore, then the next level below I could watch club mates, pulling 9 to 5s, take on the countries best in representative rugby. Rugby played with flair and not too much riding on the consequences. It was beautiful. That largely still exists today, but with the world of rugby not quite getting things right, the picture is now being painted in NZ that that level of rugby is not required in the “pathway” to Super Rugby or All Black rugby. You might wonder if NZR is right and the pathway shouldn’t include the ‘amateur’, but let me tell you, even though the NPC might be made up of people still having to pull 9-5s, we know these people still have dreams to get out of that, and aren’t likely to give them. They will be lost. That will put a real strain on the concept of whether “visceral thrill, derring-do and joyful abandon” type rugby will remain under the professional level here in NZ. I think at some point that can be eroded as well. If only wanting the best athlete’s at the top level wasn’t enough to lose that, shutting off the next group, or level, or rugby players from easy access to express and showcase themselves certainly will. That all comes back around to the same question of professionalism in rugby and whether it got things right, and rugby is better now. Maybe the answer is turning into a “no”?

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