I believe if SA decide to pull out of the S14 we should stay in SA and not look for competitions up North. They also play in a diffirent season than ours, and I don't think we'll gain anything by playing in the UK or France.
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Bull, I share your concern wrt the different seasons etc. However, the sad fact of the matter is that we need either the S14 or a European equivalent, for the simple matter of revenue.
The Newscorp broadcasting deal brings in more than half of SARU`s revenue, and the deal includes both the S14 and the Tri-nations. It`s all part and parcel of the same deal.
If we were to ditch the S14, without joining a northern equivalent, we would be well and truly stuffed on the financial side. Sure, an extended Currie Cup competition will result in full-house crowds, especially with all the Boks available as in the S14, but the broadcast deal between SARU and Supersport is peanuts compared to the Newscorp deal. Also, the Newscorp deal is in US Dollars, whereas the Supersport deal is in rands only.
As things stand at the moment, SARU only has enough money to centrally contract 20-odd Boks anyway. Should we lose the Newscorp deal without a viable replacement broadcast deal in foreign currency, most of our top provincial players(read: future Boks) would head up north anyway- the lure of the Euro and the Pound would be too much to resist. After all, the main source of revenue for the unions is also the slice of the Newscorp deal that they get from SARU- without this money, the unions wouldn`t be able to hold onto their best players.
