Rugby Australia chairman Daniel Herbert has raised the possibility of an Anzac Day Bledisloe Cup showdown, saying the concept is a "no-brainer" and that the 15-player game must evolve to become a mass-entertainment product.
As the NRL and AFL prepare to stage the biggest games of their respective seasons outside of the finals, Australian rugby can only watch on in jealousy and wish for a game of its own. While Super Rugby Pacific will stage an Anzac Round this weekend when all but one of the Round 10 fixtures are trans-Tasman contests, it lacks the same emotion, reverence and entertainment that is the highlight of the regular season of their rival codes.
"In short, yes. I think it would be a no-brainer if we could work it out and get the different parties on page with it, I think it could be something that rugby has that's a little bit unique," Herbert said when asked if he was keen to create rugby's own Anzac centrepiece. "It's not two clubs against one another, it's a long-standing rivalry but also a long-term partnership recognized through a flagship event like that.
"I think we could develop a really big event, a really prestigious event around that. Rugby League already has its State of Origin breaking up the season, so I don't see why we couldn't do it other than trying to get the schedule and the Super Rugby schedule around it, and getting our New Zealand partners onside with it, so for me it would be a no-brainer."
The push for an Anzac Day Bledisloe has come before, but with South Africa no longer a part of Super Rugby, and RA and New Zealand Rugby almost in virtually complete stewardship of the 12-team Super Rugby Pacific, one big impediment has been removed.
There is no way SA Rugby would have paused the Super Rugby season under the previous agreement when their broadcaster, SuperSport, tipped in the lion's share of broadcast revenue, to allow such a match to happen.
Whether it gets off the ground remains to be seen, and NZR may still take some convincing, but the flexibility both unions have shown in recent times suggest they may at least be open to a conversation; NZR chief Mark Robinson was recently in Australia for meetings which RA counterpart Phil Waugh described as positive.
And with both countries recognising the need to offer a better entertainment product -- Super Rugby Pacific has become the testing ground for trial laws -- Herbert said it was imperative rugby was open to new concepts and different ideas.
"There's two schools of thought around this," Herbert said when asked if he thought the idea had genuine legs this time around.
"There's the American way which is just everything is commercial, you do everything for a commercial outcome, people still have deep ties to their teams and their sports, but they know it's a mass entertainment product. I think we're sort of half-pregnant sometimes with rugby, where we're trying to hold onto the amateur ethos and traditions and why we fell in love when we went to a club back in whatever day it was; whereas, the reality is nowadays, as a professional game, the professional game is reliant on those that fund it, so you need to make sure that we're building these mass entertainment products.
"So I think that constant battle with tradition is always something that rugby [battles] -- given we're only professional for only 30 years -- we're still hanging onto the amateur baggage in my view. And we need to break free of that and just start to look at, with a clean sheet of paper, how do we build the most commercial entertaining products that we possibly can to attract the biggest market that we can.
"And it's no secret that the sports that are doing this well are working... the NRL is doing some good things, they started to operate as an American-type sport and it's grown in its commercial appeal. So rugby just needs to; we love the tradition, we want to hold onto what we can, but we can't just hold onto so much that we choke the opportunity ahead of us."
ESPN reached out to NZR for comment but had not heard back at the time of publishing.
One possible idea for an Anzac Day Bledisloe could be to break the event out separately from the All Blacks-Wallabies Rugby Championship clashes, which have doubled as the Bledisloe series in recent times.
The famed trans-Tasman rivalry has also previously been a one-, two-, three- and four-game series, while games have been taken to Tokyo and Hong Kong.
Meanwhile, Herbert said RA would be open to accommodating space for New Zealand and South Africa to stage extended tours of each nation, as was recently revealed to be in the works, likely for 2026. However, with the Rugby Championship potentially affected, Herbert hinted RA would likely seek some sort of compensation from its SANZAAR partners to safeguard against the lost revenue.
"It's a concern," Herbert told the Inside Line. "One of the ramifications of not being as competitive, in terms of the Wallabies on the field, is you're not considered in that same regard when it comes to the most profitable commercial products. South Africa and New Zealand both made the final of the World Cup, so they see that there is a really good rivalry there that they can commercialise.
"South Africa has got some different challenges... and they see the opportunity, they've got a broadcaster that's interest in getting the All Blacks over there because of the strength of their brand. And that's something that the Wallabies not performing as well as they should or could for a long, long period of time, that's part of the problem is you start to miss out on some of these things.
"So we're deep in those conversations at the moment with our SANZAAR partners and that's still not locked in, but it's something that we need to get comfortable with and then work out if that does go ahead; what does that mean, both financially, and what does that mean from a content point of view.
"It's a 'watch this space' and we'll make sure that we have some plans around it."
