New RA CEO Phil Waugh has flagged the potential of a Super Rugby draft as he admits the competition needs to be 'creative' heading forward.
Waugh becomes the first Wallaby to step into the role, having built up an impressive resume within the banking industry.
Catch every game of Super Rugby Pacific LIVE on Stan Sport. Start your Free Sport Trial Now
The former flanker spoke to the media shortly after being announced as the successor to Andy Marinos on Tuesday afternoon.
Waugh touched on a number of topics in a wide-ranging, 25-minute discussion, admitting the success of high performance remains at the forefront.
It comes with the Super Rugby sides underperforming over the past seasons, with just three out of the five teams making the finals.
“The results haven’t been good enough,” Waugh told reporters.
“I was going through with Eddie (Jones, Wallabies head coach) earlier today around our stats around the performance of the Australian Super Rugby teams since 2016 and when you take out the Australian v Australian games and what those stats look like, they’re considerably lower.
“We need to lift the performance across our Super Rugby clubs more broadly and we know when we do that, it’ll feed through to better Wallabies performances.
Waugh pointed to the potential of a draft in order to facilitate a 'reset' of the competition.
“It’s certainly a reset across Super Rugby clubs and working closely with my (NZR) counterpart Mark Robinson to make sure we have the right distribution of players across the teams," he believes.
This has been floated by RA Chairman Hamish McLennan in the past, with Waugh conceding the competition needs to be 'creative' as Europe and Japanese club competition continue to grow their influence.
“I think we need to be creative,” Waugh responded when asked to elaborate on the potential of a draft.
“We need that tournament to be the best provincial tournament in the world. We produce so much good talent in Australia and New Zealand. A lot of people talk about changing laws and I think you can be pretty creative around law changes but I think what people want to see is better execution of the current laws and I think that’s where spectators do get frustrated.
“…We're only in the infancy of talking to them (about a draft) and we had the conversations with Mark Robinson, I’m not saying that’s the solution, I’m just saying we have to be creative around how we think about Super Rugby.”
Waugh also stressed the importance of reconnecting club Rugby and Super Rugby, believing it has become a 'choice' rather than a joint union.
“Over time, people are now making the choice whether to go to club games or whether they go to Super Rugby games,” he added.
“When I played, people would go to the club game and then support your club players at the Super level and it’s really important we go back to that and we put our best Super players into clubs and then we bring the club supporters in Super and Test Rugby.
“I know it sounds pretty logical but I do think there’s been a huge separation over time…the game starts and ends in our clubs and we need to invest in that space.”
