Ireland in their 33-31 win over the Wallabies<\/a> last Saturday.<\/p>\nThe Wallabies are his second team, but he is concerned. \u201cI fear for professional rugby out here, because there\u2019s great interest in the international matches, but Super Rugby is broadcast to middle upper\/class Australia, for the most part, and the product is really poor.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gleeson stresses that schools rugby and club rugby are healthy.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut Super Rugby games are still played late in the evenings, which is not family-friendly time, and the fear is Super Rugby will fall in a few years and all players will play overseas, and like soccer fly back for internationals.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd if they get to that point then there\u2019s no recovery for the game. It\u2019ll be an absolute disaster, and it\u2019ll be a disaster for New Zealand rugby as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the last week Rugby League has signed an Aus$5 billion deal [\u20ac3.03 billion] over seven years for television rights, equivalent to about $800 million [almost \u20ac500 million] a year in television rights. I think rugby union gets about $35 million [\u20ac21.23 million] a year in television rights, so how do you compete?\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/KKBSNCMK7NFMTAMPYXL5HSZPMM.jpg\")
A general view during the round six Super Rugby Pacific match between NSW Waratahs and ACT Brumbies at Allianz Stadium, on March 22nd, 2025, in Sydney, Australia. Photograph: Darrian Traynor\/Getty Images <\/p>\n
Rugby League clubs can offer rugby union-playing boys \u20ac80-90,000 straight out of school, with the carrot of about \u20ac600,000 per year for a professional career.<\/p>\n
\u201cRugby union can only pay that wage to its 25 international players. If you\u2019re just playing Super Rugby you\u2019re probably not getting paid more than $150 to $250,000 a year [\u20ac90,000 to \u20ac150,000]. You can\u2019t do that for 10 years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many Australian players thus head to Japan and Europe \u2013 enough, Gleeson reckons, to fill two Super Rugby teams. So it is that Tom Staniforth is on the French bench in Brisbane against the Wallabies and Mack Hansen starred against them last November.<\/p>\n
The Lions\u2019 tour filled a gaping hole in Rugby Australia\u2019s finances and next year\u2019s World Cup will help, but Gleeson fears it may just be plaster tape.<\/p>\n
Of the 17 clubs in the NRL, nine are from the greater Sydney area, meaning derbies galore, whereas the Waratahs are the sole professional union team in Sydney. Even their rivalry with the Reds has been diluted and utterly dwarfed by the league\u2019s State of Origin, which the Blues won in a deciding Game Three by beating the Maroons 30-12 last Wednesday \u2013 just the third time in 40 years that NSW won a decider in Suncorp Stadium, dubbed \u201cSuncorpse\u201d in one back page. <\/p>\n
The Sydney community is \u201cmore connected\u201d to league than union, says Gleeson.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou see [league] players more regularly. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever seen a Waratahs player walking around the streets, whereas in Dublin kids who idolise rugby players would see their Irish internationals like Dan Sheehan walking up to the supermarket in Tescos in Donnybrook. You just don\u2019t get that here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Add in the cost of travelling and the only solution Gleeson can envisage is for private capital and Rugby Australia to lure players home and \u201cform six to eight east coast Australian-based teams that play six New Zealand teams\u201d to create more localised and travel-friendly rivalries.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it would take a good chunk of money and I don\u2019t know whether Rugby Australia has that at the moment. I\u2019m not sure what their vision is for the game, but if they don\u2019t sort out Super Rugby, Super Rugby as a product is going to die and that would be an absolute tragedy for the game here.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also believes the various schools competitions, namely the GPS (Great Public Schools), CAS (Combined Associated Schools) and the ISA (Independent Association Schools) should be merged into one and tiered.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo create an exceptional schools rugby competition that again would start to garner a lot more support.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gleeson himself attended St Aloysius College, more an academic school than a sporting one, but was part of a very good team. He progressed through the ranks with the Waratahs before his career stalled and might have petered out but for a call from Matt Williams to join Leinster at the age of 24.<\/p>\n
\u201cI asked Steve Tuynman, a former number \u20188\u2019 for the Wallabies who was one of my coaches at the Waratahs. He said, and excuse my language: \u2018You\u2019d be f**king mad if you didn\u2019t go. What\u2019s the worst that can happen? If you don\u2019t go, you\u2019ll never know, and you\u2019ll always wonder whether you should have\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
He flew to Dublin the day before the second Lions\u2019 Test in 2001 and what followed was \u201ca wonderful time of my life\u201d. He made friends for life such as Peter Smyth, Victor Costello and Reggie Corrigan among others.<\/p>\n
![\"Leinster's](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/OVLFTXKXORGVPBX2Q7MGORXMDU.jpg\")
Leinster’s Brian O’Driscoll, Keith Gleeson and Rob Kearney celebrate in 2008. Photograph: Billy Stickland\/Inpho <\/p>\n
He was en route to Limerick for an AIL game with St Mary\u2019s when he received a call saying Eric Miller was sick and returned to Dublin to make his Ireland debut off the bench against Wales at the old Lansdowne Road in February 2002.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy parents couldn\u2019t make the game because of the last-minute notice. But my grandfather James Gleeson was there and lots of my Irish family, my first cousins Ciaran and John.\u201d They own the award-winning Gleesons Pub. \u201cThe Booterstown clan looked after me exceptionally well.\u201d<\/p>\n
As well as that 2001 win with 14 men in the final against Munster (\u201cmainly because I\u2019d been there long enough to understand the fierce rivalry between the two provinces\u201d) and the \u201908 league win, highlights included the European quarter-final win away to Toulouse in 2006.<\/p>\n
The World Cup in 2003 in Australia meant \u201cplaying for Ireland in front of family and friends that didn\u2019t have much chance to see me play prior to that. And it\u2019s hard to go past a World Cup experience. I enjoyed that thoroughly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Partly due to his allegiances, Gleeson remains an avid fan of European rugby, although not of the way the Springboks \u201cbludgeon\u201d opponents. He laments Ireland\u2019s quarter-final loss to New Zealand three years ago, for he believes that team was good enough to go all the way. <\/p>\n
Gleeson is also enthused by the developments in Connacht and citing the success of Rod Macqueen moving Stephen Larkham from fullback to outhalf, is intrigued by Ciar\u00e1n Frawley starting there against Japan.<\/p>\n
\u201cAndy Farrell seems to have a great way of connecting with his players and getting the best out of them, because the results are there. The players seem to thoroughly enjoy playing for him, playing for Ireland. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere must be something very special about him. They\u2019re a joy to watch. Yes, we have our frustrations because 20 years ago it was a low bar and now we expect them to win the Six Nations every year and win a World Cup. But when you look at how they play the game, it\u2019s what you want to see out of them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Keith Gleeson was born in Dublin and reared in Sydney. He\u2019s been back living here since 2008, yet…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":792980,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,46102,176955,760,85],"class_list":["post-792979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-ireland-rugby","tag-leinster-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=792979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792979\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/792980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=792979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=792979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=792979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}