 | |
| Founded | 2007 |
|---|---|
| Abolished | 2007 |
| Region | Australia |
| Number of teams | 8 |
| Related competitions | |
| Last champions | Central Coast Rays (2007) |
| Television broadcasters | ABC |
The Australian Rugby Championship, often abbreviated to the ARC and also known as the Mazda Australian Rugby Championship for sponsorship purposes, was a domestic professional men's rugby union football competition in Australia, which ran for only one season in 2007. It was the predecessor to the also now-defunct National Rugby Championship. The competition, similar to New Zealand's ITM Cup and South Africa's Currie Cup, aimed to bridge the gap between existing club rugby and the international Super Rugby competition then known as Super 14. The ARC involved eight teams: three from New South Wales, two from Queensland, and one each from the Australian Capital Territory, Victoria and Western Australia.
From its inception the ARC divided many in Australian rugby, with arguments over the structure and format of the competition, and concerns that the creation of arbitrary state-based teams would undermine the strong club competitions in Sydney and Brisbane. On 18 December 2007, the Australian Rugby Union (ARU) announced that the ARC would be shut down due to heavy financial losses: the ARC lost A$4.7 million during the 2007 season, with projected losses of $3.3 million for 2008.[1]
On 10 December 2013, Bill Pulver, the CEO of the Australian Rugby Union, announced a new competition along similar lines, the National Rugby Championship, to include 8 to 10 teams in "major population centres".[2]