Australian Rugby Championship
| Australian Rugby Championship | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Sport | Rugby Union football |
| Inaugural season | 2007 (first and only) |
| Number of teams | 8 |
| Country | Australia |
| Last champions | Central Coast Rays (2007) |
| Broadcast partner | ABC |
| Related competition | |
The Australian Rugby Championship, often abbreviated to the ARC and also known as the Mazda Australian Rugby Championship for sponsorship purposes, is a now-defunct domestic professional men's rugby union football competition in Australia, which ran for only one season in 2007. It was the predecessor to the current 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 undermined the strong club competitions in Sydney and Brisbane. On 18 December 2007, the Australian Rugby Union (ARU) announced that the ARC would be scrapped due to financial losses of A$4.7 million (US$4.0 million, € 2.8 million, £2.0 million).
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".
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