Melbourne Rebels keen on Ballarat fan base

The city of Ballarat is keen to build on its alliance with the Melbourne Rebels, which could see the new Super Rugby franchise return to the city.Council chief executive Anthony Schinck said ongoing discussions would be held with the Rebels after almost 3500 spectators attended Saturday's trial match against Fiji at St Patrick's College.The Rebels, too, are committed to showcasing the sport in regional Victoria, having already held two of their three practice matches outside Melbourne as the club looks to establish a statewide supporter base.Mr Schinck said Saturday's match had set a strong foundation between Ballarat and the Rebels."The rugby came about because the Rebels had been spending a lot of time in Ballarat, visiting Sovereign Hill, researching the Eureka story and using the Eureka story as part of initial team-building efforts," he said."That led to discussions of us hosting a practice match in Ballarat. That's what eventuated on Saturday, which I think was really successful."We'll consider what all the possibilities are with council and certainly sit down with the Rebels, thank them for wanting to come to Ballarat and discuss what the possibilities are."Mr Schinck stressed that further trial matches in Ballarat would first have to align with council's events strategy.The Rebels' connection to Ballarat was not lost on team coach Rod Macqueen, who spoke about the relationship between the two in a pre-match address to invited guests on Saturday."(Ballarat) has a great significance to the Rebels," Macqueen said. "It is where we got our name from, and it's an interesting one because we sat around and said 'what does a Rebel mean? What do we want to be as a Rebel?'"What they did here at the Eureka Stockade was that they challenged the status quo, they didn't accept the way things were. "That's what we want to do in rugby. "We want to challenge the status quo in everything we do. We want to do things, hopefully, a little bit differently to what's been done with rugby before."