Fale sounds out wary ARL over Warriors bid
David Skipwith
Prospective Warriors buyer Richard Fale has met with the Auckland Rugby League in the hope of rekindling a partnership to take joint ownership of the NRL club.
Hawaiian politician Fale is the chief executive of a Tongan-US consortium engaged in talks to buy the Warriors from current owner Eric Watson for a reported $24 million, but the Herald understands the ARL will enter their own bid by the end of the week with a cash offer of $20m.
The two rivals previously discussed working together to form a joint proposal to buy the Auckland franchise, before relations soured this month, when Fale threatened the ARL with legal action after accusing them of stealing his group's ideas.
Fale has since had a change of heart and on Tuesday met ARL general manager Greg Whaiapu, to discuss putting aside their differences and making a joint bid.
“He's a great guy,” Fale said of Whaiapu. “He understood everything that I was saying, believes that we're in the right place. He's not the one that makes that call [of entering a partnership], so it's all on [ARL chairman] Cameron McGregor's plate to make that decision. If Cameron could lay out a better [overall] plan, we will jump on it immediately.”
The ARL are confident their smaller offer will still hold significant weight, with Watson and the NRL, due to the straightforward nature of their proposal and their established junior nursery and player development programmes.
McGregor insists he remains open to exploring the idea of a joint bid, but remains wary of Fale.
“We'll speak to anybody,” McGregor said. “But what we can't understand is how one minute, he's going to sue us, and the next minute, he's offering olive branches.”
Both parties previously wanted a controlling share in any partnership deal, but Fale now says his group would accept a minority stake, while also offering to provide the ARL with the capital needed to run their junior programmes.
Fale's renewed warmth towards the ARL comes after he met secretly with NRL boss Todd Greenberg and NRL chief operating officer Nick Weeks in Auckland last Wednesday.
“They're Auckland Rugby League, they handle the grassroots in the city of Auckland, so it's a natural fit,” Fale said. “I don't know why they don't just partner with us. One of the biggest challenges and problems rugby league has in New Zealand is the financial part and we solve that for them and so it's purely an ego issue.
“We would make sure they are adequately resourced to do all of that stuff and we'd support them 110 per cent. But their lack of engagement in new media and having a strategy for what the Warriors are going to look like over the next five, 10, 15 years — they have zero plans for that.
“If they had all those things in place, we'd say 'OK, we'll take the 49, you guys take the 51. You guys lead the way'.”