Forrest fires up on bid to dump Force
BILLIONAIRE Western Force backer Andrew Forrest has accused the Australian Rugby Union of “cowardly” tactics in the Super Rugby saga and said they’re targeting the Force for removal because they’re out of sight.
Forrest’s spray came as the ARU and Rugby WA continued to play the waiting game for a result from last week’s arbitration hearing, which will determine if the ARU can shut down the Force.
Forrest was this week likened to Donald Trump by Force centre Curtis Rona and the WA mining magnate lived up to that billing in a feisty Sydney radio interview.
Explaining why he was backing the Force, Forrest slammed the ARU for litigating with the Force, accused the national body of being “eastern seaboard-centric” and also fired shots at Melbourne and former private owner Andrew Cox for the “underhand” deal last week that saw ownership transferred to the “penniless” Victorian Rugby Union.
“Which ever way it (the arbitration) goes, either for the Western Force or against the Western Force, for me it doesn’t matter,” Forrest said on 2GB on Tuesday.
“Let’s just make a decision on what’s best for the game Litigation is not leadership. Litigation is a weak form – I think almost a cowardly form – of getting any agreement done. It’s the last resort.”
The legal fight was kicked off by Rugby WA in April after the ARU announced either the Force or the Rebels would be shut down to reduce Australia’s Super Rugby teams from five to four.
Rugby WA won an injunction based on an alliance agreement with the ARU, who’d taken over the battling club in 2016. A clause in the agreement said the Force would play in Super Rugby until the end of the broadcast agreement in 2020.
Forrest said the judiciary should not have been required. “I just wanted the ARU to sit down and talk and ask: ‘What do you need out of rugby?
‘Do you need a really strong support base? Do you need a fabulous grassroots growing movement? Do you need a crop of Wallabies who are being grown in their home state? Do you need a growing crowd?
‘Do you need a sea of supporters? Do you need to know a membership base is growing faster than anywhere else?”
“Well, if they’re all your criteria then the last team you would bump off the list is the Western Force.”
Forrest said the Force coming second in the Australian conference showed it was the most promising franchise.
“And yet because we are over the Nullabor, it is easy for … an eastern seaboardcentric board to say, ‘Actually … we know it is a bad decision … but they’re out of sight, we’ll cut the Western Force’,” Forrest told 2GB.