Rugby Australia warned off NZ
Rugby Australia’s bullish new attitude to private investment has been met with cautious optimism and a number of warnings, including one exhortation that Australia should be careful if it chooses to ‘‘get into bed with the Kiwis’’.
Current and former officials and administrators have welcomed new chairman Hamish McLennan’s openness to drawing private capital to the embattled code, which is about to embark on the most important competition redesigns since the game turned professional in 1996.
There has also been a keen sense of deja vu as the oncerejected trans-Tasman model roars back into favour, plus nervousness Australia will again be locked into partnerships that do not serve fans and the game’s interests at home.
‘‘At the end of the day, the [18-team Super Rugby] competition which the Kiwis were great advocates for was an abject failure one year in,’’ highly respected administrator Greg Harris said.
‘‘They were the architects of that competition. I would say if you want to get into bed with the Kiwis – they do have a new CEO now [Mark Robinson] – it’s ‘me first’ and you running a long last.’’
Harris ran the Waratahs, the Rugby Union Players’ Association, the Western Force and Sydney University Sport over a 20-year career in rugby, commissioning various reports in those roles that advocated doing away with Super Rugby in favour of domestic or transTasman models.
RUPA under his tenure and that of his successor Ross Xenos were vocal opponents of the 18-team, two conference Super Rugby model unveiled at the end of 2015. They argued the recordbreaking broadcast dollars would not cover the competition’s structural weaknesses, which included Australian teams playing overseas for weeks on end and poor fan engagement.
In the aftermath of the coronavirus shutdown, Australia and New Zealand are both taking time to work out what 2021 and beyond look like.
Australian consensus seems to be that the strongest fan-centred and commercial model will lead to a trans-Tasman competition with the addition of Japanese and Pacific Islands teams, but strong rumours out of New Zealand suggest they favour a Kiwi-only competition with room for one PI team and potentially the Western Force, leaving Australia’s eastern seaboard heartland out in the cold.
Harris urged McLennan and interim RA chief Rob Clarke to take a more hawkish attitude into any future alliances.
‘‘I was amazed with the disdain the ARU [now RA] and NZRU showed for the work that was done on viable competition models at the time,’’ he said.
‘‘Without a doubt, New Zealand had, and continues to have, strength where their game was concerned, but they didn’t have the strength in terms of their numbers and their commercial model.’’
His comments were echoed by former RA boss John O’Neill, who first proposed a transTasman competition more than a decade ago. ‘‘We had the model fully-costed by the broadcasters and us in 2009. It was viable financially and much more userfriendly in terms of time zone and vastly reduced overheads,’’ O’Neill said.
‘‘But New Zealand blinked at the last moment and left South Africa in. The rest is history; 18 teams later, a disaster by any measure.’’
NSW chairman Roger Davis applauded McLennan’s attitude to broadening Australia’s revenue base, alleging he and thenNSW CEO Andrew Hore were rejected out of hand by former RA boss Raelene Castle and deputy chairman Brett Robinson on a proposal to enter into talks with private equity firm CVC Capital Partners.
‘‘Private equity is a terrific idea, it enables the game to keep control of the rules and the playing content while leveraging the commercial prowess of the private equity players,’’ Davis said.
Broadcast rights expert Colin Smith also gave the thumbs up to a private equity investment in the commercial rights to Super Rugby, or whatever replaces it.
‘‘It can work because there is mutuality of interest in terms of maximising the commercial return but also maximising the competition and fan engagement,’’ Smith said.
‘‘You can’t run a sports league and drain it for cash. It has to work as a genuine competition and be seen as one. The problem with Super Rugby has been that it shot itself in the foot with chasing huge dollars with a competition with huge costs.’’