Costly showdown looms as Force go to court in latest battle over Super Rugby axing

MELBOURNE: The Western Force have lodged a court appeal against their axing from Super Rugby, setting up a potentially costly legal showdown that the cash-strapped Australian Rugby Union (ARU) can ill afford.

The ARU announced its intention to cull the Perth- based Force on Friday after committing to fielding only four sides from next season as Super Rugby contracts to 15 teams from 18.

However, Rugby Western Australia lodged an appeal to the Supreme Court yesterday.

Earlier, a spokesman for the Force and RugbyWA said the team had won an injunction order to prevent the ARU from moving to shut down the team but the Supreme Court’s media department, citing chambers, said no such injunction had been granted.

Billionaire mining magnate Andrew Forrest, who has publicly backed the Force and warned the ARU he would be first in line to fight any decision to axe the side, was named in the court order.

“We won,” local media quoted Forrest as saying. “It is one small, moral victory in the long battle to save this great team but it is a good one to have over those who have shown total ruthlessness towards the players and the proud rugby community that stands behind them.”

The battle over the Force’s future threatens to disrupt governing Sanzaar’s plans for the new Super Rugby season and overshadow the Wallabies’ Rugby Championship campaign. Sanzaar was proceeding under the assumption that the competition would have 15 teams next season, a spokesman said.

The Force went into arbitration with the ARU two weeks ago, seeking to stave off their axing by arguing that they had signed an alliance agreement that guaranteed them Super Rugby until the end of the current broadcasting deal in 2020.

But the arbitrator found in favour of the ARU, who contended that, with the competition contracting by three teams, a new broadcast agreement would be in place for 2018. Force and Wallabies winger Dane Haylett-Petty said he was “angry, confused, disappointed.”

“But as a group we’re really sticking tight and the process is not done yet,” Haylett-Petty told local media at a Wallabies training camp in Sydney.