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Australian rugby union coach Robbie Deans (centre) talks to players during a training session for the team in Sydney on Monday, June 1, 2009. The Wallabies will play the Barbarians on Saturday night. AAP Image/Paul Miller
I agreed with Andrew Logan’s concise assessment of Rugby Union in Australia, but not your suggested solution. A democratically driven body of Union supporters isn’t worth the effort.
Apart from the formality of its proposed structure, it is what exactly what used to exist before being crowded out by the ARU. So your proposal simply codifies what has already failed.
And the ARU will squash it again.
I used to have a passion for Rugby Union – I played it, coached, refereed, managed, was active in my club, and promoted it among friends at every opportunity.
That passion reached its zenith after the 2003 World Cup. The Wallabies played well, the ARU’s coffers were full, and young guys (and their families) thought Union was a pretty good thing.
In Victoria, clubs were overrun with new players, to the point where club coaches were in desperately short supply.
The VRU convinced the ARU to train new coaches. That helped a lot of new players discover Rugby Union was fun to play.
Parents – steeped in Aussie Rules – were happy to encourage sons into the game. (Many thought it was amazingly good that the boys had to call the ref “Sir”).
At that time Union was in a position to move against Aussie Rules in its backyard. This wasn’t by accident. VRU management was up to the task. But the ARU, apparently fearful of the reaction of AFL, sent the new Super12 team to Perth.
I, like many others in Victoria, thought that was a kick in the guts.
Let’s face it; the ARU was strategically incompetent to miss that opportunity, and even in its reconstituted state, it’s treatment of the Victorian rugby enthusiast indicates that it hasn’t changed much.
If they needed proof of Victoria’s potential, the ARU need look no further than their own records. It was the VRU that delivered financial salvation to a broke ARU by securing the MCG for a Bledisloe Cup game about 10 years ago. The most recent Wallaby All Black clash at the G attracted 77,000, in a weekend where almost 180,000 people paid to see sport in Melbourne.
The ARU seems blind to all this, but competing codes aren’t. A Melbourne NRL team has been in their grand final for 4 years in a row.
And, given what happened to the Super 12 franchise, how ironic that a new AFL team will start up in Western Sydney in 2011, and we still don’t know if there’ll be a Victorian response.
While this pathetic off-field game has played out by the ARU, the game on the field has become boring, and the Wallabies reach a new low each time they run on the park.
It’s little wonder I’ve lost the passion.
Join The Roar rugby editor Christy Doran, former Wallaby Matt Toomua and a cast of regular and special guests as they look at the biggest issues in the game on The Roar Rugby Podcast. If you’re looking for great odds on the next game check out Aussie bookmaker PlayUp. Chances are you’re about to lose. Set a deposit limit.