ARU confident it won’t have to run Melbourne franchise

By Melissa Woods, 31 Dec 2009 Melissa Woods is a Roar Pro

Tagged:: ARU, Melbourne Super 15 franchise, Rugby Union, VicSuper15

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The Australian Rugby Union is confident it won’t have to resort to appointing a project manager to set up the new Melbourne franchise, and is hopeful private owners will take full control next month.

Two potential investors, Craig Dunn and Ray Evans from the VicSuper15 group, have walked away after failing to reach a financial agreement with the ARU over the Melbourne entity, which will join the expanded Super Rugby competition in 2011.

However ARU deputy chief executive Matt Carroll said negotiations were continuing with the other prospective owners, including media buyer Harold Mitchell and Sydney-based mining magnate Kevin Maloney.

With decisions on staffing up to the owners, Carroll hoped the franchise would have a head coach and chief executive in place within weeks of the hand-over.

“We’re in negotiations and discussions at the moment with Harold Mitchell and Kevin Maloney is still very interested,” Carroll said.

“Things seem to be headed in the right direction and we’re very positive that early in the new year the owners will be in place and they’ll be able to get on with the job of making some appointments.”

The move to get a Melbourne-based team in the expanding competition has been beset by acrimony and in-fighting from the outset of the bid process.

Carroll said if the remaining ownership issues couldn’t be resolved early in the new year, an ARU project manager would be appointed.

“If for any reason it got delayed we wouldn’t be appointing a chief executive but we would put a project manager in place and we already have a list of potential head coaches and we might start to have a look at those as well.”

Evans, a close friend of European Cup-winning Leinster coach Michael Cheika from their Randwick club days, claimed to have Cheika on board for the Melbourne role.

It remains to be seen if Cheika, who is still fulfilling his duties with the Irish club, would take on the Melbourne job without the Evans connection.

Despite the short time-frame to get the yet-to-be-named franchise up and running, Carroll wasn’t concerned.

“A lot of the players they’ll be looking to recruit won’t be available until after the end of their season in May, if they’re northern hemisphere players, and if they’re local players they can’t be recruiting any contracted players until after the end of Super 14 rugby.”

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The Crowd Says (15) | Page 1 of Comments

Bay35Pablo said | December 31st 2009 @ 11:22am | Report comment

Evans not being there shouldn’t cruel any chance of Cheika taking the job. It is the next step in his coaching career if he ever wants to return to Australia. He’s not coming back to coach club rugby! Keep in mind Cheika has apparently made his money with his own business, so he is coaching for love not money. He comes back to coach in Australia, and the post has to be a Super head coach role. He could have had NSW last year, but the timing wasn’t right it appeared.

While taking over NSW, the Reds, or Force might be good, with the Rebels he gets to build the team from scratch which is an attraction. Like the Brumbies in 1996, or Force in 2005.

My only concern is that the Rebels end up gutting other Aussie sides (NSW are most at risk if they have another bad season under Hickey). The ARU talked about not letting it happen again like the Force did to the Reds, but I can see no signs they have taken any practical steps. Indeed, the reverse. All the Super teams have reduced squads this year, down from 32 or 30 to 30 or 28 off the top of my head. I think this was cost cutting. Instead, the ARU should have been paying extra cash to the existing sides for 2010, so they sould have expanded squads leading into 2011. This would provide professional players to be recruited by the Rebels, and in 2011 the funding would reduce to normal with the extra players picked up by the Rebels. Rather than picking blokes from amateur club ranks. For $200,000 per team they could have had an extra 4 players on $50,000 each, providing 16 extra pro players in 2011, at a total cost of $800,000.

The ARU planning team appears to have been recruited from the NSW State government planning ranks ….

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Mister Football said | December 31st 2009 @ 8:13pm | Report comment

This is a bit off topic, but I’ve just read here:
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sport/rugby/rugby-players-to-escape-drug-fine/story-e6frey4i-1225815005446

that English rugby is about to adopt the AFL policy on the use of recreational drugs.

The AFL copped plenty from many quarters, but those with a knowledge of the policy were aware that the AFL were actually world leaders on this.

It’s reported that English rugby was directly influenced by the AFL policy.

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- Dogs Of War said | December 31st 2009 @ 8:19pm | Report comment
  
  Not quite. They are much stricter with only first offense being kept secret. The 2nd one lands them a ban. Why the AFL were lampooned is that they allow 3 strikes, given that 6 players in the AFL have tested positive twice, and guys like Ben Cousins who never tested positive yet known to have had a problem, it raises a lot of questions from those outside of the game as to the credibility of how you handle drugs in sport.
  
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  - Mister Football said | January 1st 2010 @ 12:04am | Report comment
    
    Yes, but people lampooned because they didn’t understand that:
    
    1. The AFL was the only one in the whole sporting world testing for recreational drugs outside of competition;
    
    2. It was able to do so only because the players had agreed; and, as such
    
    3. there had to be a bit of quid pro quo, which meant treating as a health and player welfare matter, and rightly so.
    
    Absolutely everyone, without exception, lampooned it without being aware of these facts.
    
    I could never understand why the AFL was criticised when every other sporting body in the world had no policy.
    
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    - Dogs Of War said | January 1st 2010 @ 11:27am | Report comment
      
      I would like to see proof of point number 1. You are making the claim, and I just can’t see that being true.
      
      As for why people lampoon it, it’s because of the reason’s in my first post. 3 strikes, what a laugh. No one will ever reach 3 strikes, clubs will just discard those players, and no one will be any wiser. It’s a great policy to sweep drug use under the carpet.
      
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      - Mister Football said | January 1st 2010 @ 12:12pm | Report comment
        
        Well, we both know that an NRL policy came into effect after the AFL’s – what other policies were there anywhere else in the world?
        
        I’ll tell you.
        
        There were none.
        
        No one else tested for recreational drug use outside of competion – that’s why all the criticism has been based on ignorance.
        
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        Dogs Of War said | January 1st 2010 @ 2:18pm | Report comment
        
        How about a comment on the threestrikes policy. Thats biggest farce.
        
        Mister Football said | January 1st 2010 @ 2:28pm | Report comment
        
        I’m not sure what you’re trying to say.
Bruce Ross said | January 1st 2010 @ 9:55am | Report comment

Mister Football concedes that his comments are “a bit off topic”. “A bit”??? The only possible connection between news of a change to English rugby’s drug policy and a thread about the viability of the Melbourne Super 15 rugby franchise is the word “rugby”.

So why has he chosen to enlighten us in such spectacularly irrelevant fashion? His avatar gives it away. A photo of a stalky big bloke doing a can-can kick would be seen as tres gay north of the Murray but has always had great fascination for the southerners who are disturbingly impressed by their bean poles’ ability to elevate their kicking foot skywards.

Obviously Mister Football’s real purpose was to breathlessly inform us that “English rugby is about to adopt the AFL policy on the use of recreational drugs”. Wow!! How about that? Who would have thought that the antipodean game of kick-it-to-me would have become such a force in world sport that the crusty old farts of English rugby would pinch a key element of the colonial game, namely the issue of two “Get out of jail free” cards to every player with respect to recreational drugs?

Of course, it could be argued that anyone dumb enough to be sprung three times by the narks for wandering into nighclubs with wacky baccy in their pockets might be able to claim lack of mental capacity to plead. Still, the fact that no one has yet accumulated three strikes is clear evidence that the policy is working and that AFL players have been terrified into switching to chewing gum as a stimulant and relaxant.

Feel free to come back to the Rugby section of the site, Mr F, when you have more updates on the relentless march of your strange little offshoot of football to world domination.

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- Mister Football said | January 1st 2010 @ 12:10pm | Report comment
  
  Are you glad to have got all of that off your chest!!
  
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Damo said | January 1st 2010 @ 11:16am | Report comment

Well spotted Bruce, I am shocked to find that people might act dishonestly during these current code wars. I think the key word for Mister Football might be ‘Melbourne’ and not ‘rugby’. Maybe there is a threat to AFL from rugby? I find that hard to believe.
That said I have wondered since Wendal Sailor’s banning wether rugby would not have benefited from an AFL type rec. drug policy. Wendel may not have been publicly exposed for something (wrong) he did in his own time. Copped a fine, warning, rehabilitation and played with the Waratahs through the Super 14 finals that year. THe Waratahs may have won. KIds would still have a role model. Including Wendel’s kids. It seemed to me that no-one should abuse drugs of any kind. But where are the career penalties for lawyers, politicians, journalists etc that relate to the penalties that sports people have to pay.

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Bruce Ross said | January 1st 2010 @ 11:54am | Report comment

I have to be honest, Damo, and admit that I see absolutely no reason why the various sporting bodies should concern themselves with athletes’ use of recreational drugs. After all, they are not performance enhancing and if anything may be performance diminishing. I am personally affronted by athletic performances being turbo-charged but couldn’t care less about how sports people or anyone else get their kicks.

Let the wallopers worry about enforcing the arbitrary distinction between legal and illegal mood changers. And by the way, if they were really concerned about catching out people who should be role models, a good place to start looking for nose candy aficianados would be the CBD.

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- Mister Football said | January 1st 2010 @ 12:13pm | Report comment
  
  That’s an intersting post to follow up on the one addressed to me.
  
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Damo said | January 1st 2010 @ 12:44pm | Report comment

Ah hah , Mister Football does not deny his hidden AFL spruiking agenda!
Anyway MF, it is interesting that you brought up the drug policy because rugby has given itself a hard task by its policies till now. If we (rugby) had a more enlightened and intelligent (less wowserish) approach the Waratahs may have had a Super 14 title.

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- Mister Football said | January 1st 2010 @ 2:13pm | Report comment
  
  If Bruce Ross was truly as knowledgeable as he makes out to be, he would have known that my avatar is a picture of the real Mister Football, after whom I have named myself.
  
  As for the rest of his rant, the less said the better, I’d prefer not to stoop so low.
  
  I doubt I am the first to look for a spot to paste a link to an interesting story, and I doubt I’d be the last.
  
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