Melbourne gets a touch of rugby fever

 
Spiro Zavos Columnist

By , 30 Jul 2010 Spiro Zavos is a Roar Expert

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The Weary Dunlop club put on a superb rugby lunch on Thursday at the Crown Palladium on Melbourne’s Southbank. The lunch was a delight of great rugby talk, gawking at the famous rugby names mingling with the enthusiastic audience, and the sheer joy of seeing rugby fever hit Melbourne.

The lunch was intended, essentially, to show case the Melbourne Rebels and their preparation for Super 15 rugby in 2011.

There was also some animated discussion about Saturday night’s much-anticipated Bledisloe Cup Test, with the ARU’s John O’Neill suggesting that the All Blacks were world rugby’s ‘gold standard’ and Robbie Deans promising that his Wallabies were up for the contest.

We had a perceptive speech from the chairman of the Rebels consortium, Harold Mitchell.

He pointed out that last year’s lunch drew 800 suits and that this year the room was filled to its capacity of 1400 suits paying $200 each.

“Even an AFL club,” he claimed, “would be proud to get this sort of response.”

He announced that the State Government was giving $1.5m towards a state of the art training facility for the Rebels.

The Carlton Football Club was part of the venture and that it was ‘the Melbourne way’ for all the codes to work together to achieve success for the city and the state.

There were a number of AFL notables at the lunch and bearing in mind that the Rebels CEO is the former AFL administrator Ross Oakley the thought came to me that Melbourne is and will be more supportive of the Rebels than, say, Sydney is to a new AFL club.

We had a stirring rendition of the Rebels club song. In Melbourne this AFL tradition is mandatory for all sports clubs.

So 9 tenors belted out ‘The Song of Angry Men’ from Les Miserables. At the end of the song silver streamers burst from the ceiling, engulfing the singers in a moment of colour and drama.

A terrific video encouraging supporters to join up as members was shown.

The club has created a Rebels Pledge based around five key concepts: Respect, Excellence, Balance, Ethos, Leadership.

The concepts are stitched into the team’s jerseys which was revealed to be a Victorian dark blue shirt, white sleeves and a red collar. This is a distinctive and attractive uniform.

Rod Macqueen came on and talked about the spirit he is trying to create at the new club. They will ‘be competitive from day one,’ he promised. He told how filling the club’s roster was a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.

Some players he contacted told him they’d just made their Super 15 side and didn’t want to risk this security.

“Stay with your club,” Macqueen said he told these players. “We only want players who are prepared to take a risk.”

I chatted to Michael Lipman, the England player who was educated at St Joseph’s Hunters Hill. He told me he was really excited about next season and how he hoped that great performances by him might lead to a place in England’s RWC squad.

In my view, he is just the sort of dynamic loose forward that England needs, and the Rebels, of course.

And here’s an exclusive of sorts.

The Rebels first Super 15 match will be a Visy Stadium (“the best rugby stadium in the world,” according to Macqueen) on February 18 against the NSW Waratahs.

Then there was some discussion about the Bledisloe Cup Test from Greg Somerville (who got a big roar by predicting an All Blacks win), and Stirling Mortlock (‘The Wallabies can do it’) and Macqueen who insisted that win or lose the match will be a ‘litmus test’ for the Wallabies.

It will give them “a lot of information of just where they are” in the run-up to RWC 2011.

Greg Clarke, the MC for the lunch, offered the following intriguing information for Wallaby supporters.

The All Blacks have won seven successive Tests against the Wallabies, even though in five of these Tests the Wallabies were leading at half-time.

The last time the Wallabies beat an All Blacks’ 7-Test winning run was in 1998 at Melbourne, where Saturday night’s Test is being played.

As I was walking out into mild Melbourne afternoon, I heard someone call out my name. It was the referee for the Test, Craig Joubert.

We shook hands and chatted for a few minutes.

I asked him whether he thought the new tackled ball interpretations made his job easier or tougher. He said he liked them. They were clear and positive.

Teams that tackled around the legs could send their second digger in to contest possession and this was good for the game.

There had been some talk about the dire state of the surface of Etihad Stadium. “You’re not going to condemn the ground,” I teased him. He said he was just going out to inspect it and the game was going to be played.

He finished off by making this great point to me.

“For a South African referee, refereeing an Australian – New Zealand Test is a wonderful thrill, the highlight, it can’t get any better.”

So it’s game on between the Wallabies and the All Blacks as rugby fever takes hold in marvellous Melbourne.

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