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There are no winners in the settlement between the ARU and Di Patston, an agreement that brings a formal end to the so-called Patston-Beale saga.
Ms Patston gets an estimated six-figure payout, although we do not know what the first number is this. But her reputation as a business manager is in tatters.
Kurtley Beale is forever linked with behaviour towards Patston that is generally regarded as unacceptable for a professional rugby player. He is one incident of misbehaviour away from being booted out of Australian rugby.
The ARU, through the incompetency of its chairman Michael Hawker and its CEO Bill Pulver, has suffered a worrying financial loss in the payout, as well as a total loss of credibility as the manager of the best interests of Australian rugby.
For Hawker and Pulver, the Patston-Beale saga is one of a series of crises that they have allowed to develop within Australian rugby which have threatened to destroy the viability of the code in this country.
At the beginning of Ewen McKenzie’s stint as the Wallaby coach, the Wallabies were split by a dobbing-in action by senior Wallabies, a few days before the Dublin Test against Ireland, of nine other Wallabies for allegedly staying out too late at night.
The majority of the dobbed-in Wallabies were Waratahs players. When the Patston-Beale saga was at its fiercest, the dobbers-in group tended to side with Patston and the Dublin Nine group tended to side with Beale.
McKenzie was given total control of the Wallabies when he was appointed coach of the side. This was a dereliction of their responsibilities by Hawker and Pulver.
The Wallabies are the prime money-making, image-creating vehicle driving Australian rugby towards any hope of financial viability and spectator support. The first duty of the ARU board and its CEO must be to protect and enhance the glory of its crown jewel.
Hawker and Pulver have clearly failed in this duty. Pulver’s problem is that he knows nothing about rugby or rugby management or promotion. Hawker’s problem, according to insiders, is that he spends a lot of time out of Australia.
He has a style, too, that is based on going on to the back foot defensively whenever front foot leadership is required. It always baffles me when people aspire to leadership positions and then refuse to show any leadership once the position has been acquired.
The one success of Hawker and Pulver is the establishment of the National Rugby Championship. But the word ‘success’ must be tempered by the fact that only 76,000 or so people in total attended NRC games last year. This averages out to about 2,000 spectators a game.
Clearly this limited crowd support is uneconomic in the long run. So this season’s NRC has an element of make-or-break about it.
Businesses dealing with the ARU during the inaugural NRC tournament and hoping to promote the new rugby product to their mutual advantage found a degree of incompetency and lethargy from the ARU that compromised the success of the project.
Yet Pulver was hired by the ARU because of his expertise in IT. Where is the evidence that Pulver has any ability or urge to create new digital platforms that, say, the New Zealand Rugby Union is currently creating?
Unlike Steve Tew, the CEO of the New Zealand Rugby Union who is outspoken in the interests of New Zealand rugby, Pulver shows no inclination or ability to exercise a commanding voice in the interests of the rugby code either in Australia or in world forums.
In the previous administration, Australian rugby punched and often produced results above its weight. Under Hawker and Pulver, Australian rugby has become a punching bag.
We had an example of this during the week with the World Rugby (IRB) media release regarding its quadrennial laws review process.
Every four years the IRB, through its review process, runs “a health check on the laws of the game with a view to ensuring the enhancement of player welfare, the maximisation of enjoyment for players and fans, while making sure the sport can continue to develop at all levels around the world”.
Clearly, this review process is of great significance to the various unions around the world when you consider the calibre of the delegates involved in its deliberations. Among this group last week, for instance, were Andre Watson (SARU), Rob Andrew (RFU), Chris Paterson (SRU), Steve Hansen (New Zealand Rugby Union) and David Nucifora (IRFU).
And the Australian delegate? Ben Whitaker.
Whitaker is the older brother of the famous Chris Whitaker, the Waratahs and Wallabies halfback of blessed memory. He is a competent and popular official in the ARU. But in terms of world rugby, he is a nobody.
Why wasn’t someone of the stature of Watson, Andrew, Paterson, Hansen or Nucifora sent by the ARU to this important meeting?
As military strategist Sun Tzu said: “The battle is won before it is fought”. Australian rugby needs rugby laws and interpretations that favour the open, ball-in-hand game. It needs to have a persuasive voice in the forums where the laws are created to push for the primacy of this open game.
The New Zealand Rugby Union understands this. At the end of the review, Hansen made this point: “We all have a responsibility to ensure that rugby is as simple, enjoyable and safe to play as possible. It was a fascinating review and I look forward to ongoing involvement in this important process”.
Where is the ARU’s response? What were the concepts and ideas presented by Ben Whitaker?
The mention of David Nucifora brings us back to the early days of the Pulver regime. One of his early actions was to dismantle the ARU’s high performance unit, which was led by Nucifora.
The destruction of the unit was sold as a cost-saving exercise. It was more an exercise in chopping off the heads of all the senior executives appointed during the John O’Neill era.
It had little to do with cost cutting. How do we know this? Well, the ARU had a deficit of $6.5 million last season.
So much for Pulver’s frequent claim that he has ‘conquered’ the ARU’s financial problems. Administrative costs increased, despite the destruction of a group of executives who could really have conquered the financial problem if the state unions, which pushed for Pulver, had allowed the sort of changes the New Zealand Rugby Union has implemented.
This stupid vindictiveness in the case of Nucifora, for instance, has resulted in the ARU having no input into World Rugby reviews and to a lack of leadership in ideas, based on statistical analysis, to improve the playing and the coaching of the game in Australia, and then throughout the world.
Since Nucifora has become the high performance leader for the IRFU, Ireland has won an unprecedented ten Test victories and is now regarded as one of the favourites to win the 2015 Rugby World Cup tournament.
The stupidity and incompetence of the Hawker-Pulver regime was revealed throughout the Patston-Beale saga. Every twist and turn throughout the saga saw the ARU head in the wrong direction. Its lack of proper goverance was apparent from the start, when McKenzie was given a free hand with the Wallabies, to the conclusion with the media release on Tuesday confirming the resolution of the matter.
It is worth carrying the press release in its entirety to see the extent of the ARU’s cover-up.
“JOINT STATEMENT: Australian rugby union and Ms Di Patston
The Australian rugby union and Di Patston today confirmed that Ms Patston’s claim against the ARU has been resolved. The claim was due to be heard in the Federal Circuit Court.
The ARU and Ms Patston have reached a mutual agreement in relation to the matter in the interests of all parties.
The ARU recognises the distress caused to Ms Patston and her family and friends in relations to the events of last year and sincerely regrets this has occurred.
The ARU wishes Ms Patston well in her future and thanks her for her diligent service at the ARU from August 2013 to October 2014 as Wallaby Team Manager.
The matter is now resolved and neither the ARU nor Ms Patston will be making any further comment about the matter.”
When the head officials of an organisation like the ARU make such a disaster regarding the management of their prime asset, the Wallabies, that they cannot and will not answer any questions about the resolution, every one knows that this silence denotes a total and utter failure of administration.
If you can’t and won’t explain to your major stakeholders, the players and the supporters what has happened, why it happened and why it won’t happen again, you have forfeited your right to remain in office.
Keeping everyone outside of the ARU fully in the dark about what happened, the details of the settlement and why there is a priority on secrecy provides a clear case that there are serious matters being covered-up.
This is why Hawker and Pulver should fall on their swords and end their involvement with the ARU.