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The Super 15 Melbourne Rebels are up and running

5th January, 2010
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5th January, 2010
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Australian Rugby Union chief executive John O'Neill - AP Photo/Mark Baker

Australian Rugby Union chief executive John O'Neill - AP Photo/Mark Baker

It was a relieved (presumably) and excited John O’Neill who told a door stop of journalists that the ARU had signed an agreement with the Harold Mitchell-led group to create Melbourne’s Super 15 franchise for the 2011 season. This has been a long and often perilous journey for O’Neill.

In his first stint as the CEO of the ARU he argued for a fourth Australian Super Rugby side. Behind this argument was the long term game plan of taking Super Rugby to a 15-team tournament with each SANZAR country having five teams.

When people talk about a leader having vision, this sort of game plan by O’Neill fulfills the true notion of the “vision thing.”

There has been continuing antagonism for a fifth Australian franchise from South African interests.

Even inside Australia there has been stiff opposition to his vision. And the negotiations to set up the Melbourne franchise have been fraught with some tough and intense bargaining between the various bidders and the ARU which has gone on for months.

To his credit, O’Neill has navigated the ARU through these storms to get an outstanding result for Super Rugby and for rugby in Australia.

In 2011, Super Rugby will have a format that will make it the best provincial rugby tournament in world rugby. Each of the SANZAR countries will have five teams. The tournament schedule calls for home and away matches inside each country that increases the local derbies from three a year to 20.

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There is scope, too, within the tournament structure for teams to lure name players from Europe into Super Rugby.

My guess, for instance, is that Brian O’Driscoll will be made an offer he can’t refuse by one of the Super Rugby franchises in 2012. In time, the player drain from the southern hemisphere to the northern hemisphere will be reversed.

But that is for the future.

Right now the Melbourne franchise has to put in place a strong and sustainable business model and a team that attracts spectators and sponsors by adding to the sporting culture of Melbourne.

This is where Harold Mitchell comes into play. Rugby is blessed that he wants to play a major role in promoting the code in Australia.

Mitchell is the owner and creator of the Mitchell Communications Group, the biggest independent communications group in Australia with billings of $1.2 billion a year.

He was described to me by someone involved with Australian rugby as a “man of substance.”

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He runs a highly successful business (which has many cross -currents with the Super Rugby) which he built from scratch by mortgaging his assets as a young family man. He has wide interests in music, art and sports, outside his business ventures. His can-do, hard-working management style seems to be just right to set up a successful Melbourne franchise.

But back to John O’Neill.

In his press release announcing the ownership of the Melbourne franchise, he insisted (correctly in my opinion) that “there is a market for quality rugby in Melbourne.”

To justify this statement, O’Neill noted that in the 13 Tests in Melbourne since 1997, they have crowds averaging 49,966.

The Melbourne franchise will play out of new rectangular stadium, something that the Western Force have missed in Perth with crowds forced to watch at Subiaco Oval, an AFL stadium.

There is also a huge business community in Melbourne that is interested in rugby, as anyone who has been to the Weary Dunlop lunches will testify. These are the biggest sporting lunches in Melbourne.

Super Rugby, too, has something that will interest this business community, which is the fact that there is an international component to the tournament. This international component provides a nice counterpoint to the dominant AFL code, which is the premier game in Australia, and has virtually no presence out of Australia.

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And the name of new Super 15 franchise? Here is a fearless prediction: The Melbourne Rebels.

And why Rebels?

This is a reference presumably to the rebels who set up the Eureka Stockade which challenged the Melbourne establishment. In the light of this reasoning, the Melbourne Rebels will represent a polite but determined latter-day challenge to the AFL establishment in sporting mad Melbourne.

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