Waratahs' centre Tom Carter center bottom battles with Stormers' wing Bryan Habana left and team mate Gio Aplon. AP Photo/Rob Griffith
The resignation of the CEO of NSWRU and NSW Waratahs Rugby, Jim L’Estrange, was inevitable. NSW was, and should always be, the powerhouse of Australian rugby. Under L’Estrange, it has under-performed – on and off the field. And this has had a negative effect on Australian rugby.
The NSWRU media release announcing L’Estrange’s resignation carried a tribute from the chairman of Waratahs rugby Edwin Zemancheff expressing his appreciation of “the great results he (L’Estrange) achieved in running Australia’s oldest and most successful Rugby organisation.”
When someone retires or falls on his sword the way L’Estrange has clearly done, it is customary for colleagues to say kind words about him. But journalists are under no such discretion.
The fact is that in his three years as CEO, NSWRU continued to make losses, the Waratahs failed to win a Super Rugby final, and the huge slide in crowd support over the last five years was barely halted.
I always found L’estrange a pleasant person to deal with.
Not for him the all-too-often recourse by officials of blasting journalists for running stories they don’t want to see in print. And there were plenty of such stories, unfortunately for him, that were run while he was in office.
There is one administrative achievement that he can point to – the separation of the NSWRU and NSW Waratahs Rugby into two entities. The problem, though, is that the problems confronting these entities were allowed to fester in the last three years.
There is a feeling among the premier clubs, for instance, that their voices and needs are not being met or even considered by the NSWRU. The premier clubs have the same vote on the NSWRU Board as the subbies.
My understanding is that there is a move towards resurrecting the former Sydney Rugby Union, which used to run the premiership club competitions.
This might be a good move in restoring the heartland Sydney club competition to its rightful place in NSW and Australian rugby.
Looking on the administration of NSW rugby from the outside, admittedly, it seems to me that the officials and board members have not grasped that professional rugby has changed game at levels above the club grades. Take Zamancheff’s reference to the Waratahs being “Australia’s oldest and most successful Rugby organisation.”
Everything about this comment is wrong.
With the coming of professional rugby, representative rugby at the state level ended. The NSW Waratahs are not like the old Waratahs, a combination of the best talents playing rugby in NSW. The professional Waratahs are a collection of the best talent the franchise can gather from around Australia and the rest of the world.
They are not a representative team in the old meaning of representing their state. So the NSW Waratahs are not Australia’s ‘oldest’ Rugby organisation.
And in the professional era, the NSW Waratahs are not as successful as the ACT Brumbies.
In fact, the Waratahs can be deemed an unsuccessful Rugby organisation in the modern era. They are losing money. The Waratahs have not won a Super Rugby title, although the Brumbies have won two.
And crowd numbers have fallen badly in the past five years.
On the day that L’Estrange resigned, the Waratahs issued a media release recording the highlights of the 2010 season. Among the highlights was the fact that the total crowd average grew by almost 2 per cent to over 24,000 even though the Waratahs did not face any of the top five teams at home.
The 40,271 crowd at the ANZ stadium was the biggest crowd since 2002.
Five years ago the Waratahs averaged around 35,000 supporters for its home matches. That is the context in which the small growth in crowd numbers this season should be placed.
In my view, L’Estrange is the victim of the general malaise in NSW rugby right now. He was not its creator. He has fallen on his sword at a time when others more instrumental than he has been in the failures have stayed on.
The fact is the fortunes of NSW rugby really stand and fall on the performances of the Waratahs on the field.
In recent years, the style of play of the Waratahs has turned off supporters, even when they have been the top-ranked Australian side in the last three years. The Waratahs, too, invariably go into their shell in finals matches giving themselves no chance of winning a Super Rugby trophy.
None of these problems can be attributed to Jim L’Estrange. There are people who are responsible for these problems. I would argue that until these people take the honourable course that L’Estrange has followed, these problems will remain.
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