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John O’Neill has extended his contract for another two years, in a huge boost for Australian rugby. The 60-year-old O’Neill will remain ARU boss until late 2013, after the long-awaited British and Irish Lions tour.
The decision won’t please some sections – O’Neill isn’t everybody’s cup of tea.
But he is mine.
In half-a-centuty of dealing with top sporting administrators around the world, I rate John O’Neill number one.
Second would be Tim Caldwell, the chairman of the Australian Cricket Board from 1972 to 1975 – and third John Quayle, the NSWRL general manager from 1983 to 1996 – with current CEO David Gallop, closing.
O’Neill can be hard-nosed, and abrasive, but Australian rugby needs a no-holds-barred administrator to keep interstate jealousies at bay.
Those jealousies crippled the code for decades – especially Queensland v NSW – until O’Neill arrived on the scene from the State Bank, in 1996.
That was an immediate culture shock for some territorial egos.
O’Neill didn’t take any prisoners from day one, and rugby flourished.
He overseered the switch to professionalism, and set about making rugby a marketable code – no longer an amateur sport, with amateur thinking.
If O’Neill’s made one mistake in his spectacular career, it was not stopping club rugby from turning professional – he had the power to do it.
Clubs are the grassroots to Waratah, Reds, and Wallaby, selection – but the vast majority of clubs are broke, or close to it.
It’s never too late, as I emailed O’Neill some weeks ago.
Once current contracts run out, return the club competitions to amateur status where players pay to play – train Tuesday, and Thursday nights – and play on Saturday afternoon.
Then the clubs will survive, and the vital grassroots of rugby grow.
Having given O’Neill his one cross – his ticks are many.
* He lifted the image of rugby to number four on the Australian sporting scene.
* Crowds flocked to the Sydney Football Stadium, Suncorp, and Bruce Stadium to watch the Waratahs, Reds, and Brumbies.
* Leading into the 2003 Rugby World Cup, New Zealand got “cute” as co-host, so O’Neill sold the IRB the idea of Australia becoming sole host – and won.
* That 2003 RWC is still rated the best of the six so far – with O’Neill the pivot.
* And the ARU banked a profit in excess of $30 million.
But the winds of change started to flow through the ARU, so typical of rugby.
O’Neill was the shining light, which translated to “he must go” – and he did in 2004.
Frank Lowy, the patient patriarch of Australian soccer, grabbed the opportunity, and O’Neill was appointed the CEO of Soccer Australia.
Even though O’Neill was a dyed-in-the-wool rugby man, as is every ex-pupil of St Josephs College at Hunters Hill in Sydney – a rugby stronghold – his admin skills lifted soccer to great heights.
* O’Neill launched the successful bid for the Socceroos to qualify for the World Cup, for the first time since 1974.
* He negotiated Australian soccer out of Oceania, into the far bigger, and more productive, Asian group.
* And kick-started the A-League, that was dying on the vine.
Lowy was devastated when O’Neill wanted out.
But rugby was still very much in O’Neill’s veins, and during his soccer sojourn, rugby fell from fourth, to ninth, on the Australian sporting scene.
So did the interest fade, and the standard.
O’Neill had the answer, by signing the first foreign Wallaby coach Robbie Deans – that took courage – a commodity never lacking in the O’Neill psyche.
It took nearly three years before the Deans way kicked in – not Deans’ fault, the Wallabies were slow learners – eventually beating the Boks for the first time on the high veldt in 47 years, and the All Blacks for the first time in 11 meetings.
The caviare – the last 30 minutes of the international against reigning Six-Nations champions France, at the Stade de France, on November 27, last year.
Down 13-16, the Wallabies played champagne rugby to run in six answered tries in a 46-point blitz, to romp home 59-16.
Sensational rugby.
So the highly-productive John O’Neill-Robbie Deans partnership will be on-going, now O’Neill has extended his ARU contract.
Australian rugby hasn’t looked so strong since the Rod Macqueen era from 1997 to 2001.
The proof will be regaining the Bledisloe Cup this year, ending a nine-year drought – and winning a record third RWC.
It doesn’t get any better than that, and John O’Neill will have played a major role in the renaissance.
Nothing new in that, he’s done it with sport, from the moment he left the State Bank.