SPIRO: The Australian Rugby Union should be stronger

The state of the rugby union in Australia is rather like that of the British pound, it should be stronger.

But there are hopes that the rugby union code in Australia is on an upward path – perhaps not the pound, though!

Admittedly, the path is from a low base point, but there are signs of growing strength to match perhaps the glory days of the late 1990s and early 2000s when the trinity of leaders, John O’Neill (CEO of the ARU), Rod Macqueen (the brilliant coach of the Wallabies) and John Eales (the captain of the most successful Wallabies side in its history, and arguably the greatest Wallaby) made Australian rugby feared and admired in rugby strongholds like New Zealand, South Africa and Europe.

This optimism, or optimism in anticipation, is unusual among Australian rugby writers and supporters. The tendency when thinking and talking about the future of rugby in Australia is to adopt the Hanrahan mode of ‘we’ll all be rooned’.

Well old Spiro is no Hanrahan. He is sure that rugby as a boutique sport in Australia has an assured and well-supported future.

The starting point for this guarded optimism is that the present situation is not as dire as many commentators and bloggers have decided. The struggle for rugby is less about trying to avoid going under than trying to burst through to a high degree of stability in terms of numbers playing and watching, and financial stability.

Georgina Robinson, in the Sydney Morning Herald, had an interesting article last week in which she noted the successes for Australian rugby in 2014.

The Waratahs won the Super Rugby tournament for the first time playing an attractive and effective brand of rugby. The team was well-coached by Michael Cheika (a future Wallaby coach) and with virtually all the star players available for next season the Waratahs have a chance of a Super Rugby two-peat.

On the back of this success and with an attractive 2015 Super Rugby fixture list for the Waratahs, which includes a tasty home match against the Crusaders, the franchise has already doubled its ticket sales for next year, and is looking at exceeding by a large number their membership cohort well above the present level of 20,000.

Talking about membership, we should mention and congratulate the Queensland Rugby Union on its huge membership numbers of nearly 50,000. This is well above the number of members of the Brisbane Broncos. With James O’Connor and Quade Cooper coming back in 2015, the Reds should provide plenty of excitement for their fans.

There is a proviso that needs to be made here, though. Is Richard Graham capable of doing with the Reds what Cheika has achieved for the Waratahs? The answer based on Graham’s record at the Western Force and this year for the Reds would suggest that this might be pushing matters too far.

And this brings me to an important gripe about the governance of Australian rugby. Quite simply, it is not open enough and proper processes seem to be compromised on a regular basis.

When I published some information, for instance, about the surprising appointment of Richard Graham as the coach of the Reds that suggested a good-old-boy arrangement, The Roar was threatened with legal action by a prominent rugby person.

Part of the some-time disenchantment of rugby supporters is the feeling that a cabal of insiders runs the game, especially at the Super Rugby and national level. This cabal looks after its mates and is reluctant to bring the full resources of the Australian rugby community into its deliberations and decisions.

On the face of it, the Wallabies have had a successful season in 2014 in that they were unbeaten in their home Tests. France was defeated in all three Tests and South Africa and the Pumas lost in Australia to the Wallabies. Even the mighty All Blacks were held to a 12-12 draw at Sydney, with the last plays of the Test taking place under the posts of the visitors.

As Georgina Robinson pointed out, the Wallabies have scored 51 tries in their 19 Tests under coach Ewen McKenzie. This is double the number of tries in the same number of Tests by Robbie Deans’ Wallabies. 

The Wallabies achieved seven straight Tests wins in this time, too, which was the first time the Wallabies had gone for seven straight wins since the glory days of Rod Macqueen’s side in 2000.

The Wallabies have moved from four on the IRB rankings to third under coach McKenzie. And if they defeat the Springboks at Cape Town next weekend, the Wallabies become the number two team in world rugby.

This is a big if. The last Wallaby victory against the Springboks at Cape Town was in 1992.

So why is there so much disenchantment with the Wallabies? A lot of it stems from the massacre at Eden Park in the sequel to the Sydney draw. The Wallabies talked themselves up and then played without much spirit, intent or skill. Greg Martin rather controversially accused Wycliff Palu of ‘dogging it’ in the Test. Whatever, the Wallabies gave a good impression of a side that talked a good game and then forgot to play it.

Supporters, especially Wallaby supporters, can accept losses. But what they can’t accept are losses that flow from a side not having the guts to tough out a hard contest.

Before the Eden Park Test, the television ratings on pay TV and free-to-air were up. So were crowds numbers at the Super Rugby matches and the Tests. But at Perth for the Springboks, and especially at the Gold Coast for the Pumas (14,281 spectators), the numbers were down.

Once again, the fault here must lie with the ARU and its tin ear or no ear for the interests of the rugby community.

Why would the ARU play a Test match on the Gold Coast? Why not exploit the affinity of the Queensland rugby community with the superb Suncorp Stadium, a magnificent venue with the best playing surface in world rugby and virtually in the city.

The ARU is stretched for money, why wouldn’t it play its Tests at grounds where the rugby community has declared with its feet that it like attending?

You don’t get any public discussion of the policy about Test venues from the ARU, however. It is as if the views of the rugby public don’t matter. They should and I am sure that if they are asked they would say play the Tests at a couple of venues only, in Sydney and Brisbane. Only occasionally venture into Melbourne. But the Gold Coast and Perth? Forget it.

This sort of leadership, the willingness to test out ideas and concepts with the public by the administrators, is at the core of whatever disenchantment the rugby community has about the future of rugby in Australia.

Where was the leadership from the officials when virtually every rugby writer and all the bloggers on The Roar went to town about the French referee Jerome Garces’ controversial decision to pull back a Puma when he charged down a kick from Ma’a Nonu? The rugby game was called into ridicule and contempt over the decision. The officials allowed this to happen when they could have explained that the referee was correct. A charge down has to be instanteous. If the player making the play has time to work out the direction of the kick, then the charge down becomes a knock-on.

Referee Garces was correct. The IRB law book is quite explicit on this, including an illustration of a player charging down a kick inches away from the kicker’s boot to make the point. Andrew Mehrtens agrees with me on this point.

Again, why didn’t SANZAR enlighten everyone – fans, bloggers, media and television commentators – on the truth of the matter? If they had done, the rugby public might have taken a different approach to the matter of refereeing standards.

And where was the ARU on the controversy over Bryan Habana’s yellow card in the Test against the Wallabies? Someone, McKenzie or Bill Pulver or John Eales (an ARU board member who has a rugby column and talks on television about players he employs) might have made the point that the player who was tackled high, Adam Ashley-Cooper, had to miss the Test against the All Blacks with a neck injury.

Recently Steve Hansen, the All Blacks coach, has suggested the laws are too complex and need to be simplified. Eddie Jones, a former Wallaby coach and now coach of Japan, has come out with some interesting ideas about how this can be achieved.

He wants among other ideas the IRB referees boss to be anyone other than a former referee. Sir Clive Woodward is one possibility, he suggests. This is a good idea. The referees are inclined to decide among themselves how they want rugby to be played, and often this is not the game that spectators want to watch or players play.

Another Jones idea is for 12 interchanges a match from an 8-man interchange bench. A poor idea, in my view. An essential part of the game is what I call the running of the bulls, the tiring of the bigger players so that towards the end of matches the fitter, faster and smaller players come into their own.

The point is that at a time when spectators and commentators are finding the laws of rugby too complex and too biased against the attacking sides, the ARU and SANZAR should be creating a debate and then a momentum of ideas to take to the IRB after the 2015 Rugby World Cup tournament to improve and quicken up the playing of rugby.

An obsession from the top to involve all the stake-holders in what is happening in the game would go a long way to lift the supporters of the game.

Success in a sport, like justice, must not only be done, it must be seen to be done.

And this brings us back to our consideration of the state of the Australian Rugby Union.

The game is in competition with the AFL, the national game, football, the world game, and rugby league, the dominant winter game in NSW and Queensland. No other rugby union anywhere faces such a challenge for the hearts and minds of players, supporters and the media as the ARU.

For the rugby game to be successful in Australia, it needs to be world class on and off the field. The Wallabies and the Waratahs are clearly at this level. But this on-field success is not being matched with the off-field activities of the ARU and the various Super Rugby franchise.

The opportunities for making the rugby union much stronger in Australia are self-evident. The NRC is up and running (well, it seems) and this provincial tournament if organised well could, finally, provide the desired third tier to give substance to the rugby game here.

Next year there is the Rugby World Cup tournament in England. Rugby, in Australia and around the world, will be given a tremendous lift in popularity from what will be the biggest international tournament in world sport in 2015.

Then in 2016 rugby comes back to the Olympics for the first time since the 1920s, but this time in the form of sevens.

The sevens tournament will be a sell-out at the Olympics and a huge event, again, for rugby around the world.

If the ARU can’t leverage these events into making the rugby game much stronger in Australia then we need a fresh group of leaders who will achieve this reachable goal.