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This is a story about engagement, or perhaps the lack of it, between the elite and the great unwashed of Australian rugby.
A good place to start, is the largely forgotten Arbib Report of 2012, which made a salient point:
“An organisation that ignores its shareholders or takes them for granted, except on the handful of occasions where it has no choice but to seek their endorsement, should not be surprised when it meets a cold reception.”
“While the Wallabies might be the financial engine of Australian Rugby, the community Game is its beating heart.”
It’s a hard truth that the bloated and poorly balanced board of the ARU has been forced to confront recently as clubs and unions across the country refused to buy into the National Participation Fee and individual player registrations outlined in 2014.
Not surprisingly there has been an embarrassed radio silence from the ARU over the Christmas period, but as pre-season training begins and clubs start to sign up players for the coming season, the ARU will have to come out and admit that after a lot of tough talking, they’ve been forced to back down on plans for an individual-based insurance scheme, and may yet have to also justify their allocation of Participation Levies.
Most of the ARU’s problems are money problems, or problems that could be fixed with money, so it’s not surprising that they find themselves arguing over a financial issue. Unfortunately they persist in adding a personal element as well because of the way they approach their rugby allies. They’re like that weird mate who disses you down at the pub, and then turns up at your door wanting to borrow your power tools.
It’s a WTF approach to the administration of a game where the level of engagement of the rugby everyman directly dictates the amount of money that the ARU makes from merchandising, gates and memberships. Make them hate you at your peril.
Arbib again… “Rugby is more about ensuring the next crop of fans and supporters than it is about identifying future Wallabies. Without this loyal and committed base of support the professional teams are ultimately playing to empty stadiums.”
Shame the current ARU didn’t read the memo.
Engagement, not money, is the issue here. Funnily enough, the cash crisis in a World Cup year was the best opportunity the ARU has had for years to engage with the rugby public and galvanise their support. After all, everyone in rugby knows the joint is skint and they also want to see a good showing in England in October. But instead of treating the clubs and unions like partners, as a good friend would, the ARU dragged community rugby out behind the bike sheds and tried to bash it for its lunch money.
This is what the Harvard Business Review calls “Old Power” at work. Old Power, the authors argue, works like a currency. It is held by few and is zero-sum. Once gained, it is jealously guarded, and the powerful have a substantial store of it to spend. It is closed, inaccessible, and leader-driven.
However, old power only works when you actually have someone to be powerful over. If the ARU isn’t careful, it’ll end up like Homer Simpson, deserted by his Stonecutters and left playing alone with a crowd of monkeys.
New power, on the other hand, operates differently, like a current. It is made by many. It is open, participatory, and peer-driven. Like water or electricity, it’s most forceful when it surges. The goal with new power is not to hoard it but to channel it.
Old power is on the opposite side of the table. New power is on the same side.
One of the best case studies in the channelling of new power in football came to an impressive climax last October when South Sydney won the NRL grand final 30-6 over a gallant Bulldogs. The seeds of the win were sown in 2008 when owner Russell Crowe and CEO Shane Richardson realised they could no longer operate a top-down model, funded by generous sponsors and a benevolent leagues club.
When Richardson joined Souths as CEO, they were on their knees financially, much like the current ARU. Souths Juniors and Kerry Stokes were both propping up the club to the tune of several millions per year, and Richardson knew the money had to come from somewhere. He knew too, that the supporters were the best source of funds.
As Chris Barrett wrote in the SMH last year “Richardson’s answer was a new business plan: membership. He freely admits he pinched the concept from the AFL and old English Super League mate Ian Robson, by then at Hawthorn, and friend Chris Green, a mad Richmond fan – “I’m an old dog; I’ve got no original ideas” – but it proved a masterstroke. By the end of the first year of their membership drive Souths had signed up 14,000 people.”
In a perfect acknowledgement of the effect of new power, Richardson and owner Russell Crowe appealed to the hearts and minds of Souths supporters and eventually rode their 14,000-member wave to a premiership.
By contrast, the Old Power ARU is getting a big middle digit from the whole of rugby. For an organisation whose stated plan is “To reunite and re-energise Australian Rugby”, they’ve done a bang-up job of dividing and demoralising.
The nasty letter from the ARU’s GM of Participation, Andrew Larratt, to the NSWRU, (basically saying “Do as we say or we’re not giving you the $1 million in development funding we promised you”) was old power at its worst and an exquisite stuff-up, because it forced battlelines to be drawn and proved that the general mistrust of the ARU executive and board was well founded.
So what next?
Having backed down on the individual insurance issue which allows clubs to continue to pay their insurance at a team level as they always have, the ARU now faces a potentially embarrassing confrontation to show exactly where the money raised from the Participation Levy is going to go.
In particular, they still have to convince the two largest groups of rugby participants in the country, NSW Suburban Rugby, and NSW Country, that their levies aren’t going to go straight towards propping up rugby on the north shore of Sydney and funding the Shute Shield.
Unfortunately for Larratt, having already alienated the grassroots, he could find himself being fighting this battle solo, because his old-power masters are distracted by the pressing issue of career preservation. As Paul Keating once said (quoting his mentor Jack Lang) “In the race of life, always back self-interest. At least you know it’s trying”.
At ARU HQ, nothing could be more true for CEO Bill Pulver and Chairman Michael Hawker. For Hawker, the big concern is how does he get a shot at becoming chairman of the IRB if the ARU trainwreck continues. For Pulver, how does he keep his head above water long enough to engineer an honourable discharge from the CEO role?
Meanwhile, the elite and the grassroots continue squabbling and fan engagement with elite rugby drifts away like smoke on the wind.
Amazingly, there is hope, but it would demand that the ARU acknowledge that while they may be custodians of the game, they’re not the owners. It is a subtle but important difference, the acknowledgement of which demands humility. From a board steeped in old power and over-heavy with ex-Wallabies removed from the community game it’s pretty unlikely. They’ve already clearly demonstrated that their appetite for transparency and consultation with the rugby community is nil.
If they do manage the backflip (and the hard reality of cashflow may yet force them into some acrobatics), a re-read of the Arbib Report would be a good starting point to refocus on that crazy idea of reuniting and re-energising Australian rugby.
It says… “Club Rugby remains the heart of Australian Rugby, and the sense of community that Rugby fosters through local club competitions around Australia is stronger than ever. It is still the code’s greatest asset.”
Amen to that.