The Western Force should play out of Parramatta

Sometimes an idea is such an obvious answer to a number of intractable problems and has so many clear advantages that it needs to be embraced as soon as is practicable.

That idea is the suggestion by the retiring CEO of the NSW Waratahs Greg Harris that the ARU should remove the Western Force from Super Rugby and add a second Sydney team to the tournament in its place.

I would adjust this suggestion slightly. The ARU owns the intellectual rights of the Western Force. It makes sense to move the franchise from Perth to the western suburbs of Sydney and allow a consortium, possibly made up of some of the people who wanted to establish a western Sydney franchise back in 2009, to put a bid together to run it.

Harris is stepping down from the NSW Waratahs, after doing what all good chief executive should do by arranging for an excellent successor, Andrew Hore, a New Zealander whose last job was running the Ospreys in Wales.

Before the NSW Waratahs job, Harris was the chief executive of the Western Force.

He is in the unique situation of knowing the Perth and Sydney rugby cultures and potential markets extremely well.

Harris was interviewed by the SMH’s Tom Decent about his idea about a second Sydney Super Rugby franchise.

“If you look at a small marketplace like Perth,” Harris told Decent, “there’s a lot of good people and a lot of capable people, but the true fact of the matter is whether or not it has the economy to be able to underwrite a club is another thing. If you’re in a business mode you work to your strengths and strength is the marketplace on the east coast… Not even the NRL has a national footprint… they tried Perth but couldn’t make it work.”

Remember Harris has seen the sports experience in Perth and Sydney from the vantage point of having to compete in the two markets with his rugby product.

“Rugby can take a lead through AFL and the soccer. In AFL Brisbane and Sydney, you’ve got two teams because you need to have that rivalry established. In soccer, FFA put two teams into Melbourne and Sydney, so you’ve got as cross-town rivalry. The issue we’ve (Super Rugby) got here is that we don’t have tribalism. Our closest competition is the Brumbies who are three and a half hours away.

“At the end of the day, the ARU chairman (Cameron Clyne) is a former banker. I wonder how many ATMs he’s got in Perth and I wonder how many he’s got in Sydney and Brisbane? If you don’t protect them, then you’re going to lose them.”

This pointer to Clyne is interesting. When Clyne was the head honcho at NAB (disclaimer: I have a handful of NAB shares) he did nothing about the bank’s failing asset of banks in Britain. His successors have put in train the sale of these assets.

This is something Clyne should have done. In business (even the sports business) it sometimes make sense to throw in a hand and take a chance on a new hand.

This is what Clyne should do with the shift of the Western Force to Parramatta.

As the ARU chairman, Clyne is forever blowing his trumpet about how competent in a business sense his executive-laden board is. Well, if that is the case show the rugby public you not only mean business but can generate new and important business for the rugby code.

I would say this, too. Clyne and Bill Pulver are adamant that the future of the rugby game in NSW lies in the western suburbs of Sydney. So confident are they in this analysis that they are prepared to risk the traditional rugby schools and the traditional clubs that have created NSW as one of the provincial powerhouses in world rugby.

I can think of nothing more important in generating a massive rugby presence in the western suburbs of Sydney than basing a Super Rugby team there.

Club rugby in the western suburbs would be invigorated by the western suburbs Super Rugby team. Some talented kids would think twice, perhaps even three times before opting to play rugby league if they had the chance to play Super Rugby.

There is no doubt that a western suburbs Western Force will be far more viable, on and off the field, than the team currently playing out of Perth.

For one thing, the majority of players in Super Rugby or aspiring to Super Rugby in Sydney resist transferring across Australia to start a new life in Perth. A Western Force playing out of Parramatta would never to employ an ageing South African number 10, Peter Grant, because no one on the east coach was prepared to play in Perth as a back-up number 10.

I would think that rugby in Perth could flourish, too. Locals would start dominating the line-up in the local NRC team.

Perth could engage in competitions with a couple of the South African Currie Cup teams the way Queensland did in the 1960s and 1970s, under Bob Templeton, with New Zealand’s Canterbury province.

Perth could be scheduled with Test matches against the Springboks from time to time to cater for the large South African population in the city, as well.

There is nothing remarkable about transferring a franchise from one state to another. The Sydney Swans were once a Melbourne franchise. They are now a Sydney institution.

There is one sticking point, apparently, to immediate action. According to Harris, the Super Rugby competition is “set in stone for at least five years.”

But is this so? I reckon everyone involved with Super Rugby – except the Western Force management – would love to have a second Sydney team and that includes the television moguls, the other franchises that benefit from the monetary success of the tournament and the majority of the players with aspirations to play in the Super Rugby tournament

So here is a challenge to the ARU board. Show that all the pious talk about the diversity on the board and the business heft actually mean something by doing something that could be a game-changer for rugby in Australia.

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Talking about the Western Force, they were resilient in going down 31-14 to the rampant Brumbies.

Michael Foley has brought some young players into the side. The team is actually trying to play rugby rather than concentrating on stopping their opponents from playing in an attractive manner.

They were unlucky in the beginning of the game when referee Andrew Lees missed a massive Brumbies forward pass in a movement that led to a Brumbies penalty and their opening three points from a penalty.

This miss by Lees, his TMO and assistant referees was part of a catalogue of strange decisions, often by TMOs, that has occurred in many of the matches played so far this season.

How did the Hurricanes Ardie Savea, for instance, not actually knock-on when he pulled a ball on the ground forward towards himself before making the pass that allowed T.J.Perenara to score a critical try? Once again, the Blues got a poor decision from the match officials.

And in the Force-Brumbies game, the ACT won a penalty when the Brumbies player obviously pulled a Force player into a ruck. And so it goes on.

I liked Stephen Larkham’s reaction to his team’s three wins from the first three matches of the season: “We’ve certainly had a good start to the competition, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to play well in your next game.”

Larkham is not getting carried away with the wins and is trying to get his team to accept that the more wins they have, the more opposition teams are going to target them.

The Force play the Hurricanes at Wellington next weekend, a game the home side should win given their tenacious and sometimes brilliant play against an unlucky (again) Blues team.

The Brumbies play the Stormers at Newlands. Winning in South Africa against a team like the Stormers is always a good indication in the championship quality of a visiting team. I am picking the Brumbies as the front runners, so far, in the Super Rugby tournament and expect them to win.

It is hard to work out whether the Reds, with their two-head-coaches system improved against the Rebels on earlier losing performances this year, or whether the Rebels just ran out of gas after their long trip back from South Africa.

A steady start saw the Rebels go out to a 16-0 lead. You sensed that a try then might just encourage the Reds to fold. But they fought back instead. The Rebels looked out on their feet.

The Reds went into the final minutes down by only two points. But their attack fizzled out with the Rebels getting the winning points, deservedly I thought.

Was it significant that the Reds co-interim head coach Nick Stiles was quoted (and not his co-interim head coach partner Matt O’Connor) on the official Queensland Rugby Union media release: “It was an improved performance, full of grit, but the most pleasing thing is just how disappointed the group was in the change room after the game because we got ourselves in a position to win the game – poor discipline, particularly early in the match, cost us.”

It is probably unkind to point out a more obvious truth that the Reds lineout and scrum (Stiles’ area of concern) were much less impressive than usual and the back line (the O’Connor area) still stood so deep they seemed to be playing out of the stands.

I couldn’t detect any great difference between the lacklustre, clueless play of this side and the lacklustre and clueless sides Richard Graham put out on the field.

The Sharks had a tough victory over the Stormers at Newlands, and showed that they are (right now at least) the form team in the South African group.

I was impressed with the exuberant play of Joe Pietersen, a small, lively player who resembles Aaron Cruden in size and talent. Will the new Springboks coach, whoever that might be, have the sense of adventure to perhaps try Pietersen out as the Springboks number 10?

The Lions defeat by the Highlanders 34-15 was more impressive than the scoreline suggests. The Lions were certainly not out-played. Three of the Highlanders tries came from broken play and long range attack.

And the Lions, rather than the Highlanders, despite their tough tour of Japan and New Zealand, were the ones who stormed home at the end of the game.

The Chiefs redeemed themselves with a seven-try thrashing of the hapless Kings. I reckon the match of the round next weekend will be the Chiefs and the Jaguares at Jose Amalfitani Stadium. The Chiefs’ scrum, shaky most of this season, will have to improve substantially for the side to get out of this match with a win.

Finally, what a pity that the Sunwolves could not hold on to their large lead against the Cheetahs, going down 32-31 in a thriller after blowing a 31-13 lead.

The Sunwolves play the Rebels at Chichibunomiya Stadium, a real test for the visitors.

The Rebels are currently one of the stronger Australian sides. We will get some sort of insight into how strong the South African Conference really is with the outcome to this game next weekend.

From the early evidence about the new teams, the Kings are unlikely to win any matches, the Sunwolves should win several matches and the Jaguares have already won a match and are shaping up to challenge for one of the finals places in the South African conference.

Two out of three of the new teams, therefore, are worth their places in the Super Rugby tournament. This outcome isn’t as bad as what most of us thought would be the case before the season started.