Rugby's crisis of ownership is a global problem

On Monday, March 13, two of the wealthiest owners in the French club rugby game, Jacky Lorenzetti of Racing 92 and Thomas Savare of Stade Francais, announced that the two Parisian giants were to merge.

The pair stood together, arms entwined in triumph, above a myriad of colourful microphones.

The grim reality behind the embrace was that both clubs were experiencing financial problems and gates were falling.

Home attendances had flat-lined at a combined average of around 9000 per game – a drop of 13 per cent (Racing) and 22 per cent (Stade) on the previous season, and a massive fall of 48 per cent on Stade’s average gate three years ago.

Racing is currently sitting a single place above the relegation zone in the Top 14 competition, one short year after winning the Bouclier de Brennus. Without the prospect of qualification for the 2017-18 European Champions Cup, Lorenzetti will find it difficult to attract enough investment to fund Dan Carter’s €1.3m annual salary, let alone the €400 million he is investing in a new stadium.

Although the proposal received the enthusiastic backing of the Ligue Nationale de Rugby (LNR, who run the professional game in France), the response from both the host union (the FFR) and the two municipal councils which subsidise the grounds where Stade and Racing play was notably less supportive.

The regional president of Hauts-de-Seine (which contributes €1.2m to the Racing club each year), Patrick Devedjian, said that the issues of “roots” and “identity” were non-negotiable and that ’92’ had to be retained in any new brand name. In the battle of wills between the French federation and the club owners, the federation won.

Within six days of its announcement, the merger was quashed.

The future for Stade, in particular, is not a rosy one. Savare is giving the club three months to find a new owner before he petitions for bankruptcy, only six short years after his intervention saved it from exactly the same fate:

“French rugby is living beyond its means,” said Savare. “Everyone has to realise it. We’re on an intravenous drip.”

Meanwhile, the game in Wales has reached another tipping point in the decline of private ownership. The CEO of one of the original regions set up back in 2003, the Newport-Gwent Dragons, warned that unless a proposal to sell its ground to the Welsh Rugby Union was supported, both the region and the historic Newport club underpinning it would simply “disappear”.

Stuart Davies declared, “If the proposal isn’t supported then any number of scenarios are triggered that, in effect, would lead to the collapse of the group and rugby in any guise discontinuing at Rodney Parade.”

The WRU would undertake to purchase the Rodney Parade ground, invest in its facilities and all existing Dragons’ staff would become employees of the Union via a subsidiary company. The new company would be debt-free at its inception and it would undertake to truly represent the region of Gwent by dropping ‘Newport’ from the name.

Without this move, as chairman and benefactor, Martin Hazell stated quite unequivocally, “The alternative is financial disaster and receivership. If you haven’t got the money to pay the wages that would be that… Regional rugby has not really worked for the last 14 years, but this is giving it a chance… I know I cannot keep it going any longer.”

Down south, regional rugby has also reached a crossroads, with the proposed reduction of teams in Super Rugby, and the potential loss of one of the five Australian franchises.

If anything, the water has been circulating down the plughole in the opposite direction, with the ARU selling out their control of the Melbourne Rebels to private owners in the shape of Imperium Sports Management (ISM) and its managing director Andrew Cox back in July 2015. The franchise had registered a $6.3 million loss in the 2014 financial year.

Although initially enthusiastic about the prospect of growing the game within the local community via the clubs, VSRU, women’s game and Sevens, Cox recently indicated a significant veering of direction at Super Rugby level.

“We need five teams in Australia but there shouldn’t be limits on who you can employ,” said Cox in The Australian. “We are a professional competition that is supposed to be delivering for our fans and members.

“If that means we have 50 per cent of our guys from overseas, then so be it.”

Cox’s attitude is understandable, as he is the man putting in the money.

“There is a conflict between (the ARU’s) objectives and the reality. Who are we doing this for? Our members, and the fans. If we put competitive teams on the park we will grow rugby participation in each of the states, which ultimately is what everyone wants.”

Regarding the club’s recent run of defeats, Cox said, “It impacts our membership, it impacts our gate, it impacts our sponsorship and it limits our ability to open doors.”

Here is the iron fist in the velvet glove of private ownership, and another version of the model which is now struggling to survive in France and Wales. Grow the local game by all means, but ultimately, make sure you’re successful by buying in talent from overseas on a grand scale.

With 50 per cent of the playing squad imported (and presumably an even higher ratio of those starting), there would be far fewer opportunities to develop local talent in any case, so that is already diverging from the approved Wallaby pathway. Which is fine by Cox, who justifiably posed the question, “Is the sole purpose of Super Rugby to provide players for the Wallabies?”

Cox knows that neither the ARU nor SANZAAR can allow the axe to drop on the Rebels. Apart from anything else, Melbourne is one of the best advertising markets for Fox, the controlling broadcaster.

How about a Brumbies-Rebels merger? Something similar was essayed in Wales, with the Celtic Warriors representing ‘the Valleys’ as a fifth region back in 2003.

Unfortunately, there is more than one valley in Wales, and the experiment of commuting between two main centres – Bridgend in the West and Pontypridd in the East – was not a happy one. Arguments over team colours, name and home ground persisted, and the Warriors folded one year after their formation in the summer of 2004.

It is not hard to see something similar compromising a Brumbies-Rebels alliance.

The one place a merger would work is on the pitch, because the relative strengths and weaknesses of the two franchises are a good match for each other. The Rebels excel from numbers 6 to 15 but have a sub-par tight five. The Brumbies have the tight forwards but struggle to create opportunities outside the scrum. It isn’t rocket science.

The two weekend matches, between the Brumbies and Highlanders and Rebels and Waratahs, provided ample evidence of the needs of both teams. The Brumbies had a good measure of forward control but could score only one try in their period of dominance; the Rebels had no problem scoring with the ball but they didn’t get enough of it. Their set-pieces ultimately cost them the game.

Melbourne gave up four penalties at scrum-time, a further two from driving mauls (plus a yellow card on their outstanding #7 Colby Fainga’a) and lost three of their own lineouts. You cannot win games of professional rugby with those stats.

Over in Canberra, the Brumbies scored one of their patented tries from a sequence built on a penalty win at scrum-time, setting up a planned move from a red-zone lineout.

The spadework at the scrum comes first, and even without Scott Sio and Stephen Moore in their front row, the Brumbies’ technique and effectiveness at set-piece remain undiminished.

The initial key after the feed is for the loose-head to step left to create an angle and push into space, where the opposing tight-head cannot defend the zone outside his right shoulder (Nic Mayhew at 24:36).

The second phase of the operation involves the Brumbies’ tight-head Allan Ala’alatoa squaring the drive up so that the referee sees clear forward momentum rather than a wheel. Note the momentary ‘stop’ at 24:39 as Ala’alatoa comes through strongly on his side.

The Brumbies love working the front half of the lineout inside the opposition 22. They scored a try in the opening round of last season’s competition against the Hurricanes from this position (see here at 0:55) and repeated a similar move against the Sharks in Round 2 of this season (see here at 1:11).

An effective driving maul can create a more potent attacking platform than a driving scrum. At scrum time, there is the problem of controlling and picking up the ball at the base (Jordan Smiler at 24:45), while from the lineout, the ball is already in hand at the back of the drive.

If you can threaten the drive successfully, as the Brumbies had with tries against both the Waratahs and the Force in earlier rounds, it concentrates the defence on a narrower front and, in particular, tends to strip down the defence on the short-side of the maul.

At 25:52, the Brumbies set up with their halfback, Joe Powell, at the front of the line, marked by his All Black counterpart Aaron Smith. As the threat of the driving maul becomes actual at 25:54, Powell shifts quickly around to the open side, and this provides the critical ‘trigger’ which persuades Smith to follow him and #1 Dan Lienert-Brown to desert his post at short-side guard.

Flanker Chris Alcock throws a dummy to Powell to complete the deception and expose the one remaining short-side defender, #10 Fletcher Smith.

By way of black-and-white contrast, the Rebels created most of their chances via the combination of their tackle-busting, #8 Ammanaki Mafi, and their slick, new back-line. Opportunities came from unstructured situations like kick returns, or scrums when the Melbourne set-piece was still stable early on in the game.

At 1:53, the Rebels bring off a move from a left side scrum similar to that which Wales used to score against England recently (see the highlight reel from my prior piece). At 1:54 they have the two-on-one in midfield, which the move is designed to generate, but Jackson Garden-Bachop doesn’t give the pass to Reece Hodge immediately.

The three clips following that play are all derived from kick-return situations and involve some combination of Melbourne’s key attackers on the day – Mafi, Jack Debreczeni and Reece Hodge.

At 16:06, Mafi makes the initial dent and Debreczeni breaks the tackle of Sekope Kepu in midfield to create the space outside – Tom English should probably have passed to Sefa Naivalu at 16:18. It didn’t matter in the end.

The Rebels scored on the very next kick return, with Debreczeni throwing a beautifully floated pass that leads Hodge straight into, and through, the hole created by Tolu Latu’s early defensive push.

The final example illustrates some of the qualities observed in last week’s article – Mafi’s ability to find a seam between defenders and Debreczeni’s great support instincts, closing quickly on the passer, straightening his line into the offload, and his outside-half quality distribution once he gets there.

Summary
A crisis of ownership is happening all across the rugby world, not just in Australia, and both the ARU and SANZAAR would do well to heed the lessons from the Northern Hemisphere before attempting to create a Frankenstein’s monster merger between the Rebels and the Brumbies.

Trying to yoke two very different clubs with separate traditions together did not prove a happy marriage for the Celtic Warriors in Wales. Racing 92 and Stade Francais did not even get as far as the altar.

The one place the merger would work with instant effect is on the field. The Brumbies and the Rebels would complement each other’s strengths and help create the real Super Rugby play-off contender Australian rugby so urgently needs.

Imagine a Rebels back-row playing behind the Brumbies tight five, or Tevita Kuridrani (and maybe Joe Powell or Tomas Cubelli) fed into the current Rebels backline. It is a mouth-watering prospect, but one in which the off-field provenance would have to be very carefully assessed.

Ironically, the team who are closest to the axe’s edge, the Western Force, also happen to have a healthy overlap with the New Zealand model relationship between Super Rugby franchise and national team. They are already owned by the ARU, and their proposed public share issue stands to generate anywhere between $5 and $10 million in ‘free cash’ for further development in Western Australia.

It is a tortuous dilemma. The Force may be the easiest to cull, but they are also a better fit for a Kiwi-type structure than the Rebels. If the past has proved one thing, it is that private owners have their own, often very individual, ideas about where their clubs should be headed. They do not bow to anyone.

For those interested in French rugby, I would recommend the excellent articles written by Gavin Mortimer in Rugby World magazine, which you can find here.