What the west needs now

There are a lot of emotive positions or views being shared here. For Rugby WA / Force the position is simply as follows: > History will not be ignored, and the Force will make its own decisions in its interests > The team roster will add and value players judiciously to build a team and develop unity > Performance improvement matters, immediate success does not, competitiveness does > Build an entity can stand with independence as a pillar of certainty and substance > Maintain a position of strategic independent comparative strength relative to RA > Not get locked into any forward RA dependence, shape the outcomes with authority > Only commit so far in any venture with RA to ensure continued tension / uncertainty for RA > Recognise that RA and the eastern states no longer hold strong negotiating positions > Effectively engage and leverage the significant Rugby supporter base in WA > Continue to build on strategic rugby partnerships in Asia as a key priority

So an even worse situation. Another national body telling the ARU what to do. Either way, the ARU made the decision to acquiesce to NZ, treasonous, or the decision themselves, despicable.

I guess that depend on whether your definition of a good time is everyone slavishly agreeing with everything you say. Probably says more about you than me though. But if it helps define our differences in understanding: Is rugby, RA and SANZAAR is entering uncharted territory? Absolutely, these times are unprecedented in the era of professional rugby. Have RA been rubbish, and are likely to be rubbish again? Duh… Is a monumental shift underway? Well, no more than a maybe on that. The SANZAAR you place so much credence in has openly said that whatever happens this year aside, everyone is still bound by contractual agreement through to at least 2030. That would pretty much stuff the Force right there, and rope RA back into the same situation as last year. Might they be wrong and the structure of the game be completely unrecognisable from what they’ve ever been before? Perhaps, subject to all the legal ramifications of the point above. But if so, as a minimum it would leave RA with New Zealand, who as you noted to Robel below may have been the driving force behind the elimination of the fifth team. If so, are they likely to have suddenly reassessed the competitiveness of Australian rugby? Or are they more likely to demand another sacrifice in the name of competitiveness? I know where my money would lie, regardless of anything RA might recognise or embrace. Is the situation hopeless, or have you sugar-coated it? Nope, give you that. But your faith that the circumstances have somehow resulted in some sort of “road to Damascus moment” seems fanciful at best when all that has really changed are the top two faces on the board. There is every chance that they are all actually just sitting around cursing their luck that Covid interfered with their cunning plan to take rugby away from Foxtel and give it to the masses, and regretting that poor old Raelene had to pay the price. There is definitely nothing in the current situation that would give reason to think that RA have learned a single thing, until they prove otherwise. So what is the alternate for WA rugby community? Well, for this year, treat it as an anomaly. Because there is not a single thing in the current situation that indicates that RA will suddenly turn their backs on their partners in favour of you, or that they have somehow learned some lesson about your value, or even that you will be the last casualty. It may not be much, but indeed hope that GRR takes off and is the vehicle to grow your game because there is little reason to believe that RA will suddenly come up with something better where you will suddenly be within the magic circle of 'Australian Rugby'. If they now say they can, maybe play along for a bit, but whatever you do don’t give up the bird in the hand. Because if they have demonstrated anything over the last three years, it is that they have no interest in rugby’s potential in the West. Well, outside of tapping you by way of the odd Test to fund 'real' rugby, anyway.

RA's current financial position is caused by spending more money than they earn. Over the years I have been employed to turn a few companies around and the one thing they all had in common is not acting to reduce expenditure until they had too. Blind to reality RA has continued to lose money for 3 years and make money only in RWC years as if this was a viable business model. At an annual budget of $120m per year a 3% reduction in the cost base ($4m pa) is an easy ask and would make RA solvent even in these "unprecedented" times. If one thing comes out of this I hope it is simply that need a bit of basic business sense in RA.

all the best ones ?

So do 20,000 Australian for which he made that promise to. He kept everything single promises he made this far to the WA rugby community why would I not trust his word? Anyone what alternative do we have? Trust the backstabbing weasels at Rugby Australia? Not even the Board members can trust each other in that organisation. The WA rugby community understands that RA see us as less worthy rugby supporters that those in NSW, QLD, ACT and VIC. That is why we cannot trust RA to ever again. We should not give RA the opportunity again to axe us and continue pursuing the GRR despite what happens in the covid cup.

Apologies if you thought I was misparaphrasing you, but it seemed the obvious conclusion from your statement that while it's possible RA might be subjected to any one of the various pressures in future, it’s highly unlikely the combination could ever happen again. That seemed to summarise your previous posts (along the lines of "It was complicated"), but patent nonsense as any of those examples showed. But it seems your point was indeed something else. At the risk of again summarising your position then, it would seem to be that you hope they have learned their lesson from the last five to ten years, you hope they now know what will definitely work next time, you hope RA now understand Australia's backyard must always be prioritised over anything their partners might desire, you hope the new faces at RA will be better than the old faces, and you hope they've all learned those lessons despite not having been around for any of the lessons..? Not sure how their partners might feel about some of those, but that seems like an awful lot to be simultaneously hoping. So far, it looks to me like the same organisation, same structure, with different faces but from the same backgrounds, same stakeholders to satisfy, all having the same key drivers and interests. Perhaps a miracle will happen and a butterfly will emerge from the caterpillar, but I can state from experience that hope is the worst of all investment strategies. Can't imagine those at the Force haven't learned the same lesson. And the depths of the current situation is specifically why they should be cautious. Maybe it is all that talk of hope, but the situation seems to me more akin to a bunch of people afloat in a lifeboat. All the insight in the world as to how they got there is useless, as is whose fault it was and in what proportion. All the hope in the world won't help either. There will be some little things that can be done poorly or well that might help eke things out a bit or improve the chances of rescue, but sooner or later someone is going to ask who the next acceptable sacrifice might be...

The ARU went to the London meeting with a plan. It was there that they told SAANZAR that they would remove a team. The team that would be removed was the one who had agreed to a joint ownership model with the ARU just a few months before. It was always going to be the Force because members of the board had a vested interest in the Rebels survival (except Stooke, the one honourable member). SAANZAR didn't make the decision for the ARU, it was the ARU who told SAANZAR they would cut a team.

Judging on past performance, I doubt if we'll see a plethora of big names being added to the Western Forces play list. The focus has been on building the game in WA (and developing the game elsewhere in the region). Western Force fans have enjoyed the efforts of the current squad which has stayed focus on keeping fit through the CV19 restrictions. However, the current squad is smaller than the other Aussie franchises and could do with some injury coverage in some key positions. I hope the focus is on the return pf players who are WA developed players or on those who have previously played for the WF. This focus has a good chance of having a competitive team which will surprise many, in much the same way as it did in last year's NRC final.

In fact, you are not even being consistent within your own naive view of the world. You said yourself that when the partners presented the desire to drop one of our teams, RA had no choice other than comply or pull out of the partnership. So even if it was just that one thing in some future instance, despite Australia rolling in money, RA would have no option but to do what they were told. So it potentially only needs one of those scenarios, and it all happens again.

I understand what you are saying, but am gobsmacked you seem to think it was a once-in-a-million, unique blend of stars aligning type event. But it won't be...unless Australia completely cuts itself off from all contact with the rest of the rugby world, they will always be subject to external pressures. Just about every version of alternate SR mooted involves NZ as a minimum, and most have Japan too, for instance. And there will never, ever be enough cash...regardless of how much there is, someone will always want more for something. The immediate future is going to be full of that, so the question is, what will happen when someone wants something and waves some cash in front of RA next time? If the World League got revived but it meant a shortened SR, do you think they would hesitate? Or Japan was prepared to underwrite an SR after a South African exit, but only if they got one more team than there was room for? Or if, in the absence of any other options, NZ is up for a Trans-Tasman comp but doesn't think Australia will be competitive with more than three teams? Somewhere, sometime, they will inevitably be presented with a choice again featuring all of those same pressures. And when it does, what so you think RA would do based on past form?

Really - so never again will RA ever feel the pinch of finances, or be in partnership with a party whose priorities might not perfectly align with those of Australia, or stand to gain financially or politically by having one less team to support? We'll see, and see what they do if such a circumstance occurs again. Maybe as soon as the next contract. Put simply, it boils down to where RA draws the line between what is an acceptable course of action and what isn't, and who is on which side of that line. As for the Force, I guess they will have to put their imagining hat on and see if they can ever envisage such circumstances ever occurring again. And if they can, decide whether they would then want to be one of the red-headed stepchildren again, because they definitively know which side of that line they are on.

Well, first it was all SANZAAR's idea to get rid of the Force, then it was "SANZAAR being dictated to by their broadcast partners around what they thought consumers wanted". Seems it was anyone but RA, despite RA openly stating they did it for the money... But in the end it is largely irrelevant why they did it. The point is they are that sort of shambles, were prepared to do it, and would likely do exactly the same again in similar circumstances. It is not like anything in the current situation will make them better or less desperate either. Expedience is likely to be their watchword for some time to come, and frankly it is not just the Force that should be cautious going forward.