It’s a question likely to draw a different answer form every table at a local rugby quiz night: What’s the single biggest problem for rugby in Australia right now ?
One of the myriad answers could be Andrew Forrest’s memory. Here’s why.
A week or so back, your correspondent revisited the August 2017 meeting between Twiggy and then ARU chairman Cameron Clyne, which might go down as a turning point in the history of Australian rugby.
What is now clear is that what happened in the immediate aftermath of that Adelaide meeting stands in the way of the hopes and prayers of grassroots supporters from the Dunsborough-Busselton Dungbeetles in Western Australia’s south-west to the Cairns Northern Beaches Mudcrabs in far north Queensland that Twiggy might lead Australian rugby out of the abyss.
A quick potted recap on that August 2017 meeting: In an eleventh-hour bid to save the Force from being axed from Super Rugby, Forrest flew on his private jet to Adelaide to meet Clyne (They agreed to meet at the half way line because neither was prepared to travel into to the other’s 22-metre zone). Forrest argued the Rebels should instead be culled because they were a financial basket case, having already bled the ARU of tens of millions of dollars in funding and loan write-offs. Either way, the last-on, first-off principle surely should apply, he told Clyne.
Then came what Twiggy thought would be the knock-out blow. He pledged to underwrite the Force’s financial future in Super Rugby, which meant he would personally cover any operating losses incurred by the Perth team so the ARU wouldn’t have to. To sweeten the deal, the former Hale School centre/winger (and occasional hooker when the bigger boarders went home) said that if the Force was spared the axe, he would also chip in tens of millions of dollars through the Australian Rugby Foundation into various levels of grassroots rugby around the nation.
To quote frontman David Byrne from legendary 80s rock bank Talking Heads, it was a Once in a Lifetime offer.
However, Clyne was already listening to a different tune. Despite Forrest’s largesse, the Force were axed and the loss-making Rebels lived to fight on, and make more losses, helped by CEO Andrew Cox cleverly exploiting a constitutional loophole to protect the team by selling the franchise to the Victorian Rugby Union for $1. Ultimately, as is now being played out, leaving Rugby Australia to mop up the mess.
(Photo by Daniel Carson/Getty Images)
That is all, of course, yesterday’s rain.
What is not as well understood and appreciated is that it is what happened immediately after Clyne’s snub which rankled the billionaire even more than the Force being axed. And, unfortunately for the Dungbeetles and Mudcrabs’ volunteers on junior canteen duty, it still does.
With the hearts of thousands of Sea of Blue fans out west still bleeding, the Rebels went straight to work picking over the Force’s carcass, snatching coach Dave Wessels and a dozen front-line players to shore up their own team. It had shades of the Melbourne Storm’s 1997 raid on the Western Reds’ roster when the Perth rugby league team got caught in the crosshairs of Rupert Murdoch’s Super League war.
The Force players cut and pasted straight into the Rebels included many players who had been developed into Super Rugby-ready status through the Perth club system. Players like Wallabies Richard Hardwick and Dane Haylett-Petty, Dane’s brother Ross and Neddies trio Anaru Rangi, Jermaine Ainsley and Michael Ruru. Others lured from the beaches of Trigg, Scarborough and Cottesloe to Bleak City included Wallabies Adam Coleman and Matt Philip.
Adding insult to injury, those Force players set the Rebels up for their best season in 2018.
All of which remains scorched into Twiggy’s memory bank.
“He (Clyne) screwed our state by shifting our entire Western Force team and coach to that hugely loss-making drain on Rugby Australia – Victoria – where he was from,” Forrest this week told your correspondent who, by way of disclosure, is a consultant to Fortescue Ltd, the ASX 100-listed company which last week delivered the Forrest family another $1 billion in dividends.
“Only for them to again go broke,” he added.
Inheriting a financial mess as well as a mis-firing national team, incoming Rugby Australia chief Phil Waugh reached out to Twiggy late last year to see whether there was any chance he might help dig rugby’s national body out of its black hole. However, your correspondent has confirmed those discussions are no longer live.
That is sad, but perhaps unsurprising given the events of August 2017. What is worth stressing though is that Twiggy kept his end of the bargain with Clyne.
Donning the batman suit, he not only leveraged the Force back into Super Rugby in Kerry Packer-style via his own Global Rapid Rugby set-up, but has also made sure the team’s bills were paid by their due date. That is lesson now being learned by one of the Rebels’ highest-profile new recruits who was negotiating to go west for season 2023.
All of which has meant that in the current swirl of media speculation that cash-strapped Rugby Australia might look to cull the number of domestic Super Rugby teams to just three in 2025, the Forrest-backed Force is looking bullet proof.
That’s a situation with echoes of a line from Once In a Lifetime where Byrne asks rhetorically: “You may ask yourself, “Well, how did I get here?”
Clyne and his ARU offsiders John Eales and Brett Robinson who were with him at the August 2017 meeting might be haunted by another couple of lines from the same Talking Heads song.
“Into the blue again, after the money’s gone
Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground
Same as it ever was, same as it ever was.”
Of course, Talking Heads is also remembered for the hit song Burning Down The House. But we won’t go there….
kingplaymaker
Roar Guru
Yes, patience is good and impatiently cutting teams is certainly not the way forward. But on a simple level if there isn't an outstanding coach today, the priority today is to have one which does not preclude long-term work being done as well.
Bliksem
Roar Rookie
You can do what the Tahs have done, get RA to pay for it and secure a team where almost all are Wallabies plus Potgieter. Get a high profile coach involved and win SR just to fall back to previous levels when the high profile players and coach move on. Winning SR is an outcome not the objective. There is a lot more to be done than get the Force 23 play to win. You need a team of coaches from junior via academy to club level to lift the standard of rugby played across the state. A system that can help ensure that local players can frequently step-up to Superugby level. So that success is independent of the coach. That is what Cron is doing now and why we should have patience and measure success on how many locally developed players can made the step-up.
kingplaymaker
Roar Guru
If they can't keep the coach that's another problem, but it doesn't mean you don't need an outstanding coach to be a highly competitive team. The Force need one just like any other team. You can give a good group of players to an underwhelming coach and they won't do well. Failure to find, promote or attract high quality coaches is a more general problem in Australia but it can't be avoided.
Cec
Roar Rookie
Ahh okay. Just two teams being propped up or three?
Brendan NH Fan
Roar Rookie
I am talking about how prior to the Force being cut RA saw a big jump in the value of commercial deals so covering the 5 teams should of been easier to cover from 2016-2020 not harder as RA claimed. The big problem RA had was they had two teams racking up debts that together would bankrupt RA. So it's wasn't RA couldn't afford 5 teams but rather they could keep bailing out Rebels and Force like they had done up to that point.
Bliksem
Roar Rookie
Tahs won in 2014 with the quick fix coach and lots of RA topups. How sustainable was that? Quick fixes are the NSW way.
Guess
Roar Rookie
Sure he's the reason there's no better deal in first place
kingplaymaker
Roar Guru
The only teams that have won Super rugby have had an outstanding or as you call it 'superstar' coach so the Force absolutely needs one to win like any other team.
Cec
Roar Rookie
Brendan if you’re referring to the cut of broadcast dollars that turned into a loan, I think it was approx 1.5mil per year per team times 3-4 years owed.
Cec
Roar Rookie
Who does the debt belong to, the license or the corporation owning the license? Debt is normally owned by the entity like an pty ltd and a license is a sellable asset like a company car. Debt carries to the new owner if you buy both the entity (debt owner) and the license (asset). Are you not able to buy the license only?
Brendan NH Fan
Roar Rookie
On the fair go principle who is going to fund Drua to pay $5m in wages each year and who is going to give up income so that Drua and MP have the same income as everyone else. URC works on a simple rule of you put in teams and its up to you what you do to get them there. Zebre and Benetton the two Italian teams have different models. Irish and Scots aren't giving out that there is only 1 SA side and no welsh currently in the playoffs, they are happy their teams are doing well.
Brendan NH Fan
Roar Rookie
Its a very professional sport view not a European or SA view. If SRP published a list of 100 players to be drafted into SRP each year atleast the top 50 would have multiple 3-4 year offers as soon as the list was published and leagues/teams from Europe would have agents down in the South Pacific to speak to the players. SRP is a small fish in a big pond. if SRP want all teams to be the same it will need to allow all teams to recruit from the same player base which is never going to happen, once you don't have access to the same player base its not going to be even. Because all the OZ teams are competing for the same players, and the players can get 50+% more OS it makes it harder to keep players. Sharks just paid nearly $1m to buy an SA player out of his contact early to play for them next year. Do you think some of that money will be spent on hiring 1-2 SRP players. Munster have 3 SRP final players from 2023 funded by the Saders game, AFL and NRL do not have those issues so their rules will not work just like the Wage cap is not working as certain teams get alot more in RA top up than others. If Force could spend the same total spend on players as Brumbies or Tahs they would have a much better squad. IF Force or Rebels had been allowed to sign as many OS players as they wanted for their first 5 years it would have given a chance for the academies to grow and produce, instead the Force and Rebels either had to pick players not good enough for SR or pay inflated wages to existing SR players thus making the other teams hire players not good enough. Imagine telling a team like Chile who made their first WC that they had 4 WCs to win it or they would be never be allowed attend any more, either Chile would go bust trying (Rebels) or they would never grow.
Bliksem
Roar Rookie
That is a very South African point of view. In think we can learn a lot from AFL with every single team that made the finals over two decades. It is a very successful competition become it was structured from the start on the fair go principle.
Brendan NH Fan
Roar Rookie
You will find very few leagues that are competitive within the first 5-10 years who start from scratch. I am not sure its the league's job to make sure that the teas are. Yes rules can be brought in to do minimum spend or minimum off field standards. Imagine if the URC was discussing axing the Sharks because they have never made a semi and are currently bottom. Zebre have been poor but they are growing slowly, Benetton and Connacht would both have been axed long ago aswell. Only leagues were league can be manipulated to make all teams competitive either are the only professional league in that sport (AFL) or the leagues that are much richer than competitors in the same sport (NRL, NFL, NHL). Doing a draft for Sr would be a shopping list for European club. Best thing RA could have done was remove any OS requirements for the first 5 years and just let the team hire who they could.
Guess
Roar Rookie
Not rebels. Aru did it to themselves
Cec
Roar Rookie
RA are on borrowed time, quite literally now operating on an overdraft. Do you keep funding at all cost and risk having the whole fleet sink or do you cut the biggest millstone? At some point survival instincts kick in but there is more to play out with VIC vs RA. I wonder how much of that overdraft RA will have to use to defend that lawsuit which means less money for everyone else.
Bliksem
Roar Rookie
No is is probably not, but that is not gonna happen.
Bliksem
Roar Rookie
Looks like the Rebels are burning the Rugby Australia family home. Sometimes you just need to wait until it all burns down before you can rebuild.
Bliksem
Roar Rookie
They cut to 18 teams because the new teams were not competitive. Just imagine where we could have been if there was some form of equalisation to help them become competitive within a couple of years instead of just axing them. As Force supported this worked out very well for us as we can at least get the funding to build up our local community rugby and catch up after decades of neglect from RA.
Bliksem
Roar Rookie
I thanks. The way Tattarang is building up rugby from the bottom up is the only way to build a sustainable rugby team from WA for WA. Quick fixes is the NSW way, we don’t need a superstar coach, we need to get our local rugby better year after year. If an experience coach wants to help they need to do it within the bottoms up structure. Results will come we just need to be patient.