This piece is by Melbourne Rebels board member Lyndsey Cattermole* in response to an article that appeared on The Roar last week about the machinations around the culling of the Western Force from Super Rugby in 2017.
Last week I read a story on The Roar by Mark Drummond entitled ‘He screwed our state’: The act that still angers Twiggy Forrest. Like many other comments and articles that love to bring up this piece of Rugby history, it is completely wrong about the Melbourne Rebels’ role in the suspension of the Western Force from the Super Rugby competition in 2017.
Here’s how it actually played out.
Early that year the ARU (now Rugby Australia) called a meeting of its members. All 18 members including the Super Rugby clubs and national unions were there.
Over morning tea, Bill Pulver, the then CEO of the ARU, grabbed all five Australian Super Rugby clubs and told them: ‘we’ve got an issue’. He then put the proposition that the Super Rugby competition should be reduced to four teams. Victoria was represented by two votes, the Melbourne Rebels and Rugby Victoria.
Knowing exactly which team was the target to cut, the only two votes against the proposition came from the Victorian members. Western Australia Rugby Union and the Western Force Super team, voted along with the majority to cull the competition to four teams, presuming it would not be them.
ARU CEO Bill Pulver attends the Wallabies Indigenous Jersey Launch at the National Centre of Indigenous Excellence on July 17, 2017 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Matt King/Getty Images)
Three months later Cameron Clyne, the then chairman of the ARU, called out ‘we will make a decision in the next 48 to 72 hours.’
By way of background, the Force was already owned by the ARU having handed back the licence some time earlier. It was a similar scenario to Rugby Australia’s embrace of the Waratahs.
Melbourne Rebels were at that stage privately owned, with a contract designed deliberately by the ARU to disallow any change of ownership, except to Rugby Victoria, and with not $1 in liabilities when it was handed over. If these conditions were met there was no provision for the ARU to reclaim or collapse the licence. This was no smart constitutional loophole exploited by Andrew Cox to sell team for $1.
If you think about this, if it was the ARU’s intention to kill the Force, they could have closed it overnight, not giving Mr Forrest any chance to plead the case for continuation of the Force in the Super Rugby competition.
But they didn’t, I can only conjecture that the team they had in their sights was always intended to be the Melbourne Rebels.
So, with a current owner who was prepared to let the Rebels go, a small group of founding supporters stepped in to not only fund the liabilities, but make arrangements with Rugby Victoria to purchase the team. I was one of those funders, along with Bob Dalziel and underwritten by people like Peter Gillooly and Paul Docherty (the future chairman).
Andrew Forrest (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
At a meeting in Melbourne around August 2017, Pulver begged me to delay our funding to give time to the Force to “get organised”. Unfortunately Mr Forrest was not yet on-board to my knowledge. My exact words to Bill Pulver were: “You put us into this cage, Bill, so don’t expect us not to fight.”
The rest as they say is history. The Rebels had not been the recipients of millions of dollars beyond the other Super teams. Indeed in the very early days it was insisted that we were private and whilst the other four Australian teams were given grants, we were given loans from ARU.
Nobody shifted the Western Force team to the Melbourne Rebels but there is no doubt that the Melbourne Rebels provided opportunity and a home to players and staff from the Western Force, and if they made the Melbourne Rebels a better team, they also got to keep playing in Australia.
For many years I’ve read item after item from Western Australians, a brilliant supporter base, keenly hurting by what happened and blaming the Rebels.
They have accused the Rebels of all sorts of heinous conspiratorial actions aided and abetted by the ARU. Each time, whether it’s a comment on Facebook or an unbelievably inaccurate article such as this, to which I am responding, I’ve let it go. No more.
Kicking us again while we’re down is neither courteous nor accurate. Hopefully people will once and for all stop blaming the Rebels.
The Melbourne Rebels had nothing whatsoever to do with the temporary demise of the Western Force except by surviving, and indeed we were thrilled to bits that Mr Forrest stepped in and eventually brought the competition back to a sensible base of five teams.
Lyndsey Cattermole AM, joined the VRU Board in 2006 and was one of Founding Shareholders of the Melbourne Rebels. She has been a director or advisory board member of Melbourne Rebels through the club’s existence.
sheek
Roar Guru
Jeznez, Thanks for that. Whether Brumbies fans like it or not (& obviously many don't), there's a historical imperative that says NSW & Qld will be last 2 provinces to walk out the building & they'll turn off all the lights together! NSW is the first rugby state & home to most players & Qld is second in same. ACT ought to be thankful they can fill their squad (since 1996) with so many players who started their rugby careers in Sydney or Brisbane. Anyway, it's just part of the myriad nonsense thinking found among so many rugby folk these days. We might ask ourselves which was lost first - the player quality, the coach quality, or the collective brain quality of all involved! :laughing:
Bliksem
Roar Rookie
Scott that is not correct. SARU secured two places in 2018 for the Cheetahs and Kings to play Pro 14 and another two later for the Pumas and Griquas. SARU replace these four minor franchises with the Bulls, Lions, Sharks and Stormers when South Africa was kicked out of SR (by NZR in July 2020). The Irish, Scottish and Wales unions that must have thought Christmas came early when South Africa's richest teams joined their competition. RA also had to fight tooth and nails to maintain their franchises as NZ wanted to cut Australia down to only two. The Cheetahs, Pumas and Griquas do still play in a provincial competition - the Currie Cup - the competition that Australia desperately needs but that NSW do not like. The Cheetahs won the Currie Cup last year and the Pumas the year before - so they are decent and professional sides. None of these franchises however have an equivalent competition to the Pro14 to play in. If SARU always planned to axe their SR franchises surely it would not have made sense to do it at the expense of their other franchises.
jeznez
Roar Guru
G'day Sheek. Comment was made in relation to the idea that keeps getting floated (mostly by Brumbies fans) that the Waratahs should be the team cut from Super Rugby. All speculation from me as to how NSWRU and SRC would act if that occurred. Certainly not an idea I endorse in anyway. Fully agree with you that it would be an especially bad idea.
Train Without A Station
Roar Guru
Which events did any of these board members fly to in that era to start? I suspect you don’t even know. I know around that time ARU board members, who were paid nominal fees, opted to forgo them.
Around the Ankles
Roar Rookie
They flew at the front of the plane. Board members don’t fly to “work events” that are operational in nature and certainly not when the business is loss making. It was a gravy train and everyone knows it.
Train Without A Station
Roar Guru
Nope. JON. The game wasn’t close to broke and running losses in non-RWC years when JON came back. He wasted plenty over the 4 or so years after he returned.
Train Without A Station
Roar Guru
Where did these board members fly during the Pulver era? That’s ignoring that board members travelling to work events wouldn’t be at all unusual in the private sector.
sheek
Roar Guru
Jeznez, I can't see who you are replying to. Is there a suggestion Shute Shield clubs become anchors in a national comp? Rugby folk are too enamoured with the power of SS clubs. In 122 years (1874-1995) of amateur club rugby, the Sydney clubs never developed the gravitas & footprint of Melbourne Aussie rules or Sydney rugby league clubs. They are lightweights & even moreso in the pro era & right now when RA has no money. And anyone who thinks Sydney Uni & UQld in a national comp is a smart idea is one of the dumbest suggestions ever. Uni's represent a very narrow & specialised supporter base. They always have. And how do you separate some clubs from SS without a massive civil war breaking out? Hasn't anyone learnt from the super league wars of 1995??????????
Around the Ankles
Roar Rookie
Things like business class flights and first class accommodations at international games for themselves and partners.
Around the Ankles
Roar Rookie
Do you mean the mess Flowers left
Olly
Roar Rookie
You can see why it is so hard to get any form of change/progress in the game. Qld and NSW have the biggest number of votes as they have SR teams and an extra vote for having such high numbers of register players.
Olly
Roar Rookie
Your whole response make now sense. Your arguing by confirming what I am confirming....And yes, the Brumbies are signing players that are no interest to the Reds...
Ankle-tapped Waterboy
Roar Rookie
Ms Cattermole is a guy? :shocked: Certainly gives the rest of your comment credence.
Bliksem
Roar Rookie
IF you measure participation as a ration of $$ spend on community rugby, Victoria that gets almost and order of magnitude larger community rugby grant from RA will not be on par with WA.
AndyS
Roar Rookie
If the article is true and RA's master plan was to shut fown the Rebels, did they need to buy the license? Cox was clearly willing to sell, but their plan was a complete failure if the team sold to the VRU. But if it failed to get done, the Rebels were still an option for closure. But they were quite happy for it to sell, even threw technical and financial assistance at it to make sure it sold just in time to rule the Rebels out of consideration. That wouldn't have happened if closing them was the plan...obviously it never was.
AndyS
Roar Rookie
And if Jez is right, every one of them gets a say in every single thing. Tasmania has a say on what SR does and how it works, which would equally imply that all five professional teams plus RUPA get to vote on every issue affecting community rugby. Probably goes a long way toward explaining why Australian rugby is in the state it is, not to mention the cost of getting all those people in a room…
Jimmyjam
Roar Rookie
look at the success of the Brumbies who tend to take player rejected from other states to understand how effective their professional pathways are…. That old chestnut about taking rejects..... gimme a break Olly....! Brumbies have an extensive network of recruitment from NSW and Qld schools.... they are all over the NSW state junior championships and have been cherry-picking young talent for years. The Hooper brothers are a classic example but I could name plenty more. I've got sons who were in junior rep programs and I've seen it in action. The Brumbies have a great setup, no question, however they have almost zero player pathway development until they hit the senior professional level.
Dusty10
Roar Rookie
I think they did mate
Dusty10
Roar Rookie
???? G'day CS, I don't really want the waratahs cut, I'd like Aussie rugby to be doing well across the board. Just making a point. It annoys me that a club with almost 30 years of history and more success than any other Aussie side is being discussed as one potential candidate to be cut.
Stu
Roar Rookie
Humanity as a hole, however..