Rugby pay-cut battle: Two new faces join Rugby Australia’s negotiations with players’ union
A private investor and a former Wallaby have emerged as two of the most important figures in the game ahead of the most important conference call in Australian rugby history.
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Just 11 days after joining the Rugby Australia board, private investor Peter Wiggs and former Wallaby Daniel Herbert have suddenly emerged as two of the most important figures in the game.
Wiggs and Herbert will replace Brett Robinson as RA representatives on the key video conference call with the players’ union on Saturday morning, to thrash out a pay-cut deal necessary to keep rugby afloat.
Robinson, a former RA director, was scheduled to be on the call alongside chief executive Raelene Castle, but Wiggs and Herbert will now be the men alongside her to work through the ins-and-outs of rugby’s tenuous finances and strike a deal with RUPA boss Justin Harrison.
Wiggs knows numbers.
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The chairman of V8 Supercars is also the founding partner of Archer Capital, a private equity firm with $2.5 billion in investments across 31 countries.
Herbert knows the game and can relate to the players.
With rugby going broke, Super Rugby franchises exasperated and threatening to stand down players before next Wednesday’s full pay goes through, the players themselves frustrated by the prolonged process and Castle under immense pressure to hold her job, Wiggs and Herbert will play crucial roles in the most important conference call in Australian rugby history.
A deal, or at least an interim agreement, must be reached on Saturday or the very real stand-down threat by Super clubs will plunge the code into further chaos next week.
RA wants the players to give up 65 per cent of their wage for the next six months. Castle moved to tempt them on Thursday by sacrificing more of her own $815,000 annual salary to match theirs, pushing her original 50 per cent by a further 15 per cent.
RUPA has analysed confidential financial documents handed over by RA last weekend — after a fortnight of requests — that outline their profit and loss details and revenue modelling.
They will have questions as to why KPMG wouldn’t sign the audited 2019 financial statement, preventing its publication at the annual general meeting on March 30, during which Wiggs was elected as a new director.
RUPA will want deeper explanation as to why RA extended their request for players to take a massive wage but from three months to six months without notice this week.
On the video call with Wiggs, Herbert, Castle and Harrison will be Wallabies skipper Michael Hooper, fellow players Matt To’omua, Shannon Parry, Angus Scott-Young and Damien Fitzpatrick, Brumbies boss Phil Thomson – representing all four Super franchises – RA’s chief business officer Simon Rabbitt, RUPA general manager Toby Duncan and their advisor Joe Hayes.
Players are already being approached by foreign clubs, keen to sign them during the uncertainty of Australian rugby’s future and their own contracts.
No broadcast deal has been signed beyond this year.
Increasingly, it looks as though RA will have to take a domestic competition to market for 2021 given the ongoing restrictions of COVID-19 and excessive cost of remaining in Super Rugby.
Broadcasters would shell out one quarter of what RA had originally hoped to secure for their “whole of game” package for a domestic league, but that is the reality of sporting economics amid this grim pandemic.
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Players will want exit clauses if RA wants the option of extending their pay cuts beyond six months, while broadcasters will still want big names involved in any local competition they shell out for.
Castle’s own future is not guaranteed beyond next week, as numerous figures plot her ousting amid fears the game will be insolvent in three months.
Rugby’s rivals would relish the sight of the game wither and die.
If there is ever a time to begin some sort of miraculous resurrection, this weekend would be the time.
Originally published as Rugby pay-cut battle: Two new faces join Rugby Australia’s negotiations with players’ union