Peter Jenkins: Rugby Australia is dropping the ball in the West

Rugby Australia should hang their heads in shame for continuing to ignore Western Sydney and the fact it is a talent nursery for the ailing game, writes Peter Jenkins

Joseph Sua'ali'i poses during an Australia Wallabies Portrait Session. Picture: Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images

Rugby Australia should hang their heads in shame over a five-year strategic plan which continues to ignore a talent nursery that could save an ailing game.

The words Western Sydney do not exist in a glossy 20-page document – released this month – that drips with wishlists and motherhood statements but is stunningly light on substance.

The 2021 Census and relevant population trends were clearly never part of the brainstorming at Rugby Australia because the math is simple – and it screams the need for urgent action.

Western Sydney has the highest concentration of Pacific Islanders in Australia. It is a population growing rapidly and showing no signs of slowing.

Layer on the transformative impact Pacific Island players have had on rugby league and rugby union in the past 20 years and then join the dots.

Rugby Australia has to go where the talent pools are, provide aspirational opportunities, and in the case of Western Sydney give them a Super Rugby team.

There can be no coincidence that Penrith has won four successive NRL premierships when most of the Panthers are homegrown talent and a high percentage have a Pacific Island background.

They have nurtured the potential in their backyard and become the greatest team of their generation.

The Panthers have nurtured local talent and become the greatest team of their generation. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

A Western Sydney University report on the latest Census data says the Pasifika community in Australia reached 415,000 in 2021 – up 49% from 279,000 in 2011.

Of that 415,000, Western Sydney was home to 88,000. There were more Pacific Islanders in Blacktown alone – 23,000 – than in ACT, South Australia, Tasmania and Northern Territory combined.

But Rugby Australia refuses to make big calls based on the changing face of Australia, and Australian sport, even though it is happening in front of their eyes.

No player of Pacific Islander background played for the Wallabies before 1988 when Acura Niuqila, of Fijian ancestry, donned the gold jumper in a Test.

Willie Ofahengaue was the first Wallaby of Tongan ancestry in 1990 and Digby Ioane the first player of Samoan background to play a Test in 2007.

But over the last two decades, as the Pacific Island population has soared, so too has the Pasifika representation in the Wallabies team.

Nine of the 23 players in the last Test squad that played Ireland in November were of Pacific Island ancestry. One of them, Joseph Suaalii, is a $5 million recruit from rugby league. He was born in Penrith, his father Samoan.

Rugby Australia knows the importance of Pacific Island players to a future Wallabies recovery.

Acura Niuqila was the first Pacific Islander to wear a Wallabies jumper. Picture: Bob Thomas/Getty Images

After killing off the Melbourne Rebels as a Super Rugby team, they replaced them on the itinerary for next year’s British and Irish Lions tour with a First Nations/Pacific Peoples team.

Hopefully at headquarters they also know Western Sydney – alongside Brisbane – has Australia’s most populous Pacific Island community.

If so, why are they not parachuting a Super Rugby team into Western Sydney, playing out of Parramatta’s CommBank Stadium?

As they dither, here is a strategic direction to consider.

Get rid of the Western Force. The cost base associated with having a team on the other side of the country when the game is collapsing under financial strain is an unaffordable luxury.

An even bigger call – relocate the ACT Brumbies to Western Sydney.

Canberra will be in uproar but the heady days of attracting crowds of 20,000-plus are gone.

The Brumbies have not detailed season crowds in annual reports for years – no prizes for guessing why – and have bled dollars to the point where in July they handed the keys back to Rugby Australia.

But here’s the catch. Rugby Australia, when taking control, confirmed the Brumbies would stay in Canberra, a market struggling to support a Super Rugby team as well as the Raiders in the NRL.

Time to break that promise.

CommBank Stadium in Western Sydney’s Parramatta.

The game, in these days of financial distress, needs to tighten belts and have Super Rugby teams based where there is market size, commercial muscle and readily available talent.

Fitting that criteria would be the Reds in Brisbane, the Waratahs in Sydney’s east and a new side in Western Sydney.

Rugby Australia have perhaps forgotten the west was once a stronghold of the game in the pre-professional era. Parramatta won back to back Sydney premierships in 1985 and 1986.

In both years a star-studded Randwick side was toppled by a team drawn from the junior clubs of Blacktown, Seven Hills and Merrylands.

There is now an even mightier crop of talent in the west that Rugby could compete for – but those players can’t be what they can’t see. A Super Rugby team on their doorstep is a visible North Star.

One other imperative. Rugby Australia has to make a more conscious effort to look beyond its traditional private school nurseries to secure a sustainable future.

The demographics at elite fee-paying schools have evolved over the past decade or two. Successive generations of migrant families, including Chinese and Indian, are placing their kids in private school education in increasing numbers.

They are families unlikely to have any affiliation to Rugby. Rugby Australia needs to learn those lessons. Fast.

As the English pop duo of the same name sang in the 1980s: “Go West”.