How Shute Shield was revived to make club rugby great again

ASK Nick Fordham about the fix for rugby’s woes and the answer is simple: “Rat Park, Coogee Oval, great rugby, sausage sandwich and a beer. What’s not to like?”

RUGBY has its share of problems. A majority share even.

But ask Nick Fordham about the 15-man game and the sell is pretty simple: “Rat Park, Coogee Oval, sausage sandwich and a beer, kids on the hill, great rugby. What’s not to like?”

Meet the men who haven’t lost faith in rugby — as a game or as a business.

Fordham and business partner John Murray are the entrepreneurs behind the revival of Sydney club rugby.

John Murray and Nick Fordham in front of the electronic billboard at Sydney Airport promoting the Shute Shield. Picture: John Appleyard

At a time when the professional end of the game has the death wobbles and fans are voting with their feet and/or remotes, the Shute Shield has rarely flown higher.

It’s not necessarily a new thing — people turn back to club rugby when all else is grim — but much of the Shute Shield’s success in this incarnation tracks back to Fordham and Murray.

The pair own and produce the Shute Shield television broadcast, which is in its third year of being shown on the Seven Network.

Outside of Tests on Channel Ten, it is the only rugby on free-to-air television and carries a blue-chip sponsorship portfolio even Super Rugby outfits would eye off enviously.

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Ratings are comparable to Super Rugby, it is screened as far away as New Zealand and the Shute Shield even has ads on billboards around the city, giving humble old club rugby arguably greater exposure than the Waratahs.

“Look around the world and club sport is very successful,” Murray says.

“Premier League, AFL, NRL — all club-based sports. So it’s tribalism. People want to be part of a tribe, and that’s what we’ve tried to revive.”

Fordham and Murray bought the rights to the Shute Shield in 2014 after the 57-year broadcast on the ABC ended. Murray had run a live stream of club rugby out a caravan for several years prior and said he’d always sensed a fully commercialised production on free-to-air TV would work.

“The stands in Europe are full so there is nothing wrong with the game,” he said.

“I thought someone could make something of this. But every person I spoke to laughed at me.”

Sydney University lost last year’s Shute Shield decider to Norths. Picture: Troy Snook

Everyone except Fordham. They partnered up for Club Rugby TV and struck a deal with the Sydney Rugby Union for the Shute Shield rights.

The details would prove to be contentious, and prompt questions about Fordham and Murray’s motives.

After paying $130,000 to the ABC, the SRU committed to paying $300,000 to Club Rugby TV’s production. It was money the SRU didn’t have so NSW Rugby, which had signed off on the deal, paid it in year one and the ARU fronted it in year two.

Fordham and Murray saw the raised eyebrows but explain most of the money went straight into Shute Shield promotion.

“Ninety per cent of that money went to the Seven Network to buy advertising for club rugby,” Fordham said.

“We knew that after it had been on the ABC for 57 years, you need to tell people it has moved.”

Fordham says they even had to commit to funding production with their own money before the 2015 season. When the day came to do a deal with Seven, naming rights sponsor — and then the only sponsor — Intrust Super hadn’t yet signed on.

Northern Suburbs celebrate winning the Shute Shield. Picture: Troy Snook

“We treated it like a start-up and we invested our own money. We had to make the decision at a quarter-to-midnight of bankrolling the whole thing ourselves or it wouldn’t go ahead. It was a seven-figure risk on the Shute Shield,” Fordham said.

Intrust Super came on board soon but Murray still painted the sponsor’s sign on the field himself each week to reduce costs.

Match day was built up as a major event to look good, and lure sponsors and lost fans. Jumping castles, replay screens, face painting were brought in, and using city contacts, sponsors began coming in too.

Most of the companies now on board — which includes Canon, Bang and Olufsen and ooh Media (the billboard connection) — had never sponsored rugby before.

Ratings on 7Two hovered between 60,000 and 100,000 last year, peaking at 118,000; a good Super Rugby figure these days on FoxSports is 100,000.

The grand final drew 10,000-plus people at North Sydney Oval, and “Make Club Rugby Great Again” trucker hats are doing a swift trade.

It’s fair to say it’s not been a love-in between Fordham and Murray, and the ARU and NSWRU. Neither organisation was willing to pay the SRU’s $300,000 this year, so the money was raised via more sponsorship.

Fordham and Murray say they value the SRU having independence but they’re also keen to not work at odds to Australian rugby.

“We see ourselves as a huge asset to rugby,” Fordham says.

“We weren’t embraced that way, early on. But we think we’ve turned a corner.”

Murray says they were never in it for the money.

“When we first turned up, people were understandably suspicious. I sort of get that. It’s like: ‘who are you and what’s your angle?’,” Murray said.

“Hopefully now we have put quite a bit back into the game and everyone can see we are not making a fortune out of it, hopefully people can see we are in this for the right reasons and at that point, NSW Rugby and the ARU will come back and work with us. And they are already starting to, which is great.

“At the end of the day, we all love rugby.”