’Embarrassing mess’: Rugby union’s woes laid bare
No $45 million war chest, no direction at the top, no World Cup TV deal … rugby union’s in a dreadful state, writes Jessica Halloran.
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There is no other major sport in Australia that has lost its way quite like rugby union in the past decade.
While NRL, AFL and Cricket Australia have signed billion-dollar TV deals, just nine months before rugby’s World Cup, a TV deal has not be finalised.
The game has dug itself into an embarrassing mess off and on the field. If the poorly performing Wallabies coach Michael Cheika was at an AFL or NRL club, he’d be sacked by now.
There’s talk Cheika’s payout nudges the $1 million mark and that’s why RA has not axed him. But Cheika is not its only problem.
The general hopelessness in the leadership game was summed up when RA chairman Cameron Clyne delivered a 51-second “non-statement” on Cheika’s future last Monday. Clyne started hotfooting it out of the press conference even before he’d finished delivering his ridiculous “non-statement”.
As we know, rugby hasn’t always been in such a hopeless state.
Fans jammed stadiums. Two decades ago, 109,000 headed to the Olympic stadium to watch the Wallabies play the All Blacks. Back in the early 2000s, the game hummed and dominated the sports pages and TV news as the then ARU sensationally lured some of the best league players in Lote Tuqiri, Wendell Sailor and Mat Rogers.
There was the 2003 World Cup that captivated the country.
There was a buzz around the game. There was money in it — lots of money. The Waratahs averaged crowds of 30,000.
Then-Wallabies coach Eddie Jones nearly pulled off the deal of the decade by almost signing future Immortal Andrew Johns. Shortly after the 2003 World Cup, then-ARU supremo John O’Neill, armed with a $45 million World Cup war chest, brazenly said he was putting rugby league on notice and said union was about to replace it as the No. 1 sport in NSW and Queensland.
O’Neill’s prediction was flattened by league critics including then prominent player manager Jim Banaghan, who said O’Neill was “drunk” on World Cup emotion.
History shows us rugby union couldn’t capitalise on that World Cup high. The war chest is now gone and RA recorded a $3.8 million loss in 2017.
Critics say the game has fallen because it stayed snooty and elitist. That there was, and is, no love for Sydney’s outer suburbs and they stuck to keeping the game strong in private schools.
Today, there’s no Shute Shield team in Penrith and once-strong local clubs have folded in western Sydney.
Rugby Australia is also no longer the hunter. No longer poaching the best and most dynamic talent from the NRL. In fact, the best young talent is heading back to the NRL. Take former Queensland Reds player Izaia Perese, who has been a huge loss for rugby. His power and speed have made him one of the most dynamic outside backs in the country — not that rugby will see it any more.
Perese started training at NRL club Brisbane last week. He is on a train-and-trial deal with the Broncos where he is dual-registered with affiliate Intrust Super Cup club Redcliffe Dolphins.
Rugby’s failure to diversify and expand into markets has seen the game suffer when it comes to participation. No matter how much RA bends the numbers, if you look up the most recent statistics on the Sport Australia website, the game is one of the least popular participation sports. A Sport Australia survey released in May said 14.1 per cent of Australian kids played soccer outside of school hours in 2017, the most popular team sport and second overall, only surpassed by swimming at 31.8 per cent.
The AFL had an 8.8 per cent participation rate, just in front of basketball at 7.1 per cent, cricket stood at just over 5 per cent, while rugby league was 3.1 per cent and rugby union the worst performing with just 1.7 per cent.
The game can do much better when it comes to women. The AFL and NRL have launched clever, sharp, successful women’s competitions over the past few seasons. Both codes are paying their players well enough and getting great coverage on TV; just last week AFLW announced all 38 matches of next year’s women’s competition will be shown live on TV with Channel 7 and Fox Sports to share the coverage.
But rugby? This year, Rugby Australia put on a five-team, five-week Super W competition. Shamefully, the women weren’t paid a single cent. Disgraceful.
It is different for Australia’s Sevens women’s team, who won Olympic gold in Rio. Under a collective bargaining agreement, male and female Sevens players will receive $44,500 a year. Admirably, RA has achieved pay parity for its players in this form of the game.
And, this year, the Wallaroos were paid for the first time for Test appearances, $1000 a game, yet still tens of thousands of dollars less than a Wallaby.
This year, the Wallabies won just four of 13 Tests. And the heat isn’t just on Cheika for this, his assistants Simon Raiwalui, Stephen Larkham, Nathan Grey and Mick Byrne are in the firing line.
It’s going to be a miserable, uncertain lead-up to Christmas for many at the top of the game and the sport in general. Radical change is long, long overdue.
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Originally published as ’Embarrassing mess’: Rugby union’s woes laid bare
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