Barbarians blend could be a novel solution for Super Rugby as RA await Western Force response
Western Force are yet to commit so Rugby Australia are working on contingencies for the reboot of the game, with one of the proposals involving a concept that has proven a winner around the world.
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A patched together “Barbarians” style team featuring fringe squad members and Sevens players looms as the fifth team in Australia’s domestic Super Rugby competition if the Western Force fail to sign on.
Rugby Australia is scrambling to get their replacement tournament running by July 4, but have hit a hurdle on their proposed five/six team idea because the Force – who were cut from Super Rugby in 2017 – have not committed to the competition.
RA is now working on contingencies including a Barbarians team, while still working on proposals including the Force and Japan’s Sunwolves.
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The theoretical Barbarians side would be made up of players who are on the fringes of the four Super clubs; NSW Waratahs, Queensland Reds, the Brumbies and Melbourne Rebels, while also pulling from the Sevens system and under-20s prospects.
The Super clubs have not reacted well to the idea of having squad members pulled from their ranks to feed an opposition team.
However, they are keenly aware of how important it is for rugby’s perilous finances to get a competition off the ground as soon as possible.
While a Barbarians team would likely struggle against the four Super teams, it would present a unique opportunity for young guns and Sevens specialists to make their cases for spots in the professional XVs ranks next year.
RA still hopes the Force will agree to participate in their revised tournament, after the club released a statement earlier this week saying they had not been formally invited to the competition and would not commit unless they had all of the details.
RA has not finalised the details yet, because that is dependent on how much money they can recoup for their proposed tournament from broadcaster Fox Sports, who signed for the original four-nation Super Rugby tournament that was halted two months ago due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Sunwolves are another option, but it will prove difficult to include them given the enormous expenses they’ll incur being housed in a Sydney or Brisbane hotel for two months.
Most of their players are also back in Japan, which means they’d need special permission to enter Australia given the border closures, and then 14 days of quarantine before they could begin training.
RA’s proposed tournament would run for 12 weeks, with 10 weeks of round-robin competition followed by finals.
Australian players who are contracted to overseas clubs, but have returned home during the coronavirus crisis, are on a hitlist for the Barbarians team by RA. However, it’s understood they cannot participate in the Australian domestic Super Rugby tournament without breaching their contracts.
While Australia’s 192 professional players have been forced to accept an average 65 per cent pay cuts until September, those who are contracted to Japanese clubs are still earning their full salaries despite the season being cancelled.
Force must beat major roadblock for Super inclusion
The Western Force may have to relocate to the eastern seaboard if they join the revamped Super Rugby competition.
There is no certainty the Force will take part in the domestic competition with club bosses still in discussions with Rugby Australia about what the cost will be to join the domestic competition.
But if an agreement is reached with the Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest-owned franchise it will most likely be based on the east coast due to the Western Australia government’s hard line COVID-19 border restrictions.
If the five-team competition goes ahead it could be composed of 10 rounds with four home and four away games plus two byes.
RA hopes the competition will start in July but it is contingent on a vital broadcast agreement and interim chief executive Rob Clarke confirmed to The Australian that he has “reached out” to Fox Sports bosses to reignite the partnership.
RA is also currently without a broadcast deal beyond 2020 after the previous chief executive Raelene Castle walked away from a $US25 million ($38.53 million), five-year offer last November from Fox Sports.
Clarke, who is expected to play a key role in broadcast negotiations, said he is still finalising RA’s approach to securing a new TV deal.
“How we shape the future of our broadcast negotiations is still being resolved,” he said.
“We have had consultants historically which have been a key part of the team, and we have our own internal team. We have a lot of others who will proffer their views … externally and internally … so there’s no shortage of views about what should be done in this space and it’s my challenge to distil that and work out how the best way to move forward is.”
Clarke added the financial rescue package from World Rugby is to be approved imminently.
He said he had been in contact with World Rugby to secure the $16-17 million to pull them part of the way out of a financial black hole.
RA is looking at well over $20 million in liabilities having spent $500 million over the past four years with no assets to show for it.
“We have had numerous meetings with World Rugby over the last week,” Clarke said. “The process is well advanced, I hope to have a positive resolution on that within a matter of days.
“They have seen all of our financials, they have seen all of our future assumptions, that’s been part of that assessment.”
Clarke maintains RA is a “going concern” and said his focus is securing the financial future of the beleaguered code.
“My focus is purely and simply on what we need to do to secure our financial future for today and tomorrow,” he said.
“World Rugby is a part of that. Getting our accounts signed as a going concern for the next 12 months is a key part of that. I’d like to think we will have resolution on all those elements in the next week or so.”
When asked if the game was insolvent Clarke replied; “No”.
He also said RA was not “facing insolvency’’.
“I don’t believe so,” Clarke said.
Instead of a straight-out loan, World Rugby is planning to give struggling member nations an advance payment on their share of the profits from the next World Cup, to be held in France in 2023.
RA’s auditors, KPMG, said via spokeswoman that they don’t comment on client’s accounts.
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Who will foot the bill for the Western Force to compete with the four “official” Australian franchises in the rebooted Super Rugby-Lite competition expected to kick off in July — Andrew Forrest, Rugby Australia or both?
It hardly needs to be said that RA is broke and even when World Rugby’s COVID-19 rescue package of around $16-17 million arrives, it will be swallowed up in meeting the organisation’s mountain of debt.
RA is cobbling together an Australian-only competition in place of the standard Super Rugby series and it needs the Force — and perhaps even the Sunwolves of Japan, who confirmed on Tuesday they would be eager to participate in the proposed tournament — to bolster the number of competing teams. In doing so, it has engaged the Force almost from day one of planning.
Until now, the issue of who would pay for the Force’s presence has been sidestepped but the tough question can be avoided no longer.
The fact that RA plans to announce details of its competition either later this week or early next means that the matter must be resolved, but just to make the issue crystal clear, the Western Force on Tuesday issued a “clarification” that it had not been officially invited to join any series and that, until it was invited, it would be keeping its options open.
The “clarification”, issued by Global Rapid Rugby’s chief executive Mark Evans, could have been discretely handled in a phone call. But clearly Forrest wants the matter brought to a head.
It may be that the Perth billionaire just wants to hear RA grovel. Given that his beloved Force were culled from Super Rugby by RA — then known as the Australian Rugby Union — in 2017, Forrest would be fully entitled to make the most of holding the upper hand.
All indications are that he may be prepared to foot the bill for Force, given that he would have had to cover far greater costs had his Global Rapid Rugby taken off this season as planned, only to be scuttled by the coronavirus.
Or, he might genuinely feel that since RA is somehow finding the means to fund the entry of its four Super Rugby sides, they should even-handedly meet the costs of the WA side as well.
As much as he must be enjoying his position of strength, Forrest also would be excited at the chance that unexpectedly has opened up for the Force to compete again alongside the Brumbies, Reds, Rebels and Waratahs in even a Super Rugby-Lite competition.
Although Force coach Tim Sampson is not treating the upcoming series as an audition for an even greater role in a potential trans-Tasman series next year, there is no question that if the Perth side performs well it will open the door for a permanent return to the mainstream Australian rugby family.
There is, still the potential that Forrest will play the role of white knight and financially rescue Australian rugby.
He was aligned to the goals of Peter Wiggs, the RA director who resigned suddenly even as moves continued to have him replace Paul McLean as chairman.
Another front opened in that battle on Tuesday when the 10 dissident Wallabies captain sent a letter to McLean warning that they might revive their earlier call for an emergency general meeting if RA did not abide by commitments Wiggs had made as the presumptive RA chairman.
Wiggs had taken a meeting with key agitators Nick Farr-Jones, Phil Kearns and Justin Harrison on April 27.
If that situation turns ugly and RA’s attempts to claw its way back into solvency fall short, it could be that Forrest ends up being the only port in the storm for Australian rugby.
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It’s for that reason that RA does not want to provoke him now with a demand that he meets all the Force’s costs but it literally may have no option but to admit that without his assistance, there is no way it can put together a five-team competition before it has received any of the broadcast dollars the game so desperately needs.
The other complication in all of this is that it is looking increasingly unlikely that the Sunwolves will be allowed to compete if the federal government refuses them permission to enter the country.
RA is pressing Canberra for an answer but if the government decides to keep the international borders closed, the pressure will intensify on RA to make certain the Force take their place in the competition.
Although the Rebels will not have their medical briefing from Warren McDonald, RA’s chief medical officer until Thursday, it looks almost certain that no player in any of the provinces will object to having a flu shot before the start of competition.
Sunwolves CEO Yuji Watase welcomed RA’s competition proposal and said he would be happy for the team to be based in Australia for the duration of the competition.
“Yes, we’ve been discussing with Rugby Australia about restarting the competition and they’ve been helping us to proceed with our involvement,” Watase told Reuters on Tuesday.
The 2020 season was set to be the Sunwolves’ last in Super Rugby, after the competition’s governing body SANZAAR and the Japanese Football Rugby Union failed to agree on the terms of their inclusion.
“This is to be the last season, and we definitely would like to leave a legacy,” said Watase, who added that he doesn’t expect participation in Rugby Australia’s competition to lead to re-inclusion in Super Rugby next season.
“I believe participating in this competition is a different story from Super Rugby in the future. SANZAAR is the one to decide the future for Super Rugby,” he said.
with AAP
Originally published as Barbarians blend could be a novel solution for Super Rugby as RA await Western Force response