How a group of stock pickers and financial gurus are trying to save rugby

Behind the Rugby Future Fund and the sport’s foundation is an eclectic group of fund managers and rugby tragics, who are trying to raise $100m to help their sport through troubled times.

Following the Wallabies’ win against England, there’s now optimism about rugby on the field, and there’s a group trying to help the sport off it. Picture: Getty Images

Rugby in Australia was just about at its lowest ebb when an eclectic group of stock pickers, money managers, investment advisers and a ballet aficionado decided to try to do something about it.

From a key meeting in early autumn 2023 and taking an idea kicking around for years, to finally and properly putting a plan in place to tap into the money-making acumen of white-collar rugby tragics.

Suddenly, there’s some optimism around rugby union in Australia, on the field and off it.

And a big part of it is that group of people, who in another guise comprise a “broken down” former second-rower, ex-front-rowers and back of the scrum talents from their glory days, and the mother of a burgeoning female rugby talent.

That mixture of rugby passion and financial acumen has come together with the emergence of the Rugby Future Fund, which so far has raised $12m of a targeted $100m.

The fund aims to generate returns for investors with money, managed by fund managers who will forgo all or part of their fees, then directed towards women’s or community rugby projects or high performance aspects of the code via the Australian Rugby Foundation.

Head of Wilson Asset Management Geoff Wilson is one of the big name fund managers behind the Rugby Future Fund. Picture: Nikki Short

It means rugby types are putting their money where their mouths are.

“There’s a lot of emotion around rugby, so my standard pitch is to let people vent and then say ‘OK I’m not elated about where we are, but this is what I am doing – so what are you doing about it?’ And people then are saying what can we do to help,” Ben Scott, the chairman of the ARF, tells The Weekend Australian.

Like the chase for on-field talent such as new Wallabies star Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii, it has taken some false starts, behind the scenes arm-wrestling and plenty of meetings.

It was mid-March 2023 when Scott, a founding partner of investment bank Barrenjoey, who had returned to Sydney a couple of years earlier after a long career on Wall Street and in Hong Kong, went to a meeting at Sydney’s salubrious Governor Philip office tower.

The host was fund manager Geoff Wilson, the one-time Victorian state rugby representative and player for Sydney club Gordon, who cheerfully describes himself as a “broken down former second-rower who is just trying to pick a stock these days”.

Also there were the likes of then Rugby Australia chairman Hamish McLennan and fellow board member turned RA chief executive, Phil Waugh, his predecessor Andy Marinos (who would leave a month later) and now former RA director Karen Penrose.

With a backdrop of Synecdoche contemporary art in the Wilson Asset Management office, the group kickstarted what would eventually become the RFF a little over a year later.

“Geoff Wilson’s reputation precedes him and like a lot of us long-suffering Wallabies supporters he was very keen to help,” McLennan recalls. “And with Ben, Phil and a few others, really worked hard to provide the catalyst to get the fund set up.”

Fund managers investing on behalf of the RFF include Phil King of Regal Funds Management, Wilson himself, Doug Tynan of GCQ and Plato Investment Management lead portfolio manager Dr David Allen.

Ex-Ellerston Capital CEO Brian O’Sullivan heads the fund’s investment committee.

Seed investors include RA and ARF board members, and a small group of supporting family offices. These include Wilson, the billionaire Millner family, Skier Capital, Russell Aboud and the family office of Brisbane stockbroker Steve Wilson.

As revealed by The Australian in June, the RFF is targeting an initial $100m capital raising and eventually plans to donate 1 per cent of its gross assets per year to the ARF.

With $12m already in there, Scott is quietly confident the target will be met. “If you’re betting me a beer, I reckon we will get there next year.”

Regal Funds chief investment officer Phil King will also help invest money for the RFF.

As is often the case with rugby, plenty of work and sporting connections are behind the germination of where the fund has arrived to today.

For Wilson, it goes back to a connection with the late Andrew Cormie, a long-time fund manager and more recently a big Melbourne Rebels supporter. Wilson remembers squaring off against Cormie on the fields when they played for Harlequins and Melbourne University respectively in the 1980s.

Wilson says Cormie, by then on the ARF board, approached him about five years ago with the idea of rugby adopting a similar model to the one Wilson worked on at the ASX-listed Future Generation fund that donates to youth at risk and mental health charities.

Wilson presented to the ARF board, which had been set up by former RA CEO Bill Pulver in 2014 and had raised about $6m from 1000 donors through to 2022, according to Scott.

While enthusiastic, Wilson told the ARF board they needed a “rainmaker” to help do the hard yards, and so the idea didn’t immediately take hold.

Until ex-Wallaby star flanker Simon Poidevin – who had joined the WAM board in late 2021 – introduced Wilson last year to a someone he knew who had joined the ARF board.

It was Scott.

“Geoff is a statesman with a background in rugby. He said we should do some sort of future fund and we went from there,” Scott recalls.

Scott then turned to another rugby tragic to help with the grunt work: Randwick rugby club director and ex-Ellerston boss O’Sullivan.

“We played against each other when we were younger, worked together at two firms, he’d recently retired from Ellerston, and we needed someone to set up the fund,” says Scott, who was at the back of the scrum for Sydney University while O’Sullivan played prop for Randwick.

O’Sullivan says there was not much arm-twisting needed.

“Why wouldn’t you get involved, was what I thought. I started playing rugby when I was four. My dad, brother and uncle played. It is part of us.

“And look, in this industry I have been lucky enough to get to know a lot of these great fund managers or at least know about them. So this has been a call to action to the investment community. If you have got investments to make, here’s a great spot to make them and let’s do something [for rugby] rather than just watching and hurling advice from the armchair and from the sidelines.”

O’Sullivan jokes that he has also had to call a truce with Plato’s Dr Allen, president of Randwick’s great rival, Easts.

The people involved aren’t all from traditional rugby sources though. The ARF board includes Queensland Ballet executive director Dilshani Weerasinghe, a champion of not-for-profit organisations who has raised more than $80m for QB, says Scott.

“Her 15-year-old daughter is a promising, passionate rugby prop, and so this is all just connecting with all these interesting people who genuinely want to give back,” Scott says.

Next comes convincing more rugby types with money to pitch in their funds. Wilson has volubly predicted the fund may be worth $1bn one day, though there is a long way to go as O’Sullivan and others knock on the doors of wealth management firms, family offices and other potential investment and distribution sources.

“There’s products out there and places to invest but here you get a philanthropic purpose with it, and with experienced managers who you can get content and commentary about what is happening in the market from,” says O’Sullivan. “And why not do that with a rugby element around it.”