ARU decide to cut Western Force; Bill Pulver quits

Shockwaves hit rugby with CEO Bill Pulver announcing he will step down, just after the ARU moves to axe the Western Force.

ARU chief Bill Pulver during a today’s media conference. Picture: Carol Cho/AAP

Australian Rugby Union chief executive Bill Pulver will resign as soon as a replacement can be found as a series of shockwaves rocked the game in the wake of the national body’s decision to cull the Western Force from Super Rugby.

The first of them arrived even before Pulver announced his decision at an evening press conference, with ARU director Geoff Stooke, the Force’s founding chairman, resigning with immediate effect from the board.

He told The Weekend Australian that the Force were the victims of “a totally corrupt process” and described the ARU’s rationale that Australian rugby was financially unsustainable trying to keep five teams alive as “horseshit”.

“The integrity of the process doesn’t exist,” said Stooke. “It’s all how you spend the money. They don’t mind paying a bucketload to bring Will Genia and Kurtley Beale home from Europe.

“There is only one reason why the Force was axed, because they could do it. No other reason.”

Stooke had recused himself from board discussions while the process remained up in the air but had contacted the ARU on Thursday afternoon to say he was rescinding his recusal in light of the fact that the arbitration decision was to be handed down the following day. But the board meeting went ahead yesterday without him.

Pulver’s resignation was not unexpected but it still came as a shock when he announced it at last night’s press conference. He insisted he was “very, very sorry for all the people in Western Australia but it’s the right decision” to remove the Force. I’m not denying that this will not have an impact there.”

However, he insisted that all the pathways remained in place in the West — even if young players no longer have a Super Rugby team to aim for.

As for his own position, he admitted that it had been “a difficult year for rugby”. “I think it’s the right time for a change,” he said.

Certainly it is unfortunate that this decision will define Pulver’s term as ARU CEO because he had done commendable things in his nearly five years in the job. But there is no question that the man who only a year ago had vowed not to allow rugby to “shrink to greatness” became as much a victim of a 123-day process as the Perth club itself.

Ironically, the ARU has an experienced contender on staff at present in the shape of Force CEO Mark Sinderberry, who became an ARU employee when the national body took over the club in June last year. Yet he was a shattered man when he spoke to The Weekend Australian yesterday and had to break off the interview because he was in tears.

Former Waratahs and RUPA boss Greg Harris also is understood to be ready to step in if required.

“It is not a popularity contest but you must first of all listen to those who you lead and be able to understand how those you are leading feel,” Harris said.

It now remains to be seen whether ARU chairman Cameron Clyne will follow Pulver’s lead, though he pointed out that the direction the national body has followed was approved first at the ARU’s annual general meeting and then at the emergency general meeting in June. Still, it could be argued — and indeed was being argued strongly in the west — that NSW, Queensland and the Brumbies voted purely out of self-interest.

Clyne indicated that the decision to sack the Force was final from the ARU’s perspective. “But we can’t control it from now,” Clyne said.

Within hours of the decision, Western Australian mining magnate Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest was giving a press conference in Perth, flanked by Force Wallabies Pek Cowan and Richard Hardwick vowing to study the arbitration judge’s ruling and launch an appeal to the Supreme Court if it was deemed viable.

“What is my absolute amazement (is that the ARU) would take that arbitrators decision and then immediately attempt to cut the Force,” said Forrest. “And I say attempt because I will be studying an injunction option. If an injunction is possible I will certainly be prepared to stand behind that. This would be a gross injustice that the three people who are the architect of this decision inside the ARU have resigned. I don’t blame them for that

“This is a try against us but it is not the end of the game.”

Forrest took issue with Pulver’s claim that the ARU had consulted a spreadsheet before determining to trim the Western Force rather than the other team it had nominated as a culling option, the Melbourne Rebels. “I’d like to see that spreadsheet,” he growled.

But there is also growing concern at how the Rebels came to have been saved by arranging for former owner Andrew Cox to sell the licence back to the Victorian Rugby Union.

The ARU publicly expressed shock and outrage that the sale had gone ahead without their knowledge but it is now becoming clear that the ARU not only was kept abreast of the sale but actively worked to bring it about.