Broadcast chaos the latest folly to hit rugby union

Club rugby in Sydney has been thriving over the past five seasons. Picture: Karen Watson

It was the French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr who coined the immortal phrase in 1848 “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose”, which means, “the more things change, the more they continue to be the same thing”.

Poor old Monsieur Karr must surely have been thinking, in 1848, of Australian rugby circa 2020.

Whatever might change in the administration of the game, the outcomes don’t. It’s a diabolical betrayal of the family of rugby.

Last week, the Waratahs were beaten; Queensland were beaten; the men’s sevens were thrashed by the US; the women’s sevens beaten by Canada.

But nothing could approximate the folly in relation to Rugby Australia and Fox Sports.

Some background. In the last four years, the club rugby competition in Sydney has been on fire — terrific football and big crowds, simply because in 2015, when the competition was about to die, Nick Fordham and John Murray established Club Rugby TV.

The then ARU had refused to pay $1 million for the broadcasting costs to the ABC and the ARU stopped giving clubs their annual grant. Fordham and Murray took their Club Rugby TV, the product, to Channel Seven.

Since then, the crowds, the ratings and revenue streams have gone through the roof.

Nick and John have a deal with Channel Seven until 2024.

Under the current arrangement, the Sydney Rugby Union pay $300,000 a season, $250,000 to Channel Seven for broadcasting and advertising and $50,000 towards Club Rugby TV’s production costs.

Most years, understandably, given the current administrative mess, the Sydney Rugby Union can’t afford their $300,000 and are constantly under financial strain. Enter Fox Sports with an amazing offer.

They offer to provide the match of the round in Sydney club rugby, live, on Fox Sports. Every week.

They will deliver every other club game in the Shute Shield competition live, on Kayo Sports, which would provide an unprecedented coverage for club Rugby in Sydney.

Good for the game. You can’t grow the game if people don’t see it. Fox Sports, as I understand it, want this to start in less than eight weeks.

They have offered to pick up the rest of the contract from Club Rugby TV until 2024; and instead of paying, Sydney Rugby Union will receive $200,000 per season, in revenue, as a starting point.

This would allow them to potentially bring a team such as Penrith back into the competition and even provide fulltime staff for Sydney.

The Sydney Rugby Union would go from massive debt to money and unprecedented coverage.

Sydney Rugby Union are supporting this. Fordham and Murray’s Club Rugby TV has agreed.

The roadblock, you guessed it, NSW Rugby and Rugby Australia administrations.

This is Andrew Forrest and the Western Force revisited. Remember Forrest walking into a meeting with $50 million for rugby on the condition that the Western Force were kept in the Super Rugby competition. He was shown the door.

Here, another gift horse is being sent to the knackery.

Rugby Australia are currently trying to shop the entire rugby product and “broadcasting rights” around to other buyers.

Should that word be singular or plural? After all, who wants a product with the current image of Australian rugby? Who wants a product run so badly, with conspicuous failure, awful audiences, rating badly and, above all, poor quality rugby with commensurate results?

The current deal with Fox Sports is reportedly $285 million for five years, $57 million a year.

Exit Fox. Exit $57 million.

And, so, Optus looms into focus. Pretend that Rugby Australia can offer to Optus, the Tests, Super Rugby and club rugby all in the one package.

But, subscription TV. You will have to pay to see the product. But there is no guarantee Optus would show any Shute Shield matches. Only Fox can guarantee they would show every club game, live.

The deadline for this deal is looming. Rugby Australia chief executive Raelene Castle and her board have gone missing.

This is a deal the like of which, in the current climate, rugby should be embracing.

Which prompts the question, how could they not approve such a deal? I suppose the answer to that is to ask Andrew Forrest.

Meanwhile, the new president of Rugby NSW, Al Baxter, has reached out for a meeting in which we could hopefully look at positive initiatives for the future of rugby in the state.

The president is more a titular head, not active in the day-to-day running of the game as the chairman is meant to be.

Nonetheless, the willingness to communicate is something that is absent from most rugby administrators. They seem terrified of anyone who might know something.

But if the new chief executive of Rugby NSW, and the new president, are looking at issues facing the game, then we all have an obligation to offer support.

I have people writing to me about rugby every week. I hope I have a reasonable understanding of things.

The first thing that NSW should seek is a change to the Rugby Australia constitution.

Currently, the chairman has too much power and control over who becomes a Rugby Australia board member.

New Zealand have elected members as well as non-elected members on their board.

We need more genuine rugby people in charge and making decisions.

Cameron Clyne, the chairman, has presided over a shambles and has far too much power.

Last year, the former Wallaby, successful businessman and then Queensland chairman, Damien Frawley, called for constitutional change at Rugby Australia.

The governance model is flawed and enables the chairman to be virtually all-powerful. The Vladimir Putin model is not suited to rugby.

The next thing we need is a national chief executive who understands the playing and business structures of the game.

I have no doubt Raelene Castle is genuine. After all, she didn’t appoint herself.

She is well paid, but she is struggling on most levels with a new broadcast deal and understanding the intricacies of the game.

The first avenue towards growing the game is having a Wallaby side that wins. We need someone who understands how that can happen and we need someone who can promote a realistic deal with Fox Sports; and someone who can help us challenge the NRL and AFL for market share in the war of footy codes.

Castle and her board have become firefighters. There is always a fire to put out; but there is no vision and no grassroots support.

The NSW chairman, Roger Davis, a former Rhodes scholar, rugby international and businessman, recently sounded the alarm bells over the financial tsunami that awaits our game if we don’t get the broadcast deal right.

He believes our Super Rugby teams are about to lose upwards of 20 per cent of their total revenue, at least, if and when a broadcast deal ever materialises.

I’ve asked before what happens if the $57 million a year from the current deal is reduced to $20 million, or $30 million.

The knock-on effect to the Super Rugby franchises would be catastrophic. No business can lose a fifth of its revenue and prosper. This is serious stuff.

Rugby Australia can’t manage it. We need urgent and outside intervention. The next step would be to focus on our high-performance directors.

The jury is out on Scott Johnson at Rugby Australia; and I have written before about the Waratahs’ general manager, Tim Rapp.

Those jobs should be thrown open. Let incumbents apply on an open market.

NSW is the biggest franchise in Australian rugby. Rapp is in charge of high performance. I grow tired of telling the story, and hearing the story told, that Rapp told Angus Crichton he would not be ready to play for the Waratahs until he was 23.

Crichton turned 24 two days ago and is already a household name in the NRL.

Only yesterday, I read in this newspaper the new Queensland captain Liam Wright talking about his class of 2014 at the GPS rugby school, Churchie, in Brisbane.

He talked about Kalyn Ponga and his running magic when Ponga played for Churchie. He’s now a State of Origin player and on the verge of becoming a rugby league international. Wright spoke about Brodie Croft, a former Churchie teammate, recruited from the Melbourne Storm to the Brisbane Broncos to “ignite their attack from halfback”.

Another player is reported to be playing with the Toronto Arrows in major league rugby in North America. Izaia Perese has played rugby league for the Broncos. And so it goes on.

This is just from one schoolboy side at Brisbane’s Church of England Grammar School.

So much for the role of high-performance directors whose first task, surely, is to secure the transition of high performing schoolboys into senior rugby.

The new defence coach for the Waratahs, Phil Bailey, oversaw a defensive effort last weekend against the Crusaders where NSW conceded six tries in the first game of the season.

Rapp must have appointed him, even though Bailey’s last job was coaching NSW under-16s rugby league.

The high-performance departments, like every other administrative aspect of the game, needs to be urgently sorted out.

We must look after our schools. These are our rugby nurseries. The principals haven’t been spoken to for years. How hard is it to go to a school, talk to those in charge, make them feel valued and explain what our game can offer their schoolboys.

Re-engage with the schools. Re-engage with the clubs. Invest in the clubs. Pay for their head coaches. Centrally contract them.

Grow homegrown coaches to take over at the top of the game. And when we’ve done all that, insist on new contracts going to Australian kids and show faith and loyalty in homegrown players.

We have a stack of them. And yet the Waratahs sign a Japanese sevens player.

And this bloke is not the Lone Ranger. There are plenty of foreign players in our Super Rugby teams. We don’t need ring-ins.

It doesn’t make sense to water someone else’s rugby garden and ignore our own. Why does Johnson let this happen?

And, please, no more foreign coaches unless they are world class. We love our Kiwi friends but, please, no more.

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Laurie Fisher may not thank me because this will be his kiss of death. Why isn’t he the forwards coach to the Wallabies? Fisher’s Brumbies’ pack is extremely well drilled.

Last week they monstered Queensland.

If Dave Rennie is allowed to bring in Tom Coventry from the Auckland Blues, Scott Johnson should be tarred and feathered.

Fisher is homegrown. He produces great packs capable of playing Test match rugby. The Auckland Blues under Coventry don’t frighten anyone.

Put all of the above in place, simple stuff, and our rugby-loving philanthropists will be given a reason to invest. They just need to know that the money will be invested wisely. As things stand that cannot be guaranteed.

Unless we have a good hard look at ourselves, we can’t move forward and we can’t rebuild.

The clock is ticking. It’s time to make change; and if we don’t nail this broadcast deal, we’re in deep water.

Who is going to step up and force the necessary change?