Hamish McLennan’s five-point plan to resurrect rugby

Rugby Australia’s push for a trans-Tasman competition may come at the cost of one or two teams.

Hamish McLennan will start his tenure as chair of Rugby Australia on Monday. Picture: John Feder

Hamish McLennan, the incoming Rugby Australia chairman, has a five-point plan he intends to implement once he takes the reins from Paul McLean on Monday, although he admits that being able to go to broadcasters with a definite competition structure for next year eclipses everything.

“We have to determine what our product is so that we can sell it to the broadcasters and if I had my way, given the circumstances with COVID, a cross-Tasman competition makes the most sense and will be the most valuable commodity to sell,” McLennan told The Weekend Australian.

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There is no question a trans-Tasman competition would be the most popular format with broadcasters and with Australian rugby fans but McLennan said it was far too early to speculate on how such a competition would be structured.

It may well be that the price of securing NZ participation will be to trim Australia back to three or four teams. It seems increasingly likely that Western Force owner Andrew Forrest will negotiate a place for the WA club on the condition he is able to meet their costs. In that event, it could force a possible merger of the Brumbies and the Melbourne Rebels — as painful as that would be for players and supporters of both clubs. Only if World Rugby financially supported the islander team as they did the Fiji Drua in the NRC would such a format be accepted. The Force’s culling from Super Rugby in 2017 showed the depth of feeling released when an Australian side is axed. McLennan, as he revealed with his five-point plan, already has problems enough to solve.

What would be particularly galling would be if one or two Japanese sides were then also brought into the competition, along with an islander side that might play as a virtual West Indies of rugby or a national side made up of, say, players resident in Fiji.

“The first step is to secure the financial future of the game,” he said. “That incorporates everything from the broadcast deal, to working with our commercial partners, to fixing Super Rugby.”

He is reassured by the fact that private equity investors have been approaching him, even though he is not yet officially in the chair.

“The pleasing aspect to the inbound calls that we’ve had is that they see a lot of growth in rugby and that it’s a global game.

The downside, though, is that the calls also indicate that independent businesses see potential in rugby that generations of Australian rugby officials have left untapped.

“Stage two is to invest in grassroots and club rugby. We need to have meaningful competitions and clear pathways right through to the Wallabies. And we need to build depth in our coaching talent.”

Under a McLennan administration, the Australian club championship would become a formal competition, not a random, hastily arranged match between the Sydney and Brisbane club premiers. The trick will be to organise a structure that does not lead to haves and have-nots.

That priority neatly folds into his third priority of creating a meaningful pathway from amateur rugby to the professional ranks, leading all the way to the Wallabies. Unlike some other RA executives of recent times, he has not set a required target for the Wallabies to reach, although clearly he is totally uncomfortable with their present global ranking of seven.

He admits to somewhat mixed feelings regarding the Giteau Law. “In my DNA, I’m a free marketer and I acknowledge that rugby players have to earn a living and maximise their earning potential for their playing years,” he said. “But in strengthening those pathways from amateur through to the professional rugby and therefore to the Wallabies, we need to find ways to keep our top players playing senior level rugby (in Australia) for as long as possible.”

His fourth priority is innovation. Mostly that will apply to law variations but it also will be to change the way the game is presented to broadcasters and, through them, to the viewing audience.

His final priority is to allocate sufficient resources to Australia’s 2027 World Cup bid. Australia is the only candidate at present and the tournament is overdue to come to the southern hemisphere but McLennan is taking nothing for granted.