Inside the Zoom meeting that saw a failed rugby coup

Peter Wiggs was set to become the new chairman of Rugby Australia when a demand turned the meeting on its head.

Despite two successful stints as chief executive of Rugby Australia, John O'Neill is still a polarising figure in rugby Picture: AAP

Peter Wiggs was effectively in the middle of his first address as chair of Rugby Australia when a problem emerged from the unlikely direction of fellow director John Wilson.

Wiggs had been asked during the RA board meeting teleconference to step up to chair the Zoom gathering and he wasted little time in outlining his conditions: he would run the organisation as chairman but he wanted to make a captain’s pick of Matt Carroll as chief executive and he also wanted room made on the board for the return of two-time former chief executive, John O’Neill.

The board was expecting some tough talking from the Harvard-educated Wiggs but this took them aback.

Like him or hate him, O’Neill has always been a polarising figure in Australian rugby and the idea of him returning to the board was more than some could stomach.

But it was Wiggs’ determination to make a “captain’s pick” for chief executive and automatically install Carroll, the Australian Olympic Committee’s chief executive, that most rankled with longstanding board members Pip Marlow, Hayden Rorke and Wilson. Newly-appointed director Daniel Herbert also had his reservations. But it was Wilson, a director widely thought to be on his way out of the board, who surprisingly issued the challenge.

Why, he asked, would RA “parachute” a hand-picked chief executive into the position when it had engaged global headhunters to search for the best candidate? “We’ll look like idiots,” he is reported to have said.

The mood was broken and the meeting became more turbulent. Interim chairman Paul McLean, who had been supportive of Wiggs throughout the meeting, called a halt and immediately notified RA’s communications director that he would be remaining in the chair for some time to come.

Whether McLean now is entertaining second thoughts about Wiggs only he would know. He declined to be interviewed on Tuesday. But even if he wasn’t having second thoughts, others were.

It is all very well to lay down heavy conditions to a board that seemingly has few alternatives, but the smart play would be to build them up to the idea, not drop it like a nuclear warhead. “At least take a week or so,” as one stakeholder observed. “It might be the right call. But it might not be the right call.”

But it was Wiggs’ reaction to being challenged which was most instructive. Almost immediately after the meeting broke up, the first texts began arriving on journalists’ phones. “Wiggs has resigned … or threatening to resign”. Early Tuesday, there were suggestions he had to be talked out of quitting his place on the board. The question was now beginning to form in the minds of board members and other stakeholders: If being challenged by his fellow directors prompted threats of a walkout, how serious was he really?Australian rugby will face massive hurdles in the coming months and it will need a chairman who won’t toss it in at a moment’s notice.

The turbulence might have been a sign of the stress RA directors have been under lately. And normally after a board meeting, directors adjoin to the bar to sort out their problems. But with a Zoom meeting, it is all over with the push of a button and there were very few directors at all happy with how the meeting had broken up.

The fallout was dramatic. Even those critical of Wiggs’ personal reaction remained overwhelmingly convinced he has the financial expertise that RA so desperately needs. But no one likes being presented with a fait accompli and then being pressured into accepting it. Why the rush, especially given that McLean’s expected replacement on the board, Hamish McLennan, the former Ten boss, also was looming as a potential chairman.

NSWRU chairman Roger Davis didn’t see it quite so charitably, not only strongly supporting the Wiggs-Carroll ticket but even suggesting that an extraordinary general meeting take place to remove the “recalcitrant directors”. It’s fair to say that plan won’t be happening, not with Queensland — which is very supportive of Carroll, generally supportive of the less-well-known Wiggs — hosing things down.

Thankfully, there was some light to go with the shadow. Carroll had been approached by only one rugby person, Wiggs himself, so when he suddenly found himself thrust forward in newspapers suggesting he was about to make the leap from the AOC to his first love, rugby, he figured he should broach the subject with his Olympic boss, John Coates. As it happens, Coates is a mad-keen rugby supporter – though not from the 2088 postcode of Mosman, he is quick to point out — and when Carroll mentioned that rugby truly was where his heart was, he gave him his blessing. But it was when another friend, O’Neill, rang to thank him for dealing with Carroll so sympathetically, that Coates sprung his mischievous trap.

He was prepared to let Carroll go, Coates told him. But at a price. “I want to make you an offer to come and be the CEO of the AOC,” Coates demanded. O’Neill played the job offer with a straight bat. “Oh, I’ve always wanted to work under you,” O’Neill replied.

It was a joke, of course, although what a team of administrators to conjure with.

It may well be that rugby fans will come to speak of Peter Wiggs and Matt Carroll in those same sorts of glowing terms. But there are any number of obstacles, not least the fact that RA needs to make an offer to Carroll. To do so, of course, would mean ignoring their own due processes.

Is that really how Wiggs wants to begin his term?