John Coates gives Matt Carroll his blessing to return to Rugby Australia

The president of the Australian Olympic Committee believes Matt Carroll is the administrator to fix rugby in Australia.

President of AOC John Coates, left, has backed Matt Carroll, right, to fix rugby Picture: AFP

Not only is the Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates prepared to allow Matt Carroll to return to rugby union without obstacle but he believes he is just the man Rugby Australia desperately needs to fill the role of chief executive.

Job switches are always a matter of timing and in this instance Carroll, the chief executive of the AOC, got his timing almost perfect. Had the Tokyo Olympics been going ahead in July on the original pre-coronavirus schedule, Coates admits he would have taken a very dim view of Carroll’s approach to him on Tuesday to return to Rugby Australia.

“If the Games were this year, I would kill you,” Coates told Carroll, seemingly only half-jokingly. But with the Olympics being deferred by a year and still 14 months away, he does not want to stand in Carroll’s way if he had truly set his heart on making the move back to rugby.

“He had a talk to me this morning after he realised I would have read it (in the newspapers) and he said, “Look John, just as your heart and passion is the AOC, mine’s rugby.”

No one from RA has contacted Coates but had they done so, he would have given them a glowing referral of that work Carroll has done with the AOC since joining in May 2017.

“From everything I know and having worked with him, I think he would be the ideal person for this,” Coates insisted. “With the AOC, he has really reintroduced us to all the national federations. The last few secretary-generals didn’t get on the phone, didn’t get out and about. So our relations are very good.

“He has regularly been in Canberra, he has moved around all of the states with the state Olympic Council. He has done a very good job with getting this “Olympics Unleashed” going …. they are all the things that are missing in rugby. Someone has got to go out and win back the club heartland, win back the states. It’s not rocket science and it’s not dissimilar.”

Coates noted that the only person Carroll himself had been in contact with from Rugby Australia was the presumptive chairman, Peter Wiggs. No one else from the RA has been in touch.

“Everyone is replaceable,” he said. “I don’t say that lightly. He (Carroll) has been outstanding. (But) he still has to be offered a position.”

Like most rugby supporters, Coates simply wants to see the code pull itself together and he is wearying of the endless political squabbles. “Someone do something and get it together,” he said. “It needs someone to take it by the throat.”

Nor have the RA boardroom antics soured Coates’ close relationship with former boss of Rugby Australia John O’Neill, now the chairman of the Star Entertainment Group. The two have worked closely on Brisbane’s Olympic bid, with O’Neill joining Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk on her trip to Lausanne in January this year to help sell the southeast Queensland bid to International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach.

With Wiggs attempting to sell his fellow RA directors on the advantages of triumvirate of himself as chairman, Carroll as chief executive and O’Neill as an incoming board member, there was concern that Coates might have viewed O’Neill as attempting to lure the AOC chief executive back to rugby.

But Coates was adamant that all was well with O’Neill.

“We have a good relationship and he rang me to say that Matt had called him to say that he was very worried about talking to me and John rang me to thank me for how I had approached the thing with Matt. John knows him so very well. He said you’ve nailed it, that’s where his heart is. That’s what he wants to do and that’s where he would be very good in John’s mind. We’ve had that conversation.”