John O’Neill calls for rugby officials to show more ambition

The former Rugby Australia boss is tired of the lack of ambition in the game and wants the code to fix the glaring mistake made by past Waratahs administrators.

The face of Australian rugby, Joseph Suaalii, is a product of a region of Sydney that has been largely ignored by the game’s administrators Picture: Getty Images

Former long-serving rugby union boss John O’Neill says while the heartbeat of the game is alive in its traditional heartlands, the born-to-rule mentality of past officials has led to it ignoring its biggest growth opportunity in western Sydney.

In a wide-ranging interview, O’Neill said CommBank Stadium in Parramatta should have been a crucial stop in the British & Irish Lions tour which begins next month, and there should be a Super Rugby team in Western Sydney to attract more Polynesian talent to the game.

The man who oversaw Australian rugby union’s most successful era, when the Wallabies won all the silverware on offer, including the 1999 World Cup, a historic British & Irish Lions victory on home soil in 2001 and posted a record $44.5m profit from the 2003 World Cup, believes more should be done to attract Polynesian players.

“To not have a Super Rugby team in western Sydney, is an oversight,” O’Neill said. “And not having a British & Irish Lions game in Parramatta next month, I think that’s a real missed opportunity. I personally find it pretty incomprehensible.

“And instead of the First Nations and Pasifika match being played in Melbourne, Parramatta would have been ideal”.

In his first extensive interview since his high-profile resignation as Star Casino chairman – with the crisis stricken casino subjected to an independent inquiry – O’Neill also added that Super Rugby needed a team from Japan to capitalise on both rugby and commercial opportunities.

Former chief executive of the then Australian Rugby Union (now Rugby Australia), John O’Neill

He said while the code struggles to expand, and Super Rugby has constricted over the years, at the game’s grassroots it’s thriving.

O’Neill last week was invited to the 125-year celebration of his old club, the Eastern Suburbs Rugby club, and was inspired by president Dave Allen’s stirring speech about how victories can unite and in turn how a team can become “the centre of the universe” for people.

“There has been a lot of doom and gloom around rugby at the elite level for many years but it actually still thrives at the community club level,” O’Neill said.

“It still exists, but success isn’t an accident. And the success Easts is now enjoying, they won both the club championship and the premiership for the first time in 55 years … if you scratch the surface, you’ll find good administrators – like Dave Allen – go hand in glove with performance on the field.

“If you elevate yourself to the national level to Rugby Australia and the Wallabies, that magnet to get people back to the game, to get the crowds back, to get the enjoyment back, is fundamentally and undeniably about the Wallabies winning – and having great administrators hand-in-glove with great players, great teams, great coaches – it is crucial.”

While at an elite level he would like to see a second Sydney Super Rugby team, with dedicated players’ pathways in western Sydney – where the Wallabies’ $5m marquee man Joseph Aukuso Suaalii was born and raised – he also hopes for Rugby Australia’s head office to become more ambitious.

In their strategic plan announced last December, RA announced it would like to win this year’s British & Irish Lions series, and they have a goal to win the Bledisloe Cup and Rugby Championship – every second year.

The Wallabies are currently ranked No. 8 in the world but RA’s plan details the aim to be a World No.1 rugby nation again by 2029.

“I read that part of the huge strategic vision for the game was to beat the All Blacks every second year,” O’Neill said. “That really seems to many people to be a very low bar to set. Surely, the ambition is to become the No.1 team in the world. And how do you achieve that?

“You don’t achieve that through starting with low-bar expectations. The ambitions have to be a real stretch.”

The west neglected

Tatafu Polota-Nau is a high profile Wallaby from Sydney’s west but John O’Neill believes there should be more

O’Neill, who was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 2015 for his services to rugby and soccer, would like to see the game’s administrators push out to western Sydney as soon as possible.

During his 14 years in charge of Australian rugby, a second Sydney Super Rugby franchise was floated but a number of NSW power­brokers opposed it.

O’Neill said a “born to rule” attitude had snuffed any idea of capitalising on an area that has proven to be a blockbuster rugby league nursery.

The Penrith Panthers’ recent four straight NRL premierships was founded on an area where over 9000 junior players are registered to play rugby league.

But as O’Neill notes, many Polynesian families also have strong ties to rugby union and RA should move to capitalise on this.

“In the past there’s been a really hostile reaction from NSW Rugby Union,“ O’Neill said. “I think it’s that ‘born to rule’ mentality, that ‘we are the NSW team – we are the Sydney team, and this is our territory’, and that’s where RA needs to intervene and … say ‘Well, you’re only one franchise in our single biggest market and frankly we need at least two franchises because we’re losing the battle for the hearts and minds of rugby fans’.

“Why haven’t they done anything? I think it’s the last vestiges of people not comprehending that 30 years ago, when the game became professional, the genie was let out of the bottle, and you can’t put it back in. We’ve gone from the days of an annual interstate clash, NSW versus Queensland, to these Super Rugby franchises, and then you look at rugby league there’s 17 franchises – with eight teams in Sydney. We’re down to four in Australia … not to have a rugby presence in western Sydney, it’s negligence.”

‘Aussies love winners’

The scoreboard announces the world record crowd at the Bledisloe Cup in 2000, an era when the sport was booming. Picture: Brett Faulkner.

After the Wallabies 1999’ World Cup win, the game in this country was flying. At Stadium Australia in 2000, the Wallabies team led by captain John Eales attracted a crowd of 110,000.

“We could have sold another 80,000 tickets; we had demand for close to 200,000,” O’Neill said.

While the 2003 World Cup, which Australia narrowly lost, was an enormous success, the country has not been able to regain its grip on the market since then.

The billion-dollar sports – the “colossal codes” of the NRL and AFL – have bounded ahead and the Matildas have replaced the Wallabies as the preferred national team (and Australia’s most valuable brand).

O’Neill said many of rugby union’s problems could be solved simply by winning. He believes that the current front office should have bigger immediate goals rather than winning against the All Blacks every second year and aiming to be World No. 1 by 2029.

“Rugby’s points of difference have to be elevated more than ever before,” he said. “There’s a lot of cheering in the street about a Lions tour and a Rugby World Cup in 2027, and undoubtedly, as Australia does each and every time, we’ll host great events.

“But Australians love winners. When the Lions came in 2001, we were the best team in the world. We’d been the best team in the world for three years.

“Here in 2025 we’re ranked eighth in the world, and the British & Irish Lions are selected from the four nations, including England, Ireland and Scotland who are all ranked higher than us. There’s only Wales who are ranked behind us. So that’s an important context.

John Eales holds the World Cup in 1999

“However, I am confident we can put a competitive team on the paddock. I think Joe Schmidt is a great, great coach. But winning consistently needs to be a habit and a mindset. The selectors will name a squad of our best 23 players who have to understand that ­losing is not an option.”

“Even the tour last year, which (showed) there’s some really positive signs, some green shoots, and while we beat England and Wales, we were beaten by Scotland and Ireland.

“There’s nothing to be gained now by looking in the rear-view mirror. But the stats don’t lie. Our cupboard is pretty bare of silverware. And at the Super Rugby level, in nearly 30 odd years we’ve only won it four times. Again. I’d be accused of death riding Australian rugby but I am the first person to say that it’s time to be super ambitious and do whatever it takes, because … to host a World Cup in two years time … we’ve got to be ­really, really competitive.

We’ve got to be without a shadow of a doubt. We have to be at least a semi final chance.”

‘Rugby now like soccer’

Wallabies captain at the last World Cup, Will Skelton, is one of several high profile players plying their trade overseas PictureL Getty Images

In 1995, O’Neill was there for the dawn of professionalism in rugby union. He was there on the frontline, as a freshly minted CEO, soon after a massive 10-year $US550m deal between SANZAAR and News Limited (now News Corp) was signed. Back then rugby league’s Super League war and a potential rebel rugby competition, the WRC, drove up wages.

“The ARU had to pay big time to keep their players. These guys went from nothing to $350,000 a season … they had two aces in the Super League and WRC,” O’Neill writes in his book It’s Only a Game.

But today’s Australian players are departing overseas to make more money playing in French and Japanese rugby union, as a slimmed down Super Rugby now struggles for the TV dollars and the audience it once held.

After he left RA in 2004, O’Neill ran the Football Federation of Australia overseeing the Socceroos’ epic qualifying win in 2005 that put the national team into its first World Cup in 32 years.

Having run the FFA, he understands the complications of retaining players who are lured overseas by dollars and elite competitions.

“Rugby has become more and more like soccer,” he said. “The fundamental point is the players will go where the money is.

“They want to play for Australia, to wear the gold jersey, but now the pre-eminent position SANZAAR enjoyed in that it owns its competitions and players has been whittled away, and now there is a tension that won’t go away … a risk we’ll lose more and more players.

“It isn’t as bad as football, but the trend is there, it creates a whole lot of risks and the need for the administrators to be to be creative and innovative, because can you imagine if all of our best players are playing overseas, same for New Zealand, what does that do to Super Rugby?”

“It’s halcyon days of watching the best players in the world playing each other are gone. But if our financial resources aren’t sufficiently strong … you can’t blame the players. Maybe there’s an inevitability about it but the consequences need to be understood that you can do what South Africa does, and players go and play anywhere, just bring them back for World Cups or whatever.

“I’m sure people running rugby in Australia understand it. But one of the advantages we enjoyed for the first 10 years of the sport, and even probably for the first 15, is that we had the world’s best talent playing in Super Rugby.”

Beasties’ success

The Beasties, a foundation club from Sydney’s east, is booming

O’Neill was heartened by the turnout for the “Beasties” (Easts). He said by 10pm, the black-tie function – dominated by young people, “average age well under 30 – turned into a rock concert”.

“This was a celebration of a foundation club, founded in 1900 before rugby league even started (in Australia) – a year after Australia played its first ever test against the British Isles team – and the ­uplifting aspect of the night was the sheer the vibrancy of the ­occasion,” O’Neill said.

Along with Dave Allen’s speech, another highlight was also former Wallaby and Easts player Tim Gavin’s toast.

“The toast of the club was given by Tim Gavin, former Wallaby great – again, through both speeches, you couldn’t hear a pin drop,” O’Neill said.

“They were so respectful. Again, Tim Gavin hit all the right messages about what the club meant to him, joining the club straight out of Scot’s College, and although he went on to be a great Wallaby, the grassroots of rugby was so close to his heart. The respect and attention for the speeches was terrific but thereafter it was one great party with a rock concert atmosphere!”

O’Neill says winning starts when the vision is right and there is a “unity of purpose that everyone has signed up for”.

He deeply hopes only for success for the game that he ran for 14 years and which is now “at the crossroads” again. “We have had too many false dawns. Now, right here in 2025, it’s time,” O’Neill said. “It’s an old truism; winning is an incredibly significant cure for all the ills.”