‘One of the great tragedies of rugby‘s sporting history’
Andrew Forrest opens up on the Western Force being booted out, and his 2017 meeting with ARU powerbrokers.
Billionaire Andrew Forrest has lifted the lid on his explosive meeting with Australian rugby powerbrokers as he desperately tried to save the Western Force.
In Episode 4 of The Australian’s new podcast The Breakdown, Forrest has exclusively spoken about the meeting in Adelaide in 2017 which would see the Australian Rugby Union walk away from a $50 million offer to revive the game’s grassroots and keep the Western Force in the competition.
“If you’re in pursuit of bad corporate governance, you are only worried about yourself, then my offer to help fund the sport from the ground up to make good what had been neglected was just of no interest,” Forrest said.
“And that, of course, was one of the great tragedies of rugby’s sporting history, that decision. And rugby, as you know, continue to go from bad to worse over the ensuing years.”
Episode 4 of The Breakdown — ‘Where did the money go?’ — touches on years of flawed governance and gives an insight in one of the most disturbing chapters in rugby history.
Forrest tells The Breakdown his meeting with rugby officials in 2017 was futile before it began.
“I felt that I’d met with people who weren’t sincere, who had come to that meeting with the result already cooked, and I just had to be at that meeting because it would have looked too bad for them to have not attended,” Forrest said of the meeting.
“And when I made the offer to meet them in Adelaide, then they felt they just had to do it. But you could tell I didn’t really want to be there.”
Episode 4 covers the years from 2005, as Australian rugby dealt with the aftermath of 2003’s World Cup loss. Chief executive Gary Flowers both came into the game with big plans for growing the code and capitalising on its popularity, as well as launching a national competition which lasted a year.
The Australian Rugby Championship was deeply controversial within the game, with former Wallabies captain Nick Farr-Jones telling The Breakdown the ARC “torched eight million dollars in the first year, before it was abandoned. That … wastage of money was terrible.”
Former CEO John O’Neill was brought back from 2007 to 2012 and in 2013 businessman Bill Pulver came into the top job declaring he wanted the game to be more exciting, more professional and more popular.
Financial difficulties and state-versus-state wrangling were putting pressure on the code’s finances and in 2014 the ARU introduced a National Participation Fee on all players from senior players down to the under-6s.
Pulver introduced another national competition – the National Rugby Championship – which also failed to thrive.
Nick Farr-Jones stood down as chairman of NSW Rugby in 2015 in frustration at the code’s troubles, including what he perceived as a failure to adequately fund club and grassroots rugby.
He told The Breakdown: “I couldn’t be a part of the game, the professional game, going to matches and what have you without some bitterness, you know, a taste of bitterness.”
In the meeting with the ARU about the Western Force’s departure, Andrew Forrest said he believed: “nothing was going to change their mind from the cooked result, which they said was, you know, made out of a comprehensive spreadsheet of variables which helped them select which team to cut.
“They just that cooked result, which is what brought-in governance does. And when we came along and said, ‘well, apart from the fact that the Western Force just beat Sydney (NSW) and smashed Melbourne and is the fastest growing club in Australia with the second largest support base, we would be prepared to do what you have not done.
“We would be prepared to make good what you have neglected, which is grassroots, which is building support from the grass up.”
Listen to more from Forrest, former administrator including Gary Flowers and John O’Neill, former broadcast executive David Leckie, award-winning business writer John Stensholt and former Wallabies coach and broadcaster Alan Jones in Episode 4 of The Breakdown available exclusively on The Australian’s app.
Come back tomorrow for Episode 5: Folau and the First Lady
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