Precious bequest for Australian rugby

There is no shortage of interest in how the money Paul Ramsay allocated to the game he loved is going to be spent.

The late Paul Ramsay, founder and chairman of Ramsay Health Care.

The bequest represents only a tiny sliver of the $3.3 billion that billionaire philanthropist Paul Ramsay left to charity on his death in May 2014, but these are tough times in Australian rugby and every dollar is precious.

So there is no shortage of interest in how the money Ramsay allocated to the game he loved from his school days at St Ignatius College, Riverview — understood to be $350,000 a year for five years — will be spent. Even the Australian Rugby Union, desperate for good news, is anxious to be involved, which accounts for the presence of chief executive Bill Pulver at today’s meeting in Brisbane with the Ramsay Foundation and trustees of the rugby fund, Wallabies Paul McLean, Ken Wright and Dick Marks.

Indications are the ARU wanted to pool the money and use it in conjunction with other programs it is running, but it is understood the bequest is to be ring-fenced specifically for grassroots development in schools.

And the prevailing thinking of the trustees is that, rather than spread it over a number of projects where it might achieve only limited results, the best use of it would be to concentrate it on a single scheme.

In the end, the recommended project to be put to the meeting is one that will address the decline of rugby in schools, particularly in the face of AFL’s encroachment. As ever, it will rely heavily on volunteers. Where teams have dropped off in schools and some competitions have even been forced to close, the Ramsay Foundation will underwrite support systems to revive them.

Kits and practice gear will be provided, along with referees. There won’t be an elaborate infrastructure surrounding the project. If a teacher or other volunteer wants help setting up rugby teams, he need only apply for assistance. If approved, help will be delivered in kind. And if, for example, a school is able to organise its own referees, for example, then the thinking is that they will be refunded the cash equivalent of arranging them.

Significantly, mainstream rugby organisations and professional rugby bureaucrats are being kept as far removed from the money as possible. Indeed, the purpose is to keep the bureaucrats out and have only school people involved.

In a way, today’s expected heads of agreement meeting is a microcosm of the larger problems the ARU confronts as it attempts to restructure the game after it culls one of its five Super Rugby teams. It has become locked into the problem of how the game can be funded, rather than how the game can be made to work, particularly if it re-engaged the vast army of presently-disaffected volunteers.