Rugby Australia to pursue transfer fee system following Reds exodus

Rugby Australia is investigating the use of a system of transfer fees to prevent a talent drain away from Australian shores.

Rugby Australia director Scott Johnson, left, and Queensland Reds coach Brad Thorn. Picture: AAP

The gloves finally are coming off as Rugby Australia is seeking to investigate whether to employ little-used World Rugby regulations to prevent overseas clubs and player agents from inducing players to break their contracts and head offshore.

The issue has been brought to a head by the Queensland Rugby Union following the decision by three senior squad members — Izack Rodda, Isaac Lucas and Harry Hockings — to cut themselves off from the Reds and explore other options, principally in Japan.

The QRU has initiated action requesting RA to seek formal approval from World Rugby so that compensation, in excess of $100,000, can be claimed for Queensland’s role in developing the trio.

But, as The Australian reported last month, RA’s director of rugby, Scott Johnson, has gone on to the front foot, calling on World Rugby to put in place a system of transfer fees to stop overseas clubs or agents profiting from the work done to develop young stars.

On Thursday Johnson led a meeting of the general managers of high performance for the Super Rugby states to drill down into the consequences — some unintended — of a transfer fee system, with the intention of taking those findings to a summit of RA boss Rob Clarke and Super Rugby CEOs.

World Rugby executive committee member Brett Robinson has confirmed that the sport’s international governing body does have the regulations in place to prevent players being induced to break their contracts, and also allow transfer fees to compensate unions that have talented young players taken away from them.

“It is something that there are regulations around but no one has pursued them aggressively,” Robinson said last month. “But there is definitely a policy there to support that if unions choose to act.”

That, indeed, will be one of the first things on Johnson’s discovery list.

“There must be a reason why this legislation has lain dormant,” Johnson said. “It may be that we were naive, it may be because it was a simpler world then … they may be all the reasons. But if we open it up because we feel it is the right time to do it, then we have to understand what we are getting into.”

Rewind the clock and watch Super Rugby classics with Kayo. New to Kayo? Get your free trial and start streaming instantly >

Yet if Australia ultimately is reduced to a raw producer of talent for foreign markets, it should be aware that Robinson’s claim that World Rugby does offer access to compensation is true. “Compensation for a player’s training and development shall be paid by the rugby body or club to which the player is proposing to move to the player’s home union,” reads regulation 4.7.9.

The World Rugby Handbook also spells out the penalties that can apply to a club or agent who induces a player to leave a union with which he has signed a written agreement.

In the case of a club being found guilty of breaching this regulation, the penalties that World Rugby can impose range from a mere caution, to match suspensions, cancellation or refusal to register the player wrongfully approached, to outright expulsion.

But it is the penalties that can be applied to any agent who is found to have breached the non-inducement clause that most excites Johnson and, no doubt, QRU chief executive David Hanham. The penalties listed under regulation 5.1.10 range from a caution, to a suspension of the agent, to the withdrawal of entitlement to act as an agent.

Almost certainly no action can be taken against any club or individual in the case of Hockings, who was in the final year of his contract and therefore, under the regulations, fully entitled to be approached.

Rodda and Lucas, however, were not covered by the year-long clause, nor did any club or agent seek the written permission of the QRU to approach them.

RA is pursuing only international transfers but Queensland and NSW, who produce the bulk of Australia’s players, will be pressing for the transfer fee system to also be applied domestically.

“If they get their talent ID right, they should get the first pick that they want and if people have to go (interstate) because they are the third-best 10 and that person overachieves, that’s a good thing,” Johnson said. “They (NSW and Queensland) do a wonderful job of producing them and we are grateful for it but they are not going to keep everyone.”