Rugby is broken in Australia but there remains hope it can be revived
The Wallabies are failing, junior numbers are falling, Super Rugby is decaying and franchises are financially bust. Australian rugby is on ‘life support’.
Not so long ago Olympic supremo John Coates was walking around Wallabies coach Eddie Jones’ alma mater Matraville Sports High School in Sydney’s south.
It was an institution that had also produced the three Ella brothers who had left such an indelible mark on rugby in Australia. Coates did not see any future Ellas at the school, what he witnessed was the grassroot problem plaguing rugby.
Coates, then part of the star-studded committee that successfully secured the 2027 rugby World Cup, was touring the school alongside former pupil and fellow committee member Gary Ella.
“When I was appointed to that committee to secure ’27 and ’29 women’s World Cup I went out to Matraville High School with Gary Ella and the headmistress said to us that this was a high performance centre for (A-League club) Sydney FC,” Coates said.
“When I was there what was clear to me was that after soccer, AFL was the next most popular sport, then it was rugby league … and then rugby union … and this was the school that produced the Ellas … not to mention others …
“The biggest problem is; we have lost the schools.”
Australian rugby has many problems but as Coates points out the sports ever-shrinking talent pool is the biggest.
Kids just aren’t playing rugby like they used to. Private schools — once almost solely rugby union nurseries — now house future AFL and rugby league stars.
Soccer is a popular choice of parents and the Matildas’ stunning World Cup run made them the country’s most popular national team — a mantle once held by the Wallabies.
Jones told The Weekend Australian this week that as he saw it, one of rugby’s biggest problems was trying to get the next generation fighting to become a Wallaby and not an AFL or NRL star.
Jones, who toured many regional and local rugby clubs on his return to the job, also noted the disappointment and apathy among the rugby fan base.
“I think there was a general state of feeling that things aren’t good,” Jones said. “Like we need to change, we need to improve. There’s a disconnect between the levels of the game. There’s a lack of hope in Australian rugby.”
It’s Jones who’s been the focus of critics this week — he apologised for their shocking record World Cup loss to Wales last Sunday — for the third time this week chairman Hamish McLennan publicly backed the Wallabies coach despite the calls to sack him.
“Eddie is a world renowned Australian coach and got three separate teams into the finals of three World Cups,” McLennan said. “(Former All Blacks coach) Steve Hansen also believes in Eddie and his capability. My view is we need to think long term.”
This week the drums have been beating not only for Jones’s head but also McLennan’s.
There’s been questions over RA chairman’s leadership and from some quarters speculation about the way that former Wallaby and long-time RA board member Phil Waugh became the organisation’s chief executive.
Former Prime Minister John Howard, who was also part of the bid committee which secured the 2027 World Cup, “strongly” backed the current leaderships of chairman McLennan and Waugh.
“I strongly support, and have a lot of confidence in, Hamish McLennan and Phil Waugh,” Howard told The Weekend Australian in a statement. “They are doing a very good job in challenging circumstances. Like many people, I welcomed the appointment of Eddie Jones as coach.’
McLennan refuted to The Weekend Australian that Waugh was a “captain’s pick”.
“That’s laughable and not fair on him or his distinguished career on and off the field,” McLennan said. “Phil has made a massive contribution since I’ve been on the board and has intimate knowledge of all that is going on. Phil participated in our CEO process and won hands down. The board unanimously chose Phil on his presentation which focused on the reforms needed to fix our pathways and performance. The fact that he went to the same school as me is purely coincidental.”
Former rugby boss John O’Neill, the man who was the architect of the modern game in Australia, says at this time of high emotions that the critics take a deep breath, put down the “AK 47s” aimed at the Rugby Australia board and coach.
“It’s inevitable that the conversation immediately turns to terminating the coach and asking the chairman to resign, that’s predictable, but we just need to put down the AK 47 for a moment,” O’Neill told The Weekend Australian. “And recognise that the hole that Australian rugby finds itself in has been dug over many years.”
“It’s foolish and naive to think that the solutions to the hole we’re in will come from removing a few people. That’s not to say there mustn’t be consequences and you often find that after a rugby World Cup ‘failure’ there are casualties.’’
With private equity not willing to invest in Rugby Australia, the game is facing an ominous future. Super Rugby once drew sell out crowds and TV ratings boomed but now two of those franchises, the Waratahs and Brumbies, are in a perilous financial state.
McLennan did not refute that those franchises were financially struggling but said it was key to reform the high performance system to help, which RA has plans to do, but it needs member backing.
“RA makes contributions to all clubs and we are committed to five professional clubs,” McLennan said, when questioned on the financial health of the Brumbies and Waratahs.
“The most important aspect here is that we restructure the whole system to create efficiencies and drive better performance.
“We need one high performance system program the way Ireland have. We need to seize the moment.”
Ironically the architect of Ireland’s outstanding high performance system is David Nucifora — a man who was shown the door by Australian rugby officials in 2012 — he assumed the Irish post in 2014 and has been lauded for his work. In Ireland, Nucifora implemented the same high performance model the then Australian Rugby Union rejected in late 2012. Nucifora has been on the record saying that centralising the high performance model is key.
O’Neill says a litany of decisions like axing Nucifora have cost the code dearly. He says the game is now on “life support” because of “complacency and hubris”.
“We won the World Cup in ’91. We won a World Cup in ’99. We beat the British and Irish Lions in ’01. We‘ve posted a terrific World Cup profit in 2003 and we had money in the bank,” O’Neill said.
“I think there was a sense that this professional era was a walk in the park and it’s not.”
O’Neill saw the rise of the professional game here, doubled its participation, secured bumper broadcast deals and revenue — in 2004 he then went on to do the same for soccer at the then Football Federation of Australia.
In this time the Socceroos made it to the 2006 FIFA World Cup — the first time it had qualified in 32 years — and FFA revenue grew rapidly to make the organisation sustainable. He’s overseen a broken sport and revived it.
He believes Australian rugby can be revived.
O’Neill notes New Zealand Rugby recently ran an “independent review” and O’Neill said it would be wise for RA officials to look through that report and “copy” some of its recommendations.
“That review into New Zealand Rugby found the constitution and consequent governance structures are not fit for purpose in the modern era,” O’Neill said.
“The review also said New Zealand rugby lacked a leadership structure to solve its problems and it remained too beholden to provincial members. Yet their determination for funding was not sufficiently held to account for their spending … that’s exactly what’s happening in Australia.”
“My passionate plea is that Australian rugby do an independent review. We need to bolt onto this review, looking into the failure of our high performance system, the decay of our pathways and the diminution of the value in the value of our mass entertainment content; that’s the Wallabies and Super Rugby.”
O’Neill is not alone in saying the way rugby is run in this country is broken. There’s a chorus of people lining up and saying the federated model must be done away with and replaced with an AFL-style commission.
In 2012 the then ARU tinkered with the constitution largely around independent directors but made no real change to the voting system so the member unions still hold the cards.
Standing in the way of centralising Australian rugby are the states who refuse to surrender the power.
McLennan told The Weekend Australian it needed to happen now and called for the member unions to unite in the interest of preserving the future of the game.
“I’ve been saying the exact same thing for three years now (we need an independent commission),” McLennan said. “We’ve had multiple independent reports done over the years all saying the same thing. The member unions need to agree to push the centralised model through.”
Coates, arguably the country’s leading administrator said the federated model which rugby currently operates on is dated and old – he moved to overhaul the Olympic structure in Australia in the 1990s.
“We went there with the Australian Olympic Committee in the late 1990s, we used to be the Australian Olympics Federation where each state had one vote the sports didn’t have any vote and we changed that to bring us to line with the IOC requirements … and so we moved from a federated model to an executive appointment by the 35 sports … I think the federated model is not the way to go in Australian sport.”
Former Wallabies captain Phil Kearns, who oversaw securing the 2027 World Cup, said it’s time for self-serving agendas to be shelved.
“I think if this (Wallabies shocking performance in France) is not the signal to centralise our game, then nothing else is,” Kearns said.
“And the states have to think seriously about what they see they’re giving up or centralising rather than what they’re actually centralising. I think they’ll find they’re not losing much at all …”
Most believe the reason why the game hasn’t been centralised is the always looming revolt from the member unions.
With a federated model members can always threaten to call — or can call — an EGM and sack the board if they don’t like a decision, including centralising the game.
It’s not just pressure in the boardrooms. On the field in France, the Wallabies remain a very tight group, despite the pressure and intense criticism.
Normally when teams lose, things start to unravel very quickly, but this has not happened, at least yet.
Publicly, the players and staff are saying they still believe in Jones and his long term vision for Australian rugby.
And it’s the same thing privately, with few grumblings coming out of the camp.
The mood is surprisingly upbeat with players still optimistic there will be a silver lining to come from the hardship they are enduring now. Fullback Andrew Kellaway said the group is tight knit.
“We’ve come together as a group,” he said.
“Willie Skelton’s been fantastic, obviously hurting that he’s not playing but able to put that aside and continue to be the captain that we need him to be and rally the troops and get that stuff out in the air and knock it on the head so that we can get on with Portugal.”
Utility back Ben Donaldson echoed Kellaway’s points.
“We’ve got a very young team as a squad, so for the majority of our squad it’s our first World Cup, it’s a new kind of tournament; we haven’t really been to big tournaments like this before.
“But what I can say is that we’ve stayed tight as group the whole time, the coaches and the players, and we’ve taken a lot of learnings out of it.
“I've really enjoyed it, as much as possible considering the results haven’t gone our way. I’ve learnt a lot from the coaches and players who are older than me and more experienced than me, and so I think it is only going to help in the long run for the whole squad.”
O’Neill said the onus is on the administrators to get the game right for the future generations of Wallabies and Wallaroos.
Twenty-eight years ago O’Neill commissioned a review into the game by Dr Michael Crawford.
O’Neill notes over a hundred “rugby” people were interviewed by Dr Crawford and asked for their view on the game,
“One of Dr Crawford’s observations was that; ‘yes, everybody was well meaning in Australian rugby and had a passionate love for the sport but a lot of them felt that the sport of rugby owes them something,” O’Neill said.
“Dr Crawford said to me; ‘you’ve got to see the world as it is, not as you’d like it to be … and you know what I’ve never forgotten that statement.”
“We’re 26, 27 years into the professional era, and we’ve got to see the world of rugby in Australia as it is, not as we’d like it to be … the reality is it’s behind AFL, NRL, football …. we’re a distant fourth in Australia and now No. 10 in the world.”
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