Super coaches pitch to save mass defections

Rival Super Rugby coaches do not believe the player problems in Queensland will spread to their states.

NSW coach Rob Penney says he does not sense that players will leave Australian rugby en masse Picture: Getty Images

As Waratahs coach Rob Penney admitted on Thursday, it is a very unusual environment in Australian rugby and the crystal ball is “pretty murky” at present, but the other three Super Rugby coaches are convinced that Queensland’s present difficulties will not contaminate the game.

Penney, Dan McKellar of the Brumbies and Dave Wessels of the Melbourne Rebels are watching Queensland’s stand-down of Izack Rodda, Harry Hockings and Isaac Lucas with morbid fascination, wondering if the Reds infection will spread, leading to mass desertion of players at the end of the season. And while it is a hazardous task predicting the future at present, all three are adamant it won’t.

“Every year, we generally farewell between 10 and 12 players,” said McKellar. “That’s how professional sport works. Some get opportunities overseas, some are due for a change and others don’t have their contracts renewed. Players have bills and expenses to pay like everyone else. They will feel stressed, pressured and a little bit anxious in times like this. But it’s the same across the world.

“We’ve got a few off-contract but they all want to stay … they love Canberra, they love the Brumbies, they love the program and they want to stay.”

Penney is relying on the same emotions holding sway at the Waratahs. Even though the NSW side made a disappointing start to the year, the COVID-19 lockdown gave the squad and its isolation-bound head coach — now five days into a 14-day lockdown at a Sydney hotel after returning to NZ to be with his family — time to reflect and regroup for the long-delayed second half of the season.

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“Players will make their own choices for their own reasons,” Penney said.

“If they want to go, they’ll go. If they want to stay and be part of something that will be really good going forward and rebuilding the game in Australia and have that as a legacy to be really proud of, then we obviously want them to stay and be part of it.”

Asked whether he feared a mass desertion at the end of the season, Penney replied: “I certainly don’t get that feeling.’’

Wessels, who has spearheaded moves to radically revise some of the laws that are holding rugby back, believes that it is not just rugby that is recalibrating at present, but the whole of society.

“This crisis has taken a real blowtorch to rugby and maybe it is the recession we had to have,” said Wessels, slipping into Paul Keating-mode.

The fact that half a dozen of his players were listed in the media as being set to take up offers in Japan and the USA surprised him not at all. “Anaru Rangi is going to Japan, but he was leaving before COVID, as was Angus Cottrrell. Andrew Kellaway does have interest from Japan, but he also wants to stay and we’ve got to try to make sure he does,” Wessels said.

Wessels was unsurprised by reports that his star winger Marika Koroibete was being targeted — and not just by overseas rugby clubs but also by the NRL.

Of course, all bets — and all contracts, quite possibly — may be off if rugby does not have the money to pay out those contracts in full, but the game has until the end of September, when the agreement for players to accept an average 60 per cent pay cut expires, to sort out its finances. What it needs now, by common consensus, is a return to playing.

Almost certainly the attempts to bring the Japanese Sunwolves into the Australian competition this year will come to nothing. Even if the Australian government grants them an exemption to play, there is the further complication that Japan would be asked to meet some of the costs. The Western Force are almost certain to play, though, again, the financial details are yet to be confirmed.

World Rugby executive committee member Brett Robinson, meanwhile, has stressed that the global governing body does have laws in place to prevent players from being induced to break their contracts and also transfer fees to compensate unions that have had talented young players taken away from them.

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