Uncertain cuts confront Waratahs as season hangs in balance

NSW Rugby Union chairman Roger Davis admits he has no idea how savagely the Waratahs will have to slash their player wages bill.

Harry Johnson-Holmes celebrates scoring a try for the Waratahs against the Rebels on Saturday night Picture: Getty Images

NSW Rugby Union chairman Roger Davis is drawing heart from the lack of NZ media criticism of a 10-team trans-Tasman competition for next season but admits he has no idea how savagely the Waratahs will have to slash their player wages bill until a competition model is formalised.

Even though the Tahs beat Melbourne 38-32 on Saturday night, they could not prevent the Rebels from picking up a vital losing bonus point. Now all they can do is sit and wait for the outcome of Saturday’s final-round match between Melbourne and the Western Force. If the Force can win or even lose by three points or less, the Waratahs will play the qualifying final against Queensland Reds on September 12. But a Rebels victory by four points or more will see them advance to the playoffs for the first time. For NSW, the season will be over.

While they might not be done with 2020 yet, the 2021 season is weighing heavily on NSW officials’ minds.

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“We have no broadcasting agreement, we have no competition, no certainty of money, so we are trying to manage the cash-flow financials of the club so we will survive,” Davis told The Australian. He backed away from the reported figure of a $1 million players’ salary cut but he had no real idea how brutal the reduction would be.

“There are going to be trade-offs. The people who will get squeezed here are the people in the middle. The superstars are fine and the juniors are fine because they cost less. It’s the people in the middle who are really going to suffer.

“We are trying to work through that at the moment. We’ve only had two meetings on what the list should look like in the future and cut our cloth accordingly.”

Yet until the competition model is determined and a broadcast deal negotiated, Davis and all other Super Rugby chairmen will have no idea how much “cloth” they will have to divide.

Even then, the situation could be rescued if private equity firms make up any shortfall in the broadcast deal.

“It’s an option,” Davis said. “Look at the UK. The clubs there walked away with £20 million ($36m) each as a result of a private equity deal done with CVC.

“(But) private equity won’t write a cheque until they see a broadcasting deal and a competition structure. It’s not venture capital.”

On the face of it, the clash between the Brumbies and the Reds at Suncorp on Saturday has nothing riding on it, with both sides having been assigned their final positions entering the finals – Brumbies one, Reds two.

But ACT coach Dan McKellar stated with absolute conviction his side would be fully switched on for the game. “If they want to play in the final, they will be,” he said yesterday.

He felt his side might not have had their minds fully on the job for at least the first quarter against the Force in Canberra on Friday, although it was not until the Brumbies quelled the Force insurrection with a Lenny Ikitau try in the 65th minute that the issue was finally put to bed.

One player McKellar would have no doubts about would be winger Andy Muirhead, whose re-signing through to the end of 2022 was announced today in Canberra. He arrived in 2017 from McKellar’s old Brisbane club, Souths, not having even played NRC but in the time he has been with the Brumbies, his commitment has been exemplary.

“He’s a classic Brumbies success story,” McKellar said.

WA referee Graham Cooper came in for criticism from both sides for his handling of the NSW-Rebels game but, by contrast, Amy Perrett turned in an impressive debut as the first woman to referee at Super Rugby level in the southern hemisphere in the Brumbies-Force clash.