While others sports strategise our game plummets further into the mire

The current administrators of Rugby Australia need to come up with a plan for the future or get out of the way.

Rob Clarke this week stepped into the hot seat as interim chief executive of Rugby Australia Picture: AAP

Just when we thought that our great game was finally getting its act together, there’s more turmoil with the news that our proposed saviour, Peter Wiggs had resigned from his short tenure at Rugby Australia.

It was because Wiggs couldn’t get the board to agree to his selection of Matt Carroll as the new CEO. After all Carroll has spent most of his working life in and around rugby and on the surface was probably an ideal candidate to guide the code out of its current doldrums.

Now we have former RA employee Rob Clarke being anointed by chairman Paul McLean to lead the code out of this chaos.

All I can say to both McLean and Clarke is good luck!

Who in their right mind would want to go anywhere near rugby in its current state because the code has managed to tilt from one disaster to another and I have no doubt rugby will manage to embarrass itself again before some sort of stability finally emerges, but will it be too late?

Most of the leading sporting bodies around the world are saying that after the coronavirus pandemic has passed it will be the ideal time to look at every aspect of their operations and make those changes to their structure that have outserved their use.

But rather than get highly intelligent people together to talk about the future and what is best for their sport over the next 20 or 30 years, rugby seems content on tearing itself apart.

Rugby in Australia has struggled over the past 10 years, with the last two in particular the pinnacle of ineptness, which unfortunately highlights how little the game has accomplished.

Our trophy cabinet is all but empty, the Israel Folau fiasco and the removal of Michael Cheika, the dispute with RUPA over player payments, the debacle around the television rights which is very much still a work in progress, the open revolt from past Wallaby captains, RA taking a bailout to survive from World Rugby and the resignation of Raelene Castle doesn’t look encouraging as the sport continues to stumble.

I always thought that rugby was a team sport and in times of trouble or duress we would all come together as one to help get us over the line.

Obviously the current RA board, whoever these mystery board members are, should assemble and either come up with a clear path for the future of rugby or if they can’t do it themselves then assemble those like Wiggs, Carroll, Clarke, McLean and others who have the ability and experience to get us through this continuing drama.

The current team, in every aspect, simply isn’t performing and even though I have been reluctant to acknowledge the harsh criticism of RA by Alan Jones, among many others, he has at least highlighted the many dysfunctional machinations of rugby in 2020 and something has to be done otherwise we will continue to be at the bottom of sport in Australia.

We need positive action but sadly all we seem to be doing is talking, going around in circles and basically going nowhere.

I can’t understand why it has taken the state unions so long to respond to this current situation and until this week they have been notoriously silent, perhaps preferring to stay out of the way until the turmoil abates.

From my playing days the state unions always had a powerful voice and no doubt their opinions have been reduced because of their reliance on RA’s financial support but with the exception of the NSWRU, they are finally standing up and voicing their support for McLean.

Rugby needs an open forum and it needs it sooner rather than later in order to take advice from those intelligent men and women that I spoke about earlier, state unions CEOs and CFOs, team coaches past and present, key sponsors, grassroots rugby representatives, a selective number of highly forthright media personalities including Alan Jones and perhaps some fans.

If rugby is going to survive or be restructured beyond the pandemic we need to team up together rather than ripping each other apart, after all this isn’t rugby the game they play in heaven!