How Kearns went from outspoken critic to 2027 Rugby World Cup hero

Over a beer at Sydney’s Blues Point Hotel in July 2020, Hamish McLennan made the defining move of his stewardship of Rugby Australia.

In simple terms, he gave a mate a job. But the job wasn’t any old job and the mate was Phil Kearns, World Cup-winning Wallabies great and recent, sharp thorn in the side of RA.

McLennan wanted Kearns to head up Australia’s bid to host the 2027 Rugby World Cup.

“He and I had already spoken because I was interested in the CEO job,” Kearns recalls. “He asked me to meet him at the Blues Point pub and when we got there he said, ‘I’ve got a better job for you’ and I thought, ‘Here we go’. But he talked me through it and I said, ‘You’re right, I’m keen’. He’d already lined up the bid advisory board members and I thought it was a great opportunity.”

It was a gutsy move from McLennan. Just three months earlier, Kearns had led the infamous captain’s insurgency against McLennan’s predecessor, Paul McLean, and then-chief executive Raelene Castle, calling on them to “stand aside” for the good of the game in an open letter signed by some of the game’s leading lights.

It was the coup de grace in Australian rugby’s worst period of bloodletting, brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic’s global shutdown of sport, which laid bare rugby’s parlous finances.

Phil Kearns and Hamish McLennan talk to the media in London in November as they ramp up Australia’s World Cup bid.Credit: Getty

It also typified the game’s deep divisions, with a number of high-profile captains, including John Eales, Mark Loane and Tony Shaw criticising Kearns and the other signatories, such as Nick Farr-Jones, for what they viewed as a vicious and unnecessary move on one of their own.

Kearns, in particular, was portrayed as bitter after losing out to Castle for the top job in 2017. There were also questions raised about whether he was doing the bidding of his former employers, Foxtel, who were angered when Rugby Australia took its broadcast rights to market at the end of 2019.

However, McLennan saw the potential. Within a week of taking on the chairman’s role, he had put together a bid advisory board of top Australian business, rugby and political figures, including former British Airways boss Sir Rod Eddington, former prime minister John Howard, Wallabies great Eales and former governor general Sir Peter Cosgrove.

He needed someone to not just run the bid, but sell it at home and abroad.

Phil Kearns was part of two World Cup-winning Australian sides, in 1991 (pictured with Michael Lynagh) and 1999.Credit: Getty

“I’d known Phil for a long time, and he was clearly upset about where the game was heading in Australia, via the captains’ letter and all that,” he says. “I really admired his tenacity and desire to reinstall the golden days in Australia. It was clear to me that if we harnessed that energy that he could play an instrumental role in us winning the bid.”

In Kearns, McLennan had a charismatic figure. Overseas, the Randwick hooker and World Cup-winning Wallaby is well known and universally liked. There was also upside in bringing an outspoken critic into the fold.

“Once you’ve been lucky enough to be in the position I’ve been in as a Wallaby, it never leaves you, the passion for the game.”

Phil Kearns

“I always knew Kearnsy had immense talent and the bid was about how do we get all the various factions all focused on a really positive outcome. That role perfectly suited him,” McLennan says.

“There’s truth everywhere. [The captains] felt there were aspects of the game that weren’t being managed properly, and they were right. You could argue whether it should have been so public and there was a lot of dirty linen that was aired but, at the end of the day, they felt things had reached a crisis point.”

For his part, Kearns never saw the appointment as silencing a critic. Fiercely independent, he says he has only ever acted out of love for the game and duty to protect its future.

“Nothing that I’ve done has been anything particularly personal about people,” he says. “It’s about the future of the game and making sure it’s strong. We’ve got some special things in our game that are worth protecting and nurturing, like the values of the game, the importance of respect and how that was formed, as well as the international dimension to rugby.”

Rugby Australia’s successful bid team in Dublin (from left) Patrick Eyers, Phil Kearns, Pip Marlow, Andy Marinos, Hamish McLennan, Brett Robinson and Anthony French.

He got to work quickly, although the pandemic and shifting sands in global sport radically altered the job description. What started as a schmoozing roadshow brief, with Kearns and McLennan travelling the world to cajole support among World Rugby’s powerful blocs, ended in a much more technical process.

McLennan, Kearns, RA boss Andy Marinos and bid executive Anthony French pitched Australia as a safe pair of hands, with the infrastructure and hosting track record to deliver a quality tournament and a robust profit for World Rugby. They deployed Kearns to sell the vision. His skill on his feet, ease among rugby’s elite and unimpeachable playing record did the trick, with Australia awarded preferred bidder status late last year and the hosting rights this week.

However, the 42-Test hooker’s passion project has been positioning the game’s grassroots to reap the rewards of an expected $100 million windfall during the next five years. In his words, “Legacy isn’t about what happens after the World Cup, it’s about what happens leading into it”.

“We started a series of town hall events around Australia on Zoom during the pandemic,” Kearns says. “We had 70 log on for our first one, and we had 500 register for one last week.

“People really see this as a turning point. There’s already a better vibe around the game and the bid has done quite a bit for that. The Wallabies, in their performances over the last 18 months, have shown a lot more ticker. It’s an immature team maturing, but you can see the ticker and the public picks up on that.”

Kearns is particularly invested in a pilot legacy program designed to stabilise and revitalise community rugby clubs around the country with a “toolkit” to help the game’s grassroots volunteers implement best practice on their patches, plus RA’s stated aim of growing the game by 30,000 new participants.

Now running real estate company AV Jennings, Kearns finishes up with RA at the end of the month as tournament planning enters a new phase with a joint-venture board to be chaired and run by new faces.

“Do I see myself as an insider now?” he asks. “Probably more than I was before. But after I’ve finished this role at the end of this month, I’m out again. If they want me to play some sort of role in the future, I’d be happy to look at it. Once you’ve been lucky enough to be in the position I’ve been in as a Wallaby, it never leaves you, the passion for the game.”

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