'Rule the game': Farr-Jones urges Rugby Australia to seize control

Major governance reform is high on the agenda for Australian rugby with former Wallabies captain Nick Farr-Jones revealing he urged senior officials to adopt a model in which Rugby Australia would "rule the game".

Farr-Jones and former Wallaby Phil Kearns, who have spearheaded a high-profile campaign for change over the past week, met with RA executive chairman Paul McLean and influential new director Peter Wiggs on Monday to discuss the group's calls for major reform.

As the board prepared to meet on Friday to discuss an interim replacement for departed chief executive Raelene Castle, Farr-Jones, a former NSW Rugby chairman, told a West Australian podcast he urged Wiggs and McLean to adopt a New Zealand-style centralised model.

"The constitution of rugby has to change," Farr-Jones told The Rugby Wrap.

"I said, 'we have to go down the NZ Rugby approach, which they adopted when the game went professional in 1996. We have to make sure Rugby Australia actually does rule the game and the franchises basically align to them in relation to everyone they employ in their support structures'."

When the hosts asked how the idea was received by McLean and Wiggs, he said: "It went down well."

Separately, a RA board source has told the Herald the coronavirus pandemic had given the organisation fresh impetus to drive change.

Wiggs, who has taken control of the financial and broadcasting aspects of the business following Castle's resignation, told the Super Rugby chairmen last week that he was planning for a worst-case scenario in which the game received no further revenue this year, despite the fact there are still strong indications some form of a domestic Super Rugby competition will be played in July. Castle previously put a $120 million price tag on that scenario.

But reform is a sensitive issue, with the major states NSW and Queensland routinely threatened by talk of centralisation, or alignment. Under the Rugby Australia constitution, as voting members with more than 50,000 participants, they effectively enjoy a collective controlling vote on any issue requiring constitutional change.

Departed chief executive Raelene Castle scored a major victory in high-performance alignment, securing agreement from the four Australian Super Rugby sides on a national model with director of rugby Scott Johnson at the top, a national athletic performance head in Dean Benton and broadly aligned athletic performance programs in all the states.

But further reform along the path of centralisation will be a sensitive issue requiring a delicate hand and strong arguments that any proposed change will benefit the game as a whole, and not just entrench RA's power.

The last major reforms occurred on the back of the Mark Arbib-authored report Strengthening the Governance of Australian Rugby (Arbib Review) written in 2012. The then-Australian Rugby Union, run by chief executive John O'Neill and chairman Michael Hawker, adopted its key recommendations, changing the structure of the board from a representative model - where the states and member unions were allocated seats - to an independent directors model and rejigging the voting rights of all its members.

But a second RA-commissioned review one year later, when Bill Pulver took over from O'Neill, noted that the Arbib Review changes did not go far enough.

"Whilst the 2013 ARU restructure has halved normalised deficits, structural change across all of rugby is required to restore a sustainable financial model," the report's authors Saltbush Capital Markets noted. "The federated structure of Australian Rugby, developed in the amateur era, is not a sound basis for running an efficient business."

An even earlier report, written in 2009 by consultant Michael Crawford, recommended the creation of a "Super Rugby Conference Board" to give the Super Rugby teams a voice on matters of competition structure and co-ordinated approaches on marketing and sponsorship. That concept has resurfaced on numerous occasions, most notably at the 2019 annual general meeting when the Queensland and NSW chairmen successfully secured a promise from then-RA chairman Cameron Clyne for a 'Super Rugby Commission' to be set up.

It appears the centralisation and reform issue will again preoccupy the game's power brokers, once some form of a competition is agreed upon and given clearance for later this year and a broadcast deal has been locked in for 2021.

Farr-Jones noted that centralisation did not help the Western Force, which was cut from Australia's Super Rugby footprint in 2017. The process started when the ARU bought back the Super Rugby licence from Rugby WA in 2016, folding it completely a year later in the face of a solvency crisis confronting the game.

But the former Test captain said he believed the states should have a voice at the table under any plans.

"You would have representation - this is just NFJ's view - and a strong voice at the table," he said. "We've understood that in the last two, three, four years, we've somehow blown our game up and we need to bring everyone to the table, cut a lot of the slack we've had in the game out - sadly, for some people - and we need to change the culture."

He also said Rugby Australia should be run on 40 people, not the 150-odd staff currently employed at Moore Park, and that Super Rugby teams needed general managers instead of chief executives.