Why more ‘rugby IQ’ isn’t the fix a teetering sport needs

Is Hamish McLennan, the former chairman of Rugby Australia, the blameless victim of an orchestrated smear campaign?

Or is he the victim of his own gargantuan ego and the belief that nobody can save rugby in Australia except him?

I’d say the latter.

For as soon as any leader starts denying the consensus and decreeing “captain’s picks”, they’d better be sure the choices they make are the best ones.

Once six state union members of Rugby Australia became signatories to a letter expressing no confidence in McLennan’s leadership, the notion that he nonetheless remained the correct person to continue as chairman was untenable.

Even if McLennan could have carried the numbers if those state unions had forced a vote at an annual general meeting, the mortal wound was inflicted as soon as those state unions declared their united hand.

Hamish McLennan on 2GB radio this week.Credit: Kate Geraghty

A vote of tepid confidence is actually a vote that a person is no longer fit to lead.

McLennan became a dead man walking once the majority of the state unions had expressed an appetite for carnage. But he was the walking dead even before that.

It was over for him by the time the Wallabies were on the plane home from Charles de Gaulle Airport, once McLennan’s man, Eddie Jones, started sniffing around the Japan coaching job and even as soon as McLennan backed Jones for the Wallabies job in the first place.

Hamish McLennan was a dead man walking all of these times. And so he was when he decided to go all-in on poaching Joseph Suaalii on a $1.6 million-a-year deal and also when he attempted to pay about $1.6 million over two years to acquire the services of fellow Rooster Angus Crichton.

Had the Crichton coup come off, McLennan would have had RA paying 3 per cent of the company’s gross revenue on two untried quantities. That’s not good business.

Truth is, Hamish McLennan was a dead man walking even before he was walking, in a rugby sense. The only interesting things RA has actually done in the past five years all revolve around disaster. Raelene Castle’s flagrant disregard for procedural fairness and attempted sacking of Israel Folau happened almost five years ago now; not many sensible decisions have been made since.

But will Hamish McLennan’s departure make any significant difference? Those with the collective voting power might be momentarily appeased, but that period won’t last any longer than it takes the body politic of the sport to understand that the removal of a high-profile and domineering chairman won’t ever serve as a magic pill.

The body of Australian rugby is more riddled with disease than that. RA is the archetypal gravy train, running on biscuit wheels. Hamish McLennan’s head on a stick won’t achieve much at all, besides the sugar hit. RA’s issues are more structural – its governance is insular, inward-looking, and influenced. There’s a lack of independent thinking in the room.

Eddie Jones and his coaching staff during the failed World Cup campaign.Credit: Getty

McLennan’s eventual removal was a board decision; the board appoints the chair after all. The messaging is that this decision was unanimous. It was inevitably the correct decision, but it’s a fallacy to say the decisions for which McLennan has been crucified were his alone.

Decisions must have been authorised and approved by at least a majority of directors. So where’s the wider accountability? There’s none. It’s as if the rest of the board considers McLennan a fair sacrifice.

RA would do very well to have a majority of its directors with NO knowledge or experience of the sport. That knowledge is largely unnecessary for directors. That’s what senior management is for.

Also why, in 2023, is the CEO of RA also a director, rather than the person who is answerable to the board. That’s 1970s sports governance writ large.

‘It’s a fallacy to say the decisions for which McLennan has been crucified were his alone.’

It’s tough to cede power. Nobody actually prefers change. But non-rugby people mustn’t be feared. Or loathed. In my experience, one simply doesn’t require an intimate knowledge of the peculiarities of a particular sport to have the potential to make a huge difference in the management of that sport.

In my experience, the directors who achieve far greater things are those with a broad knowledge of sport as a whole and a good dose of common sense. Running Rugby Australia isn’t rocket science, but it requires fresh brains and new thinking from entirely outside the box.

If RA is to succeed in dragging rugby in Australia back from the brink, it must be a broader church. Removing the former chairman (thus provoking him to resign as a director) and installing a former Wallaby as his replacement might be the best interim fix available, but it won’t achieve anything of significance in the long run.

What RA should do is this. First, its board should comprise a majority of directors from outside the sport, who bring desperately needed professional skills and different experiences but definitely not just more “Rugby IQ”, whatever that actually means.

Former Rugby Australia chairman Hamish McLennan.Credit: Edwina Pickles

Second, the structure of the company’s board must be altered, so the CEO is removed from being a board member. There’s no need in 2023 for the existing structure, under which the CEO is appointed as the managing director. It’s rubbish governance.

Third, Rugby Australia must appoint as a chairperson one of these new “outside” directors who come in under a new structure. Fresh eyes, fresh ideas and no entrenched enmity.

Fourth, Rugby Australia needs to be a bigger democracy. Those who are “rugby people” are, in my experience, passionate about the sport and its hoped-for future prosperity.

But I don’t think I’ve spoken to a single one of these people in the past four years who’s talked positively about the direction rugby in Australia is headed in. Why would they? It’s a cluster-you-know-what.

And yet, none of these people have a podium to influence change because of the slippery pyramid structure of the sport and the lack of voice that organisations outside of the state unions, the Super Rugby franchises and the players’ association have.

The congregation needs to be bigger, the church needs to be huge, and people in the sport need to have a proper voice in how it is run. Because Hamish McLennan’s spearing will end up proving not a jot.

If a ship heads off on a vector even a fraction of a degree wide of where a compass directs it should sail, and if the vessel travels for long enough, it will end up miles off course.

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