Win Bledisloe every two years: Rugby Australia sets out bold five-year goals

Rugby Australia boss Phil Waugh said the target of Australia becoming the number one rugby nation in the world by 2029 is not unrealistic, after the release of a new five-year strategy paper containing a range of ambitious goals that includes winning the Bledisloe Cup every second year.

The lofty targets were contained in a new strategic plan for Australian rugby between 2025 and 2029, called “Green to gold”, which was released by RA on Tuesday morning.

The strategy, which has come after a series of high-performance summits among Australian rugby stakeholders, sets out the goals and standards Australian rugby wants to achieve during the next five years, from winning major trophies to increased participation and fan engagement.

There are no shortage of bullish targets for a rugby nation that last won a Rugby World Cup in 1999, a Bledisloe Cup in 2002 and a Super Rugby title in 2014. Only Australian sevens teams have won major prizes of any sort in the past decade.

But the strategy paper spells out the aim of beating the British and Irish Lions next year, finishing in the top four of the 2027 and 2029 Rugby World Cups, claiming two Super Rugby titles and lists one measurement of success as winning the Bledisloe Cup every second year.

Rugby Australia CEO Phil Waugh speaks to the media, seated next to RA chair Daniel Herbert.Credit: Getty Images

The plan also sets the target of returning the Wallabies to a 70 per cent success rate by 2029. This was eighth season in the past 11 years where the team was below 50 per cent.

The overall “purpose” is “to become the world’s number 1 playing nation” by 2029, the paper states.

“It’s an aspirational goal. We know that’s a short runway to get to number one and if you look at where we are right now across all our programs, across our Wallaroos, across our Wallabies, across our sevens, we’ve made good progress,” Waugh said.

“We’ve got a long way to go to be number one and it’s not beyond reality to envisage being number one throughout this five-year cycle.

“If you look at where Ireland were a decade ago, you look at where South Africa were a decade ago ... and you look at where they are now and the journey they’ve been on to get to arguably the best one or two teams in the world, it’s achievable.”

The strategy also spells out the goal to increase participation by 30 per cent in men’s rugby, and by 70 per cent in women’s rugby, and build a supporter base where 50 per cent of all Australians are active fans.

The last five-year strategic plan created by the Australian Rugby Union was presented in 2016, and though it included a goal of winning the 2019 Rugby World Cup and a Bledisloe Cup, it didn’t contain the same level of specificity of the “Green to gold” targets - and the level of accountability on RA leadership that comes with them.

“You have to. You have to give the public and all of our stakeholders, our fans, some very lofty ambitions. Otherwise, what are we aiming for?” RA chair Daniel Herbert said.

“We’re aiming for excellence. High performance in particular is about excellence and winning. We want to get back to winning ways and we have done a lot of initial work to create the platform to succeed and provided the game remains united, I think we can deliver on that. If you look at the last 12 months, where we were 12 months ago to now, we’ve come a hell of a long way, but we’ve got a hell of a long way to go. And it will take a number of years before we get to that number one position, but I do think we’ve got the players and we’ve got the people involved across the game broadly, across the member unions and Super Rugby clubs, to enable us to get there.”

The Wallabies celebrate victory in CardiffCredit: Getty Images

Both Waugh and Herbert stressed the strategy was not a Rugby Australia plan, but one put together collaboratively by all of Australian rugby after “dozens and dozens” of meetings including state unions and community bodies, Super Rugby and RUPA.

The potential for a fully centralised governance model remains unclear, even after RA took ownership of the Waratahs and the Brumbies in 2024, and the strategy focuses more on alignment between head office and the states for “key actions” towards delivering the on-field goals. They include the establishment of high-performance plans for all centrally-funded national and Super teams, co-funded academies, the growth of women’s XVs rugby and the exploration of “meaningful integration” between sevens and XVs programs.

But paying for it all could be the problem, and Rugby Australia are banking on an uplift in their broadcast rights revenue during the same five-year cycle. RA and Nine Entertainment (publishers of this masthead) are in an exclusive negotiating period until the end of the year.

Cup aim … Matt Faessler scores against the All Blacks.Credit: Getty Images

Part of the strategy also covers Rugby Australia’s financial objectives, which is to have Australian rugby debt-free and with funds to invest after the 2027 Rugby World Cup. Waugh admitted “right-sizing the business” would be a factor to keep the game sustainable.

“The resourcing and the financial discipline across the ecosystem is the most important point,” Waugh said.

“Right now, we don’t have the revenue lines that we require to do everything we’d like to do, so therefore we have to prioritise different programs dependent on the revenues and then making sure that you’ve got the cost discipline across the organisation.”

Waugh said contract discussions were still ongoing with Wallabies coach Joe Schmidt. The New Zealander only signed on until the end of the British and Irish Lions tour in July next year.

RA are keen for Schmidt to stay on, but Waugh said contingency plans were being discussed and pointed to a strong cohort of Australian coaches at Super Rugby level: Stephen Larkham, Les Kiss, Simon Cron and Dan McKellar.