May the Force be with you: FitzSimons
The west must be won over with good results if rugby is to hold its own with the other revitalised codes in Australia, argues a positive Peter FitzSimons.
IT'S GOING to be bitter, it's going to be bloody, it's going to set new records for bastardry.
There are going to be high tackles, low blows, vicious uppercuts, frightful king-hits, no doubt a whole lot of biting . . . and all of that is not even counting the rugby itself!
For what is at play in this inaugural Super 14 competition is a lot more than merely working out which team from preferably Australia, maybe New Zealand and I-couldn't-stand-it South Africa gets to get a ticker-tape parade in May. Folks, at play will be nothing less than the pecking order of winter sport in Australia.
Let's go back a little . . .
When Super League was launched on April 1, 1995, rugby union lasted precisely eight days before it decided that 150 years of amateurism should be overturned, professionalism embraced and those who were formerly known as mere rugby followers should become consumers.
Within a year the Super 12 and the Tri Nations were launched, dedicated to the proposition that rugby league was no more than a pissant provincial parish-pump game anyway, soccer was a sad joke, AFL was dead in Sydney anyway and if they could provide the country with a well-promoted game of genuine international grandeur, in which Australian teams would go well, the whole thing would prosper.
And for nearly a decade all those assumptions proved correct.
From the first game, the Super 12 provided an entertaining kind of rugby which to rugby folk was almost like watching a Barbarians game every week, as the ball swung from side to side of the field and spectacular tries kept falling from the skies.
Year after year, new records of attendance were broken and on the strength of it the decision was taken to expand the competition.
Between that decision being taken and implemented, however, the entire landscape changed. After staggering along like a wounded soldier for years, constantly muttering how great things used to be, rugby league really has come back in a big way and even as we speak the Dream Team in all the land is neither the Wallabies nor a Super 12 side, but the Wests Tigers.
Just across town from them, and right in the heart of the rugby heartland, the Sydney Swans are AFL premiers. And that drumbeat in the near distance getting longer and stronger with every beat? That is the sound of the soccer supporters firing up for the Socceroos to make their first appearance in a World Cup since the early 1970s.
Therefore the conditions for a competition like Super 12 to expand are not ideal, and there will be more than one rugby administrator who has lain awake at night contemplating what happened when rugby league colonised Perth too early. Remember? Like a red sun rising out of the west the Western Reds rose out of Perth in 1995 but the whole thing was so clearly against nature, that they faded fast and quickly disappeared whence they came sinking like a stone off Cottesloe Beach.
Does rugby face the same prospect?
Happily, I suspect not!
The first thing to note is that even before a ball has been kicked in anger, the Western Force have 30,000 signed-up members, and for their first trial game they had an extraordinary 17,000 coming through the turnstiles.
In terms of playing and coaching personnel, not only have they recruited well, but there are already signs they have that most crucial prerequisite for every truly successful rugby team - a sense of humour.
When I spoke at a lunch over there in October, for example, the other guest speaker was assistant Force coach Ben Darwin . . . Ben Darwin who broke his neck in the World Cup semi-final in 2003 . . .
When asked what he thought of former All Blacks boss John Mitchell as head coach, Darwin replied: "Frankly . . . it is just great to see a Kiwi with a job!"
Boom-tish.
Tell 'em another one, Ben . . . Tell them why you decided to put your hand up to be assistant coach of the Western Force: "If you really want to know, I would have taken a job coaching the Chernobyl Rugby Club."
Sense of humour? Tick.
Personnel? Tick.
Good coaches? Tick . . . Somehow, there is that kind of feel about the place. Like the great local support? Tick.
Other Australian rugby franchises? Ticked off, which is perhaps the surest sign of all that the Force are likely to go all right. The Reds, the Tahs and the Brumbies had to hand over some of their best players to see the Force form up, and all have been weakened because of it, making it even easier for the Perthlings to make an impact.
Queensland are in disarray with the ludicrous decision to leave coach Jeff Miller twisting in the wind for the season, instead of cutting him loose or, for mercy's sake, cutting him down.
The Brumbies are not remotely the force that they were, although I do think all the attention focused on Glenn McGrath, saying he has been leading the attack too long and is way too slow in his delivery, has been entirely unwarranted.
And NSW? Well, we live in hope that perhaps this year will be their year, but it is going to be a hard task to do better this season than they did last, when against all expectations they made the final.
Bottom line?
Good Lord willing and the creeks don't rise, they will be a Force to be reckoned with, and if they can succeed then at the very least the Super 14 will provide rugby in Australia with the genuinely national competition that they have lusted after for so long - giving them a reasonable chance to at least hold their own over the other codes, and in the longer term really make headway against them.
