0
Wayne Smith From: The Australian March 18, 2011 12:00AM
A GROUP of 15 businessmen headed by former Myer chairman Bill Wavish and television presenter David Koch is negotiating with the Australian Rugby Union to buy into the Australian seven-a-side program in the lead-up to the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics.
Wavish yesterday told The Australian the businessmen, who he described as rugby aficionados and tragics, were not interested in taking over the abridged version of the game, but simply wanted to ensure Australia was well placed to exploit the opportunities opening up following the admission of sevens, both men's and women's, to the Olympic Games program.
"It would not be ownership per se, but we would look to shoulder some of the burden of the sevens program in the run-up to Rio," Wavish said.
An ARU spokesman confirmed the union was looking at alternative revenue streams to build the sevens profile, but stressed it would not be selling the brand to private equity nor losing ownership of it.
Wavish declined to reveal how much money the group intended to invest, but said it was planned to start off by adding 50 per cent to the existing, undisclosed ARU sevens budget, with the aim of increasing support as sevens' Olympic debut drew closer.
He said the size of the group, which features some high-profile Melbourne business identities as well as those from rugby's NSW heartland, would not be capped at the existing 15 investors.
"There is nothing magical about the number 15," he said. "We certainly don't want it to feel like a closed shop."
The consortium also plans to set up sevens tournaments in Australia with a goal of spreading into Asia which is seen as the real growth area of the game.
It has no intention of tapping into the existing International Rugby Board's sevens series, but Wavish said he and Koch would visit two IRB tournaments, Hong Kong Sevens and Adelaide, over the next month to study their operations and explore opportunities.
The South Australian government-backed Adelaide tournament, on April 2-3, has attracted crowds of around 30,000 in recent years and indeed may have become too successful for its own survival. Adelaide's IRB contract expires this year and Perth, Melbourne, the Gold Coast and Sydney all have submitted bids to try to replace it as the Australian stop on the 10-tournament international circuit.
Asked whether the involvement of Koch, the Seven Network presenter, in the consortium signalled the group would be pitching for television coverage of its tournaments, Wavish replied: "Probably." From a television perspective, sevens went mainstream last month when America's Olympic network, NBC, aired six hours of coverage of the two-day Las Vegas tournament, while its sister NBC Universal channel screened the entire two days of competition unedited.
"It's very exciting," Wavish said. "Where sevens might go over the next six years is anyone's guess. When an Olympic gold medal is dangled before people's eyes, who knows what could happen?"
Australian sevens coach Michael O'Connor, the former dual union and league international, said he viewed the planned involvement of Wavish and Koch as a vote of confidence in the game.
Asked how additional funding could be used, O'Connor instantly identified the need to contract sevens specialists, separate from the Super Rugby programs.
"I think that's the way the game will go, that there will be specialist sevens players just as there are specialist Twenty20 cricketers," O'Connor said.
"If there was enough money for us to contract sevens players, that would be fantastic. South Africa already spends pound stg. 1.7 million ($2.77 million) on its sevens program."
Australia won silver at last year's Delhi Commonwealth Games with a team primarily made up of sevens specialists.
As exciting as it might be to envisage how's Australia's men's Olympic team might fare in Rio with Kurtley Beale, Quade Cooper and James O'Connor or their 2016 equivalents on board, O'Connor warned there was no value in cherry-picking the Wallabies for Olympic sevens players.
"We can't rely on 15-a-side players coming in," O'Connor said. "We've been down that track before and it doesn't work. Four years out from Rio, we need to be putting a squad of players together and working hard with them."
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news...-1226023530106
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Rucking Good
