Terms of Reference for a Senate Inquiry into the Future of Rugby Union in Australia

[Perth Girl]

Does anyone know what may have been said "in camera" which is obviously a private session. It went for 30min right? Because the inquiry resumed later than the times listed on the parliament website. I assume Pulver got read the riot act? But does anyone know what these "in camera" sessions usually contain in terms of discussion. The senators were quite angry when they went to this session.

I think the Senators hoped he would be a bit more forthcoming about the many questions he was asked that he replied was confidential. I don't know how much luck they had but Linda Reynolds did say they would be following these matters up

[WFDom]

Can someone please post Senator Reynolds e-mail address.

Apologies for being lazy but internet connection at sea is pretty pedestrian

[blueandblack]

Can someone please post Senator Reynolds e-mail address.

Apologies for being lazy but internet connection at sea is pretty pedestrian

senator.reynolds@aph.gov.au

[SPaRTAN]

Oops I posted this in the wrong thread but ill post it here in case it gets missed.

South Africa is continuing its expansion meanwhile Australia is fighting tooth and nail to retract to 4 teams permanently, and also propping up the financially destructive Melbourne franchise.

This makes me hate the EARU even more when you see what South Africa is doing to grow their game.

====
SA set for two new franchises

Jurie Roux – franchises Jurie Roux
Published on September 22, 2017
0
Two new South African franchises will be formed by the end of the year.

A tender process will begin on 4 October, with SA Rugby looking to have four franchises in Super Rugby and four in Europe.


The two new franchises could play in the Anglo-Welsh Cup.

‘We have four teams in Sanzaar; we have two in Pro14 and the other two will start to develop to play somewhere,’ SA Rugby CEO Jurie Roux told the New Zealand Herald. ‘Hopefully something like the Anglo-Welsh as a development tournament. At the right time in 2020 [when the current Sanzaar broadcast deal ends] we can then make a decision on where our bases are.’

Roux again insisted that SA Rugby is committed to Sanzaar beyond 2020.

‘We believe we are as strong as we are because we play Australia, Argentina and New Zealand. We measure ourselves by those teams even though the north is getting better.’

SA Rugby president Mark Alexander recently said the Springboks could field two different teams – one for matches in the southern hemisphere and one for those in the north – but Roux said this would not be the case.

‘Having two completely different teams, that’s ridiculous. Why would you not play your best team? You might get to a situation where you select four or five players because they are more adapted to the northern hemisphere. Test rugby is too competitive to play the same players week in, week out
=====

[Bakkies]

You're doing a great job Bakkies.

Keep up your efforts as it can be quite cathartic.

May you continue to run the race and not grow weary!

No worries. They have release a report in November, I don't know if they have enough time to go through so much bs.

The big spreadsheet appears to have now morphed into a scorecard of indeterminate size!! At least, according to Willy Puller's testimony at the inquiry earlier this week.

A great big steaming piece of verbal diarrhoea that's what it is

[Bakkies]

Oops I posted this in the wrong thread but ill post it here in case it gets missed.

South Africa is continuing its expansion meanwhile Australia is fighting tooth and nail to retract to 4 teams permanently, and also propping up the financially destructive Melbourne franchise.

This makes me hate the EARU even more when you see what South Africa is doing to grow their game.

====
SA set for two new franchises

Jurie Roux – franchises Jurie Roux
Published on September 22, 2017
0
Two new South African franchises will be formed by the end of the year.

A tender process will begin on 4 October, with SA Rugby looking to have four franchises in Super Rugby and four in Europe.


The two new franchises could play in the Anglo-Welsh Cup.

‘We have four teams in Sanzaar; we have two in Pro14 and the other two will start to develop to play somewhere,’ SA Rugby CEO Jurie Roux told the New Zealand Herald. ‘Hopefully something like the Anglo-Welsh as a development tournament. At the right time in 2020 [when the current Sanzaar broadcast deal ends] we can then make a decision on where our bases are.’

Roux again insisted that SA Rugby is committed to Sanzaar beyond 2020.

‘We believe we are as strong as we are because we play Australia, Argentina and New Zealand. We measure ourselves by those teams even though the north is getting better.’

SA Rugby president Mark Alexander recently said the Springboks could field two different teams – one for matches in the southern hemisphere and one for those in the north – but Roux said this would not be the case.

‘Having two completely different teams, that’s ridiculous. Why would you not play your best team? You might get to a situation where you select four or five players because they are more adapted to the northern hemisphere. Test rugby is too competitive to play the same players week in, week out
=====

Good luck with that Jurie. Anglo-Welsh is a b team/under age comp. Concentrate more on the fact that you still control the Kings and have fraud charges hanging over WP officials (WP is stand alone now with the Stormers).

[SPaRTAN]

Here is the latest..

Sydney Morning Herald

Consultant to ARU says governing body 'signed death knell' by agreeing to Super Rugby expansion

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Tom Decent

3 hrs ago

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Fiddling while Rome burns: ARU chairman Cameron Clyne and Bill Pulver.
Fiddling while Rome burns: ARU chairman Cameron Clyne and Bill Pulver. Photo: AAP

A veteran sports consultant who twice warned the Australian Rugby Union that under no circumstances should it agree to an expanded 18-team Super Rugby competition says the governing body has only itself to blame for "signing their death knell" despite talking up next year's new structure.

The comments come as former NSW Waratahs and Rugby Union Players' Association chief executive Greg Harris slammed the ARU for failing to take accountability for plunging rugby into a mess it could have avoided.
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Colin Smith, managing director of firm Global Media & Sports, has been involved in sports media rights for 17 years and has advised the ARU, RUPA and New Zealand Rugby Union for over a decade.

Smith warned the ARU in 2009 and 2013 about the challenges of Super Rugby's model and made it clear the game's stakeholders needed to stand up for what was in Australia's best interest in order for the game to survive.
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In the hot seat: ARU boss Bill Pulver.
Rugby chief Pulver faces Senate grilling

In 2014, Smith prepared a 100-page report for RUPA, which was passed onto the ARU, outlining reasons why giving the green light to a proposed 17- or 18-team model could send the game broke.
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As it turned out, the ARU, which have the right to veto decisions made at SANZAAR meetings, agreed to the new arrangement for the 2016 Super Rugby season, which has now been changed two years on ahead of the 2018 competition.

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Angry: Supporters fly a banner in support of Western Force.
Angry: Supporters fly a banner in support of Western Force. Photo: AAP
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The comments of chief executive Bill Pulver on Thursday, when he talked up an increase of local derbies next year and the benefits the new competition structure would have for Australian rugby fans, left Smith shaking his head.

"They're right when they say they're bringing back rivalries but why the hell did they drop them?" Smith told Fairfax Media. "They should have said 'no' back then.

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Called to account: Bill Pulver addresses the media after answering questions at a Senate inquiry.
Called to account: Bill Pulver addresses the media after answering questions at a Senate inquiry. Photo: AAP

"It's one of the saddest stories I've seen. This is one report I would have liked to be wrong on because the sport has put themselves in self-destruct mode. The reason why they've had to do what they've done is because the ARU is close to being bankrupt.

"They say this is all about putting money into grassroots, well frankly that's a play on words.

"The report highlighted then that if you went ahead with the new Super Rugby structure it was going to kill the clubs and it was going to kill the ARU. Even though they got more in their media rights deal than we anticipated, it has actually has killed them.

"[ARU chairman] Cameron Clyne said he wasn't involved in any of this process of going to the new competition. That's bullshit. He was there on the board when the decision was made by that board to go with a new Super Rugby competition and that's what frankly signed their death knell.

"They adopted the ostrich management style: head in the sand and hope it goes away."
Harris, who was boss of RUPA when the report was given to the ARU, is equally irritated there has been such a positive spin when the warnings were present a long time ago.

"It's just very disappointing at the end of the day that while Bill's acknowledged the way forward, he's knew about it three years ago," Harris said. "All of those metrics were provided to him in 2014. Nobody holds him or the ARU accountable for their mistake. It's incredible.

"It was never ever in the best interests of Australian rugby. I just feel pretty bloody disheartened. If he had any courage then we wouldn't be in the situation we were in."

On the day the ARU decided to cut a Super Rugby team, Pulver did concede Super Rugby expansion was probably not the answer at the time.

"In retrospect, that was probably a mistake," Pulver said on April 10. "I accept that was a mistake. That competition has not delivered the outcomes we wanted. I'm not convinced, however, that it's the 18-team competition that has led us to losing a team today."

Asked for a solution to save Australian rugby, Smith said there was merit in breaking free from SANZAAR once the new broadcast deal expired in 2020 and going it alone.

"We should be upgrading the NRC and make it our premier competition and maybe invite the Japanese and the Pacific Islanders to play in it," Smith said. "One of the Sydney teams becomes the Waratahs, one of the teams in Brisbane becomes the Reds, we create two great brands and you actually have an Australia-wide competition. That's the answer to Australian rugby.

"If we announce that, I'll have a real wager with you that New Zealand will want to re-think [their objection to a trans-Tasman competition]."

As for Andrew "Twiggy" Forrest's new Indo Pacific Rugby Championship, Smith is not convinced it can be successful.

"That competition is not going to work either because of the very things that we've talked about before [in the report]," Smith said. "I'd love it to work. Having countries like Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong; they don't have a professional rugby community. The thing that drives rugby is domestic rivalries and what they did out of the new competition is reduce rivalries.

"Over time it's going to be seen as a second-rate tournament. That's my concern."

[SPaRTAN]

It is even more disheartening to find out Colin Smith wrote a detailed 100 page report detailing exactly why expansion would send the ARU broke, yet they proceded anyway, then subsequently dumped the Force who cost them the least amount of money of all the franchises - and also had a billionaire backer prepared to write off all future Force losses and even throw in an extra 50mil for grassroots. It is all very unfathomable. Where is the ethics committee to oversee the ARU and hold them accountable for their conduct.

Clyne was a key instigator in allowing and pursuing expansion, Smith comments are damning. To think like Smith said their is simply noone to hold them accountable for any of these actions despite almost all of them being completly the opposite of being in the best interests of Australian Rugby, I would really love to know what the overall agenda truely is.. there must be a ton of cash stashed away somewhere, I wonder just how large it is.

[SPaRTAN]

Good luck with that Jurie. Anglo-Welsh is a b team/under age comp. Concentrate more on the fact that you still control the Kings and have fraud charges hanging over WP officials (WP is stand alone now with the Stormers).

It really is questionable whether it was truelt neccesary to remove the extra 2 South African teams when the discussion from SANZAAR around this was to increase depth in the squads and increase the talent pool across the remaining 4 clubs because it was becoming too diluted in the African conferences. Yet despite agreeing to remove the teams for this very reason, they instead just relocated them instead, thus achieving nothing. Now we have the exact same dilution, if not maybe worse with these 2 new pro outfits playing in a second rate League in the NH. If anything super rugby is now even more dilluted and with Force players heading north too. It has been a total cluster F%$#!

[Jules]

Seriously when does Clyne Position become untenable?? They have got to do something here! Surely anyone that walks into Pulver's job is going to be staggered at the level of incompetence!

[SPaRTAN]

Seriously when does Clyne Position become untenable?? They have got to do something here! Surely anyone that walks into Pulver's job is going to be staggered at the level of incompetence!

You have to wonder exactly how the ARU is setup and why it is setup this way because it seems like a good ol fashioned Sydney boys club, an obnoxious bunch of snakes and eales banded together in self interest and corruption bleeding every single inch of the ARU dry with their futile arrogance and unquestionable ignorance. It is the worst run sports body in Australian history, it is in no way impartial, it is heavily NSW/East coast centric and rather than operate in a fair and equal way it choses to run the sport and treat the rest of the country with disdain. What a truely corrupt bunch, it looks like their day is coming.. burn the house down!

[AndyS]

Seriously when does Clyne Position become untenable?? They have got to do something here! Surely anyone that walks into Pulver's job is going to be staggered at the level of incompetence!

Why do you think it is only Pulver that is anywhere near the inquiry? He is out the door anyway, so sacrificial and disavowable. They aren't going to lose any sleep.

[GIGS20]

Pulver didnt appear by choice, that's not how inquiries work. He was "invited" ie they called for him and he showed up (whether he wanted to or not) Clyne will get his day, I'm sure. Linda Reynolds seems like a pretty slick operator and I'd think shes just baiting the trap by getting some testimony into the public record before she calls for the big fish.

[lou]

Re the Senate inquiry, from the West Australian:

"he said by the time mining magnate Andrew Forrest tried to stop the Force shutdown, offering the ARU up to $50 million, it was too late.

“It was pretty well over,” Pulver said. “Had Mr Forrest come into this discussion six months ago and effectively funded our purchase of the Melbourne Rebels licence, it may well have been a very different story.”


https://thewest.com.au/sport/rugby-u...-ng-b88606075z


Not really much of a process in deciding which team to axe. Am I reading this correctly? Pulver says if Forrest had stumped up with the money earlier than 4 August when Cox completed the Put Option, then the ARU would have used Forrest's money to buy the Rebels from Cox and then closed the Rebels? Is that what he's saying?

[sittingbison]

Re the Senate inquiry, from the West Australian:

"he said by the time mining magnate Andrew Forrest tried to stop the Force shutdown, offering the ARU up to $50 million, it was too late.

“It was pretty well over,” Pulver said. “Had Mr Forrest come into this discussion six months ago and effectively funded our purchase of the Melbourne Rebels licence, it may well have been a very different story.”


https://thewest.com.au/sport/rugby-u...-ng-b88606075z


Not really much of a process in deciding which team to axe. Am I reading this correctly? Pulver says if Forrest had stumped up with the money earlier than 4 August when Cox completed the Put Option, then the ARU would have used Forrest's money to buy the Rebels from Cox and then closed the Rebels? Is that what he's saying?

Maybe...except it was also revealed the ARU were told in April that Forrest was behind them 100%