Future of the Western Force hangs in the balance
Future of the Western Force hangs in the balance
By Jim Tucker | February 27, 2009 12:00am
http://www.news.com.au/common/imaged...6505714,00.jpg LEAVING ... Matt Giteau.
- AUSTRALIAN rugby is grappling with its own dangerous Y2K bug.
The loss of Matt Giteau has the potential to erode the code's boldest pioneering feat into the Western Farce.
No Giteau. Few wins in 2010. No magnet to attract new players. Lock the gate at Subiaco Oval after the last player leaves Perth. That's the doomsayers' view.
The conundrum is just how much the Giteau-Y2K bug will eat at the foundations of a Super 14 success story that launched in front of 37,037 zealous believers in February, 2006.
The Y2K bug itself was largely a myth, scaremongering that when it ticked over into the new millennium nine years ago there would be a global computer meltdown.
No one is relocating the Force to Melbourne. Times w ill get tough but the death of the Force is exaggerated.
Fear of an exodus of top stars is real. Wallaby finisher Drew Mitchell is another near-certain departure and hard-headed back-rower Richard Brown may be another.
But the Force will be with us. Australian Rugby Union boss John O'Neill will make sure of it, especially with discussions next week in Dubai about a competition leap to Super 15 for 2011, with the Force as an integral element.
Try this yardstick. Since the Force were born, Nathan Sharpe's men have won more games (15) than his old Queensland Reds (nine) and averaged significantly bigger home crowds.
"A team in Perth, rugby's continued growth in Western Australia, is very important to us," O'Neill said.
Former Wallaby hooker Brendan Cannon, the first star signed by the Force in 2005, is adamant what has been built is bigger than one player.
Realistically, he is still worried how 2009 plays out.
"Timing is everything in sport. It's unfortunate there are so many players coming off contract (17) when ideally you would manage things so you only have a few each year," Cannon said.
The timing is all wrong too when it comes to Kiwi coach John Mitchell. He is an astute coach and creator of the positive Force style.
But the player petition that so publicly railed against his management style is not exactly a selling point you'd slap on the next "Join The Force" recruitment flyer.
He is good bloke John Mitchell a lot of the time, and Jack Mitchell, super-intense, controlling and withdrawn, at other times.
Once in 2008, he walked into a losing halftime dressingroom, called his players a "pack of useless *&%$" and walked out with his coaching staff.
A senior player told him to "$#*! off and close the door". They won the game.
Former Wallaby coach Eddie Jones was disgusted with how the Force hung Mitchell out to dry so publicly by handcuffing him from certain duties and calling in a retired judge to deal with the petition.
"The Force have a tough time ahead with no local player base in Perth but it's good to see O'Neill so strongly backing their survival," Jones said.
"Like Chris Latham at the Reds, Gits is worth four wins a season by himself."
Jones is a fan of a player draft, not of the AFL style but one modelled on NZ rugby.
"Each of our four Super 14 clubs would still get to nominate their top 22 players but the rest would go into a draft. It would help equalise squad strength," Jones said.
Jones rated South Africa's Jake White as "zero chance" of taking the baton from Mitchell.
How the Force are going to surge ahead now the genius of playmaker Giteau is heading back to the ACT Brumbies is tricky.
No longer do the Force go to the player market offering the vision of a problem-free new club and a windfall in third-party money from fuel technology company Firepower.
Firepower was a costly myth. It duped the Force, the Sydney Kings basketball club and others. Millions have gone unpaid to Giteau and co.
"I was never the highest paid footballer in Australia. The most highly promised, perhaps," Giteau can now say.
The Force will have to hunt hard for a marquee flyhalf from abroad under the new international player policy that enabled the Reds to sign All Black flanker Daniel Braid.
Former All Black Luke McAlister, England's Test-retired Johnny Wilkinson ... who knows?
When the ARU culled the Australian Rugby Championship after one year, the Force were hit hardest because the perfect next tier to develop their player pool disappeared.
Cannon was in Perth last week and saw no friction in his old camp.
"It did look like a different John Mitchell. He was more relaxed and maybe sharing the load of duties is working out," Cannon said.
"People have to understand that when the Force was born, it was basically Mitch, (chief executive) Peter O'Meara and a few others.
"Mitch naturally assumed a lot of roles because we were starting from scratch and a new team needed a strong personality."
The other dimension to the debate comes from the Reds, Brumbies and Waratahs, who saw their player stocks raided when the Force was being assembled.
The Force have done one thing. They have forced the Reds to get their act together with a shrewd recruitment chief in Ben Whitaker.
The Reds won't be like defenceless fur seal pups when the Force next come raiding.
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