ARU sending stakeholders to the guillotine in Victoria Super war
AUX armes, citoyens! Formez vos bataillons! Marchons, marchons!
APOLOGIES for stealing from the refrain of La Marseillaise but with today's topic being the coup d'etat stealthily taking place in Australian rugby, it seemed only fitting to sound a Gallic call to arms.
On a superficial level, the battle being fought over the allocation of Australia's anticipated new Super rugby licence is all about whether the Victorian rugby community is entitled to a say in what sort of team will represent it, or whether the Sydney-based Australian Rugby Union is able to impose its will and foist on to the state a franchise it utterly rejects.
Of itself, that's an issue that would prompt ordinary citizens to take up arms, form battalions and march on the enemy. But that's not all that is at stake here, not by a long shot. At the core of this battle is the ARU's coup d'etat. Without any authorisation from the states, without any meaningful consultation with broader stakeholders, the ARU has hijacked the game as it has been organised throughout the professional era and forced it down a path entirely of its own choosing, entirely of its own making.
Credit where credit is due to the ARU, in its single-minded campaign to impose private equity on the game - by taking no fixed public stance, by hiding behind brilliantly written press releases designed to obfuscate not enlighten, by constantly changing the ground rules without telling anyone - it has progressed a long way down its chosen path without ever surrendering plausible deniability. It is impossible to attack the ARU's private equity position because there isn't one. It's whatever the ARU wants it to be at any given moment, in response to any given development. Small wonder not a single stakeholder in the game has a clue where private equity ends and private ownership begins. And if private ownership begins, is that where the involvement of the state bodies in professional rugby ends?
The problem, as I see it, isn't private equity. Heck, it's not even private ownership if that is what the broad Australian rugby community wants, although why rugby would want to adopt an A-League-style ownership model that the Football Federation Australia is only holding together with Scotch tape and fencing wire is beyond me.
Too many in the ARU cite the A-League as the ownership model to aspire to. That's like citing Morne Steyn as the ideal Test five-eighth simply because he's got a big boot. Yeah, well, so did the Leyland P76. No, the problem is that Australian rugby has not approved this massive and fundamental shift in how the game is to be structured and run.
Everything that is taking place is being imposed from above, with no say given even to the major stakeholders, the state unions, let alone to the broader rugby community.
Aside from a motherhood statement about 18 months ago that Australian rugby was open to the idea of private equity and the belated circulation of a discussion paper - distributed to all Super rugby franchises only after a senior ARU official was discovered to have leaked it to a friend - the issue simply has not been discussed.
Needless to say, now it has become obvious this policy shift is being rammed through, quite a few questions have arisen.
Why, for instance, this hellfire urgency to rush headlong down the private equity/private ownership route? The ARU would say that the game desperately needs an injection of more capital. Well, who doesn't?
So, show us the (lack of) money. The ARU trumpeted the fact it finished with a $712,000 surplus after making allocations of $8.54million to member unions last year, so it's not time to whip out the begging bowl just yet. Moreover, all indications are much better times are ahead.
Next year will see two Bledisloe Tests played in Australia, in 2011 the new broadcast deal - with revenue tipped to rise by at least 25 per cent - will come into effect, while the 2013 season will deliver the $30m windfall of a British and Irish Lions tour.
Still, let's assume the global financial crisis has played havoc with the ARU's bottom line this year. Does it now intend to scale back, or even cut out entirely, the annual $4.3m allocation it makes to NSW, Queensland, the ACT and WA to run the Waratahs, Reds, Brumbies and Western Force? And if the state bodies are forced at virtual gunpoint to make good all or part of any shortfall, how precisely are they to lure private equity investors into their organisations?
One state official estimates that, as things stand, any private equity investor prepared to put in $2m per year would get back a few hundred thousand. That's not a few hundred thousand over and above the $2m invested. That's all that would be left of the $2m.
There might be a couple of billionaires out there whose egos and love of the game might inspire them to play Santa Claus to a Super 15 team but surely Australian rugby doesn't want to sign itself over into the hands of owners who are bullish today, bored tomorrow.
The questions go on, but I want to leave some for the state unions to ask the ARU at their regular meeting of chief executives tomorrow.
Meanwhile, let's reflect on the promises made in the ARU's 2008 annual report, to bring private equity into the professional part of the game (a) in a way that is tightly controlled nationally; (b) to provide enduring benefit to the code while recognising the interests of private equity partners and; (c) with clarity about the rules and potential opportunities for Australian rugby and its partners.
As for (a), the ARU certainly has been true to its word. So tightly controlled nationally is the process that no one else in the game has a clue what is happening.
As for (b), who would know, outside of senior ARU officials and the private equity partner with whom they have been holding unobtrusive meetings, Sydney mining identity Kevin Moloney?
But (c), sorry. There has been no clarity whatsoever about the rules and potential opportunities for Australian rugby and its partners.
Until there is, until the game's stakeholders are given a say in their own futures, the coup d'etat goes on.
Man the barricades!
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...015651,00.html
