Rebels 'raise looting threat'
Rebels 'raise looting threat'
By Wayne Smith
April 25, 2007
AUSTRALIAN rugby is in danger of being ravaged by a World Series Cricket-style raid if a threatened rebel European super club competition becomes a reality, Australian Rugby Union chief executive Gary Flowers warned yesterday.
While Australian rugby has been preoccupied with its own internal problems in recent weeks, the game has been spiralling out of control in Europe.
French and English clubs have withdrawn from the 2008 European Cup because of demands for more money, and now the boycott has evolved into a revolt.
The leading clubs from France, England and Ireland are reported to be talking with cashed-up sports broadcaster Setanta about setting up a rebel European competition outside the control of the International Rugby Board.
"It's a bit like a Kerry Packer thing," Flowers said, referring to the Packer-funded WSC rebellion of 1977 that shook international cricket to its foundations.
"They could not only set up their own club competition but also their own internationals that would undermine Test rugby and ultimately the World Cup."
That is a worst-case scenario but it is precisely what the game's global administrators are bracing themselves for in the coming weeks.
"The threat is real," Flowers said.
The proposed competition is a threat also to rugby league, with NRL chief executive David Gallop admitting yesterday that he would be monitoring developments.
"We'll certainly keep an eye on it," Gallop said.
"But rugby throwing large amounts of cash at our players isn't exactly a new problem."
Perhaps not, but the demand for players might be so intense if a rebel cup competition is established that dozens, rather than one or two, of league stars may be targeted.
IRB chief executive Mike Miller briefed Flowers and the chief executives of other major rugby nations on the crisis in a phone hook-up last week, and the budding rebellion is certain to dominate next week's IRB council meeting in Dublin.
"There will be a fair bit of dialogue about it," Flowers said.
"I took a phone call from one northern hemisphere official who said this was line-in-the-sand, take-to-the-trenches stuff. It's shaping as a bitter battle and it's one that traditional rugby cannot afford to lose."
And yet it is a battle traditional rugby could very well lose.
New Zealand, South Africa and Australia are particularly vulnerable to a cashed-up raider, and Flowers, who retains the position of SANZAR secretary despite having only another fortnight to serve with the ARU, intends to confer with his New Zealand and South African counterparts in Dublin to try to prepare a united response.
The southern hemisphere unions are unable to pay their players anything like the salaries available in Europe, with one agent revealing recently that a fringe Super 14 reserve had been offered $180,000 a season by a French club, $60,000 a year more than his Australian side could offer.
Indeed, the reason why ARU regulations stipulate that only players who turn out in the Super 14 can be selected for the Wallabies is to avoid a football-style situation in which the country's best players are all based in Europe.
Proof of the rule's effectiveness was provided yesterday when Scott Staniforth, the incumbent Wallabies inside centre, turned down a lucrative offer from Japanese side Kintetsu to re-sign with Western Force because he would have ruled himself out of Rugby World Cup selection had he moved overseas.
Wallabies mainstay Steve Larkham, who is being pursued by Toulouse but has not signed any post-Rugby World Cup contract, said there was "always the potential" for a rebel competition to ransack Australian rugby because of the disparity in pay rates between Australia and Europe.
"I know the players talk about the fact you can earn so much more in Europe," Larkham said.
"The rules are pretty much set out that you've got to play Super 14 in order to play for Australia, but I know the Rugby Union Players Association spent two hours at its last meeting discussing that whole situation and intends to raise it at the next ARU board meeting."
Tony Dempsey, Australia's delegate to the International Rugby Players Association, which held a board phone hook-up on Monday night to discuss the looming rebel competition, said the situation was grave.
"It's a very worrying concern, not just for southern hemisphere rugby but world rugby," Dempsey said.
"We have the potential for a split in the game and for a rival league to be formed. History shows that rival leagues have an adverse impact on the game and its development."
History also shows, as in the case of World Series Cricket and Super League, that players are able to cash in on the crisis.
"But I'd like to think that the players would look beyond their own short-term," Dempsey said.
"The effect on the game would be deleterious."
Dempsey said it was understood that the English, French and Irish clubs would take a united stand.
"They'll either all break away or they'll all stay," he said.
"If they break away and take their entire rosters with them, the Rugby Football Union might tough it out and that would certainly create a demand for more players.
"But if there is a split, the revenues available to the Welsh, Scottish and remaining English and Irish clubs won't be so great, which means the clubs wouldn't have the money to pay well."
Flowers meanwhile was asked if Australia could insulate itself against any rebel competition.
"That's something we've got to be thinking about in conjunction with our SANZAR partners," he said.
"We've got players under contract but they (the rebels) could go on a buying spree and just pick up all players as they come off contract.
"It will undermine the traditional game and the money that flows into it. If we don't have the best players then Super 14, Tri-Nations and eventually the World Cup will suffer."
