Rod Macqueen says build Melbourne team with locals
Wayne Smith | August 14, 2009
Article from: The Australian
WORLD Cup-winning coach Rod Macqueen, the man who in creating the Brumbies from scratch brought in only one overseas player, is adamant the anticipated Melbourne Super 15 team should be built on home-grown talent.
Australian Rugby Union chief executive John O'Neill, when announcing on Wednesday that Melbourne was Australia's preferred location for the 15th Super rugby team in 2011, speculated the proposed new outfit would be "a bit of a Heinz variety team".
That was a reference not to the fact the ARU wants the three rival Melbourne consortiums to come together into an unlikely marriage of convenience, but to O'Neill's belief that 30-35 per cent of the playing roster would be filled by Pacific Islanders, possibly supplemented by some Argentine and Japanese players.
In the event of SANZAR awarding Melbourne the expansion licence, the ARU is likely to grant the new team an exemption to import as many as a dozen footballers to play in the Super 15 who are not eligible to represent Australia.
But Macqueen, who had only one foreigner in his original 27-man Brumbies squad in 1996, Argentine prop Patricio Noriega, insisted yesterday that far from looking to build a team largely on foreigners, Melbourne should be allowed to focus on developing local players.
Or at least overseas players -- South Africans in particular -- who would emigrate to Melbourne in the hope of one day becoming a Wallaby.
"I think it's a great decision to settle on Melbourne," said Macqueen, who assisted the Victorian Rugby Union on developing the rugby side of its bid. "Melbourne is definitely the right choice for Australian rugby.
"One of the things that's particularly important is that this team is able to produce home-grown Wallabies. While there is a push for getting islanders involved, the emphasis should be on producing Wallabies. The achilles heel of Australian rugby is lack of depth."
Macqueen's original squad included 15 ACT players.
Although it's scarcely likely Melbourne could come anywhere near that total, even if it rounded up the Victorian rugby diaspora (Rocky Elsom and Digby Ioane would be at the top of any recruitment list), he is impressed with the way the VRU has raised the standard of its rugby.
"I don't think there's a big difference between where ACT rugby was and where Melbourne rugby is," Macqueen said. "The VRU has done some really good things and rugby is in good stead in Melbourne."
His comments again contrast sharply with those of O'Neill, who this week labelled the VRU "a small player".
Instead, he attributed the two other consortiums with more weight, pointing to the sporting acumen of the bid from Melbourne Victory chairman Geoff Lord's Belgravia Group and the financial clout of the Vic Super 15 group, understood to be underwritten largely by The Mac Group's Kevin Maloney.
Lord yesterday would not be drawn on whether he intended investing any money in a Melbourne Super rugby team, insisting he wanted to hear what was said at the meeting the ARU has called on Thursday with the three consortiums.
While still uncertain whether Football Federation of Australia intends to press on with a proposal to include a provision in A-League licences preventing an A-League club from investing in or having any share in any other franchise or any other sporting code, Lord said it might not be Melbourne Victory taking any equity in the Super 15 side but the Belgravia Group.
"That's to be sorted out with the FFA," Lord said. "We bring no rugby expertise. We don't pretend to have any rugby expertise. We bring management and a professional approach."
Melbourne is not the only Australian city intent on strengthening its South African links as Perth's Western Force is planning to travel to the republic in January for pre-season matches against the Stormers in Cape Town.
The Sharks also have expressed interest in becoming involved in a three-cornered mini-tournament.
The Force, meanwhile, has snared NSW Schoolboys captain and second-rower Luke Jones, who is set to sign a contract with the Perth-based club.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...015651,00.html
