Parlous state of game must be fixed on and off field

Parlous state of game must be fixed on and off field
Wayne Smith | January 30, 2008

IT's not quite wrist-slashing time but Australian Rugby Union boss John O'Neill warned yesterday the code needs major surgery to stem the flow of lost revenue and fans.

As State of the Union addresses go, O'Neill's, presented to a press conference in Sydney, was even gloomier than the one George W Bush delivered to Congress yesterday, even if the themes were pretty much identical: defending the union against vicious external aggressors and the desperate need for an economic stimulus package.

O'Neill revealed the ARU would announce in April a loss of between $7-8 million. This comes in a year in which its reserves dipped to below $15m, notwithstanding the payment of a $7m grant from the International Rugby Board, Australia's cut of the World Cup pie.

Moreover, he said, the SANZAR broadcast deal, renegotiated in 2006 after the original 10-year deal struck at the dawn of rugby professionalism had expired, would effectively see Australian rugby come up $43m short over its five-year life.

"It's not a pretty picture," O'Neill said. "We are at the crossroads. Our position has been eroding but unless we find some transforming initiatives, the erosion will continue. Doing nothing is not an option. Some very significant and radical changes have to be undertaken."

Granted, O'Neill could hardly have painted that picture in darker hues. Last year had always shaped as a lean year because of the impact of the World Cup, which cost Australian rugby in all sorts of ways, not least the fact that Wales and South Africa short-changed the ARU of several million dollars in gate revenue by sending second-string teams to Australia.

Yet even making allowances for those complications and for the bold and ultimately aborted experiment of the Australian Rugby Championship, the stark reality is that the game here, like in New Zealand is living off its reserves. Across the ditch it is being sustained by the fast diminishing spoils of its currency hedging.

"Were it not for the 2003 World Cup reserves, Australian rugby would now be broke," O'Neill said.

He claimed many of Australian rugby's most passionate fans were disillusioned and drifting away from a game that was failing to deliver on the entertainment front.

"In the last couple of years, not only have we been losing (with the Wallabies' winning frequency dipping to 60 per cent) but the quality of the spectacle has not been what it should be."

The ARU boss indicated he was open to a wide range of ideas to put the game back on its feet, from allowing foreign players, especially from the south Pacific islands, to bolster the four Australian provincial sides, to restructuring the calendar to set up a more seamless and sensible season, to doubling the number of Super 14 matches each year.

O'Neill conceded he was concerned about the prospect of Australia losing its top players to a European market that he claimed had far surpassed SANZAR in terms of scale and critical mass.

"The northern hemisphere rugby economy is now twice the size of that of the southern hemisphere," O'Neill said. But he was quick to defend the man he last year appointed to head up the ARU's high performance unit, Pat Howard.

Howard has come under widespread criticism not just for failing to retain stars Chris Latham and Dan Vickerman but also for the manner in which he has negotiated with senior Wallabies.

"It's a criticism of style rather than substance," O'Neill said. "Pat has my absolute confidence."

However, O'Neill conceded his enforced absence from the scene, when he underwent neck surgery shortly after the World Cup, had "thrown him (Howard) in the deep end".

Now that he was back in the job, O'Neill said he would be able to provide Howard with guidance and help remove him from the firing line of the contracting system.

The ARU boss said a review of that system was under way but central to any reform was the need for the ARU and the states to approach re-contracting players in union, not for the states to present their offerings independently and then hand the whole thing over to the ARU.

"It's got to be one deal," he said.

O'Neill acknowledged that having 55 players on ARU contracts was probably too many.

He also pronounced dead the long-running arrangement of the Wallabies using Coffs Harbour as a training base and said the intention would be to reconnect the players to the public.

"There has been criticism that our players live in an ivory tower. That's a bit harsh but somewhere in between might be the truth," he said.