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Rivals break the code barrier
Bret Harris | January 31, 2008
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...013406,00.html
A NEW partnership between the NSW Waratahs and Sydney Roosters has the potential to bring the rival codes together again.
Rooster and Waratahs joins forces to sell their new clothing range. (L to R) Braith Anasta, Anthony Minichiello, Adam Freier and Kurtley Beale at the Sydney Football Stadium. Picture: Lindsay Moller
One hundred years and five days after Dally Messenger defected from rugby union to rugby league, the Waratahs and the Roosters joined forces yesterday to launch a line of clothing.
But this commercial arrangement is set to be only the first of a whole range of mutually beneficial ventures.
The Waratahs and the Roosters are bound together by geography and, to a lesser extent, demographics.
The two teams play out of the Sydney Football Stadium and both organisations house their respective administrative offices at the venue. They also have an overlap in supporters, particularly SFS members.
Even the players who paraded the new gear yesterday blurred the lines between the two codes.
The Waratahs chased Rooster five-eighth Braith Anasta a few years ago, while former Italy coach John Kirwan was once on the hunt for rugby league players with Italian backgrounds such as fullback Anthony Minichiello.
Rugby league clubs are interested in NSW five-eighth Kurtley Beale, while hooker Adam Freier's father Laurie played for and coached the Roosters.
So perhaps it is not surprising the team's chief executives, Jim L'Estrange (Waratahs) and Brian Canavan (Roosters) are exploring ways they can help each other.
"It's really exciting," L'Estrange said. "For many years people kept thinking about rugby union and rugby league as competitors and there's no doubt that that is the case.
"But this is a great example of codes working together. We want to continue working with the Roosters and look for ways to enhance both our codes.
"We could share player ideas. Maybe we could look at how we could use their coaching resources, looking for that little bit of edge.
"We are obviously very respectful of two different codes and the investment we make in those codes, but there is a lot of duplication we can eradicate if we start talking together."
The logical conclusion to this partnership, it would seem, would be for the Waratahs and the Roosters to come under the one umbrella as in England, where the Leeds and Harlequins clubs oversee both rugby union and rugby league teams.
"I think we are a long way away from that still, but clearly that is a model that is working in the UK," L'Estrange said. "They are owned by a franchise operation. Rugby union certainly hasn't got to that stage yet.
"It may be something that happens in the long-term future, but right now it is about ways we can work with another code that has often been seen as a rival and they will probably still be a rival.
"There is a lot to be shared because we both run football clubs and we both run elite athletes and we are looking for ways to work together.
"To date we have been looking at back of house. What we can do in relation to ticketing, memberships, off-field apparel.
"That's where our momentum is at the moment. Where it takes us, we'll have to wait and see."
Canavan could not see a merger of the Waratahs and Roosters in the short-term, but he did not rule it out.
"Probably not in my time," Canavan said. "You just don't know because there are incredible financial pressures on professional sport in Australia.
"We are a small population with several professional sports operating.
"If you get to the stage where things are struggling down the track, that may happen, but it won't happen in my lifetime."
With the doom and gloom surrounding Australian rugby union's finances at the moment, a partnership with rugby league could be a radical solution to the code's problems.
ARU chief executive John O'Neill, who has foreshadowed a $7m to $8m loss for the ARU, has always been opposed to private equity in Super 14 teams, although this is the norm in English, French and Japanese club rugby.
Asked whether he believed the ARU should embrace private equity, L'Estrange said: "These things are going to have to be thought through pretty carefully.
"There are a lot of challenges for rugby union as alluded to by John O'Neill.
"There are challenges we faced early on the back of last year's performance (second last). The matter is how you react to those challenges.
"I'd like to think we've started to respond the way John wants us to respond.
"We have to lose the shackles of being a conservative game and become an entertaining game."
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