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Talks kick off but clubs offside
By Ben Kimber
Monday, May 29, 2006
NSWRU chief executive Fraser Neill has called on Sydney's clubs to park their "paranoia" at the door and embrace the process aimed at securing a third-tier rugby future for Australia that begins today.
About 70 representatives of the various stakeholders in the code will meet this morning to kick off a three-day summit designed to establish once and for all the way forward for rugby below the Super 14 level.
Sydney's premiership clubs have been in an uproar as the meeting approaches, with many believing the ARU has already planned a future competition that will exclude them and will sound their death knell as money and crowds are lured away.
Rumours abound of plans for a six-team competition centred on the four provinces, or a 10-team version with five Sydney entities, and last week Randwick and Sydney University placed advertisements querying any system which would not allow them to be involved in their current stand-alone format.
Asked if he could guarantee no agendas were in place prior to the meeting, Neill said: "There's an agenda to get what the right result is. Everybody has an opinion as to what is the right answer. I've had a myriad of solutions land on my desk that all have merits and downsides.
"I myself have my opinion of how it should end up, and I'd be amazed if people at the ARU didn't have some ideas about how it should end up, but I'm very confident that it is going to be an open process and we're going to end up with the best result because for the first time there's a fully inclusive process."
Neill said Randwick and the Students had had a knee-jerk reaction to the summit.
"I'll take it in the upside that people are passionate and thinking about it ... [but] I hope those paranoias are parked pretty quickly in the first day ..." he said.