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Wayne Smith, Rugby union editor | July 09, 2009
Article from: The Australian
ON how many fronts can John O'Neill and the Australian Rugby Union continue to wage wars?
The Wallabies, through their trade union body the Rugby Union Players Association, jumped out of the trenches yesterday and came storming over the hill, threatening legal action against their employers if their investigation into Lote Tuqiri's dismissal uncovers evidence the collective bargaining agreement with the ARU was breached.
Significantly, RUPA boss Tony Dempsey brushed aside suggestions the action could undermine his organisation's relationship with the ARU. Apparently it's already so damaged another dent won't matter.
It was significant, too, that the players took collective action. They are reported to be mad as hell about the way a valued teammate and old friend was treated, even if Tuqiri did foolishly hand his ARU firing squad its ammunition. Individually, the players are too terrified to speak out against O'Neill, but they are evidently hoping there's safety in numbers.
No such luck for Wallabies coach Robbie Deans, whose relationship with his players has been placed in grave jeopardy over his solo public pronouncement of support for O'Neill's handling of the Tuqiri affair.
Even if Deans honestly believes this, his credibility with his players and the rugby public should never have been squandered in the defence of what is increasingly being seen as an indefensible action. If any one man should have been quarantined from this imbroglio, it was the Wallabies coach.
A number of other legal actions are now swirling around O'Neill and the ARU. It is doubtful whether the Tuqiri case, for which the papers were filed yesterday, will ever see the inside of a courtroom. The last thing the ARU needs is for former Wallabies coach John Connolly or any of the other numerous former employees sacked by O'Neill to take the stand, swear to tell the truth and then be asked: did John O'Neill ever say or do anything to cause you to believe he was looking for an excuse to sack Lote Tuqiri?
And among a host of high-profile rugby identities who have fallen out with O'Neill, one is now understood to have launched defamation action against him.
Even the relationships that should be the strongest - the ARU with its constituent states - are frayed to breaking point. The accusation that ARU officials are working to undermine Victorian Rugby Union chairman Gary Gray in advance of Melbourne's selection as the Super 15 expansion team would be bizarre were it not for the mounting body of evidence that suggests it's true. In the wake of the report in The Australian yesterday on the apparent destabilisation campaign, affidavits have been sworn that do not paint a high-ranking ARU official in a good light. ARU chairman Peter McGrath, who is supposedly investigating the allegations, would do well to ask for copies of the sworn statements.
Then, even more bizarrely, Queensland Rugby Union chairman Peter Lewis revealed that he believes he is the target of a "Sydney-based" campaign to topple him. Asked if the ARU was orchestrating the push, Lewis guardedly replied: "I don't know."
Under normal circumstances, Lewis's answer should have been a snort and a derisive: "Of course not." The fact that the chairman of a major state union was entertaining the proposition that the national body is playing the man not the ball was telling.
Clearly, as with RUPA, the states' relationships with the ARU can't get much worse. Or perhaps it can. Battle has not yet been officially joined on the vexed issue of private equity.
Through all of this turmoil, McGrath and other members of the ARU board have maintained a spectacular silence.
One board member approached for comment on the Tuqiri sacking insisted it was not his job to second-guess the CEO about hirings and firings.
What nonsense! That's precisely the oversight role the board should be playing, especially when the employee sacked is one of the highest-paid and most popular members of the Wallabies.
It should be of the gravest concern to the board that so much energy is being expended on issues and campaigns that do nothing to advance the standing of rugby in Australia, and indeed threaten to impoverish the game on many levels.
Now is the time for McGrath to confound his critics by taking a strong stand to get the ARU back on track. If the challenge is too much for him, he should stand down for the good of the game.
If nothing else, the ARU board members should seek the advice of one of their own number, former chief of the Australian Defence Force Peter Cosgrove, on the wisdom of fighting wars on multiple fronts.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...015703,00.html