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WAYNE SMITH
Senior sport writerBrisbane
The emergency general meeting of the Australian Rugby Union failed to divert it from its course of culling one of Australia’s five Super Rugby teams.
The meeting, which came about when the Victorian Rugby Union and the Rugby Union Players Association combined forces to force the ARU to explain its position, was not expected to produce any fireworks, with the NSW and Queensland Rugby Union declaring right from the start their support of the ARU’s policy of reducing its Super Rugby component to just four teams.
Curiously, even though the Rebels are one of the two teams on the chopping block – along with the Western Force – the Melbourne franchise also are understood to have backed the ARU policy to defeat the two resolutions attacking the reduction.
The third resolution, to set up an advisory Super Rugby Commission to advise the ARU, wasn’t decided upon, although a motion was passed to facilitate a wider discussion about it.
As expected, there was no move against ARU chief executive Bill Pulver. The meeting’s support of the ARU stand vindicated him to a degree, although it will only be a relatively brief stay of execution.
His contract is due to expire in February, and clearly the ARU intends to leave him in place until either he has culled a team or been defeated by the legal and/or arbitration process that the Force, in particular, are banking on to save them.
Once this interminable saga, which has now gone on for more than 70 days since the ARU first announced a decision would be made within 48-72 hours, comes to an end it is almost certain the ARU will move Pulver on.
Either way, he is in a no-win position – either he is the man who cut an Australian Super Rugby team or he is the man who promised to do so but couldn’t.