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By Wayne Smith
March 24, 2008
INEXORABLY, Australian rugby is closing on the day when some tough and extremely painful decisions will have to be taken.
It may be that Waratahs flanker Rocky Elsom nudges the game closer to Decision Day if he announces this week he plans to follow NSW team-mate Dan Vickerman to the northern hemisphere for a season or two before possibly returning for a crack at another World Cup in 2011.
Former Test prop Dan Crowley's reaction to that scenario ("black ban them for life") is understandable and almost universal but also utterly unworkable. Lashing out at professional rugby players for taking advantage of professional opportunities and better pay is like backchatting the referee when he makes a muddleheaded decision.
Better to take a leaf from Western Force's book after Mark Lawrence's brain explosion in disallowing Scott Staniforth's legitimate try against the Highlanders on Saturday. Play it cool and eventually things will level out.
The question is how can Australia - and New Zealand too, because it is in the same situation - level out the playing field when British and French rugby is awash with money, more money than the ARU and NZRU are capable of matching, let alone their constituent unions?
How can the Waratahs fight off Northampton's moneybags owner Keith Barwell, if, as is rumoured, he has set his sights on Elsom to consolidate the club in the premiership after fighting its way back into the top division.
Technically speaking, the Saints aren't there yet, but Barwell was moved to tell The Guardian on the weekend that "even the England cricket team couldn't muck it up from here".
Just say, for instance, the Brumbies had wanted one last season out of George Gregan. What hope would they have had going up against the mega-euros of comic strip syndicator Mourad Boudjellal, who has assembled a virtual Who's Who of rugby greats at Toulon for no other purpose but to indulge his whim of having a side in the French first division?
How does Australia fight off Bath's long-time owner Andrew Brownsword, a man reputedly so frugal he doesn't carry a mobile phone, which helps explain how he amassed $1.2billion, a tidy sum to have up your sleeve if you want to lash out on quality rugby players?
The temptation is to suggest Australia should fight fire with fire. Unfortunately there's just not the same critical mass of rugby-mad billionaires in this country that there is in England and France. But while individual ownership might not be a realistic option, it may be there is scope for joint ventures or consortiums to come in, trailing their money behind them.
It's not a thought rugby administrators at any level would find attractive because it inevitably would mean a surrender of some if not most of their authority and control. New Zealand officials are not any more enamoured of the idea either, but at least they are prepared to entertain a discussion of it at the national rugby summit this week in Wellington on where the game is heading and how it's going to find the money to get there.
There is no doubt that private ownership of Australian professional rugby teams would be fraught with danger. England foolishly went down this route when the game went professional in 1996 and the RFU soon found itself in a situation where the tail was wagging the dog, with the clubs dictating terms to the national body. And when the RFU tried to buy back the farm, it found that it had been subdivided into so many private fiefdoms that the task was impossible.
But the flip side is that British rugby is booming, in stark contrast to Australia where finances are so stretched that it simply couldn't find the coin to retain Vickerman and, quite possibly, Elsom. And yes, that's not forgetting Vickerman's ostensible lifestyle reasons for leaving.
But had the ARU shown him some love - and that can take many forms, but money sure is one of them in a professional game -- then he surely would have thought more seriously about playing out his career in a sky blue jersey.
The trick would be in determining how much control to hand over. Too little and there would be no incentive for entrepreneurs to come on board. Too much and rugby could end up in the sort of mess NBL giants the Brisbane Bullets found themselves in when owner Eddie Groves fell on hard financial times recently.
And any move in this direction would open up the question of a salary cap because there would need to be some constraint on how much clubs spent on players and coaches other than the length of the owner's arms and the depth of his pockets.
Yet it would be interesting to see how hard-nosed corporate heavyweights might approach the business of rugby. There is no question that they would expect, indeed demand, results a lot faster than, say, the Queensland Reds have delivered them.
Half a decade has slipped by since Queensland last fielded a side that gave its "stockholders" any return on their emotional investment and that's not the sort of time scale most businessmen find acceptable.
How long would it be, perchance, before a sign appeared at Ballymore similar to one recently erected at Northampton by a Barwell-appointed coach: "Holiday Camp Closed?"
Australia doesn't want to have to buy back the farm. But it can't afford to lose all its cattle either.
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Originally Posted by GIGS20
