A SUPER rugby commission could be set up as part of a plan to uncouple the professional game from the state unions if a controversial Australian Rugby Union strategic plan uncovered yesterday is enacted.

The ARU, acting in response to protests from state bodies after they learned the discussion paper allegedly had been leaked by an ARU heavyweight to two provincial union officials for perusal and comment, late yesterday distributed the plan to all state union chief executives.

It's not just the selective leaking of the discussion paper -- which outlines proposals for radically overhauling the entire structure of the game in Australia -- that has, as one state official put it, enraged his union. It's also the fact that the paper was commissioned without reference to the states, even though questions directly relating to its subject matter were put to senior ARU officials at a recent summit meeting involving all state chairmen and CEOs.

"It's been happening without any transparency," one official told The Australian last night.

Ironically, anger at the manner in which the paper was commissioned has been balanced by relief that some of the most pressing questions in Australian rugby have been brought out into the open for wide-ranging debate.

"It's exactly what rugby needed to have a look at," one source said. "The politicking going on is pathetic but if this paper helps to resolve that and restore financial sustainability to the game, then it will be worth it."

It is understood the discussion paper is the Crawford Report, Mark II, written by the same analyst, Michael Crawford, who was commissioned by the then and now current ARU chief executive John O'Neill in 1996 to create a strategic plan for Australian rugby.

The original Crawford Report was approved against the wishes of key Queensland and NSW officials at the time, Norbert Byrne and Ron Meagher, but it remains to be seen whether the states, though highly suspicious of the ARU's means and motives, will array themselves against the new Crawford paper.

The ARU specifically reassured NSW, Queensland, ACT and WA officials at the recent summit meeting that they would hold their Super rugby licences in perpetuity even after they expired when the existing broadcast agreement ends at the end of next year.

It remains to be seen how that promise sits with one Crawford paper model that proposes the establishment of a Super rugby commission to oversee that level of the professional game within Australia. One official suggested that, rather than disenfranchising the states it literally would give them a seat at the table along with the ARU.

However, there is likely to be a groundswell of resentment if the state bodies are uncoupled from the Waratahs, Reds, Brumbies and Western Force. Indeed, Crawford foresaw a similar problem in drawing up his 1996 report.

As O'Neill wrote in his autobiography It's Only a Game, "Crawford also was astute in recognising that the game needed to be careful not to disenfranchise the rank and file and the volunteers who played and supported the game as amateurs at club, suburban and social levels."

Intriguingly, the paper reportedly does not address the issue of private equity, the pursuit of which has become a key ARU objective in recent times.

There is a growing belief in the states that the ARU could force them down the private-equity route by withholding all or part of its annual $4.3million allocations to them to run their professional rugby franchises.

Certainly the national body is intent on applying a private-equity model to the anticipated new Super 15 franchise in Melbourne, a message that is expected to be reinforced later today when ARU senior manager Matt Carroll meets representatives of the three bidding Melbourne consortiums.

Much will depend on the outcome of the broadcast right negotiations. If Australia's cut of the SANZAR pie increases, as is expected to be the case given that the expansion of Super rugby will provide broadcasters with significantly more product, then some officials are arguing that would be the perfect time to invite private equity into the equation.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...015651,00.html

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Hardly any surprise - who really didn't see this coming? But the outcome could be anything from a firm template for success to an unmitigated disaster. Still don't really see how private equity would fit into the mix though. But more bloody leaks to mates and insiders...can anyone seriously argue that the games administration is not plagued by amateurism?