NSWRU owns the Tahs but has sold leased the operating licence to Waratahs Rugby Pty Ltd. I have no idea who would sit on the restructured board in regards to the set up.
fixed
When the Brumbies came into existence in 1996 the new team got its discrete body from the start, the team's operations have always been separate from the ACTRU. And, to be fair, its early successes seemed to point the way forward for professional rugby teams. The NSWRU has oscillated from incompetence to indecisiveness to featherbedding to bankruptcy the last few decades, but some bright spark came up with a Brumbies-style model for the Tahs a couple of years ago (2009?). IIRC, the new arrangement runs for five years when it has to be revisited. One of the advantages of the arms' length operations of the Tahs is the non-involvement of interfering alickadoos from the NSWRU board in the running of the Tahs. A disadvantage is the involvement of various alickadoos who were at the helm of the NSWRU when it went broke some 10 years ago;
ANYONE associated with those bleak days should've been shown the door by now.
I've often wondered what the bloody hell NSWRU do. Waratahs Rugby runs the Tahs, Sydney Rugby Union now runs the Sydney grade comp, NSW Suburban Rugby Union runs the subbies comps, NSW Country Rugby Union runs everything outside Sydney, Sydney Juniors run the Sydney junior competitions, as does NSW Country JRU in the country, ACTRU run everything in southern NSW (say, below Goulburn), and GPS, CAS, ISA, CHS, AICES and Western Associated Schools run the various school competitions. Have I left anyone out? Ah yes, the women's comps. Dunno who runs them. But I'm quite perplexed as to WTF the NSWRU do. Other than swan about, eating and drinking at our expense while achieving SFA. One could mount a convincing case to reform rugby in this state from top to bottom.
A small example of how structurally tangled rugby is in this state: some years ago I was the secretary of a junior village club for my sins. A village club has to be part of a district Junior Rugby Union, which are directly aligned with the twelve Shute Shield clubs. Junior rugby in Sydney is divided into three zones: Metropolitan Northern Zone, Metropolitan Western Zone and Metropolitan Southern Zone, each with four members. These three zones make up Sydney JRU, which with NSWCJRU make up NSW Junior Rugby Union. NSWJRU has a board spot on NSWRU, along with subbies, schools and country. From the bottom up it looks like this:
village club->district club->zone->SJRU->NSWJRU->NSWRU. But wait, there's more: NSWJRU has a tangental line of authority to Australian Junior Rugby Union (which I think does fuck all). The lines of authority for schools rugby in this state are something similar, also with a tangental line to Australian Schools Rugby Union. I used to spend three-quarters of my spare time attending bloody meetings (monthly for village, district and zone with appearances at Sydney and NSW JRU AGMs), most of which argued the toss about what level had the power to do anything. After my secretarial stint I took on the district club presidency, and promptly cancelled all meetings! Executive fiat was my modus operandi, no one complained.
Reform rugby? Bring it on!