Poll - Do you support Aus withdrawing from Super Rugby?

[ChargerWA]

Quick question related to the Where to For Super Rugby thread.

Plenty of people have mentioned that they'd be willing to see Aus withdraw from Super Rugby and build the game up again. I'd propose that the ARU state their intention to not compete in Super Rugby post this broadcast deal in 2020, use the intervening 3 seasons to build the NRC into the premier Australian Rugby competition and then go it alone for a couple of years while we build the game from the grass roots up. Not trickle down as per the ARUs strategy for the whole professional period.

I'd expect a Southern Hemisphere team competition would eventually reform, be it a champions league style deal or something more akin to Super Rugby, but it feels like we need a fresh break.

 

[Inside Shoulder]

That's surprising and it's a worry: if we, the rugby tragics, think that then Foxtel etc would be mad to throw more money at it.

 

[Omar Comin']

Interesting results. I suspect if this poll was put to a wider audience that there'd probably be a higher percentage of No's and Trans-Tasman votes, but given the people voting here will have read and thought about the arguments from all sides it's pretty telling that half of the votes have been yes, and most of the rest Trans-Tasman.

I do think the two Yes answers are virtually the same because if Australia did make a move to leave Super Rugby I think it would ultimately force a Trans-Tasman (or Asia-Pacific) comp, if not immediately then within a few years.

 

[Gnostic]

I am a bit surprised at the number of Yes votes, and a bit heartened honestly, because to me it means people are starting to see that the future of the game in Australia really exists outside of the Super Rugby comp. It is a dead end, it isn't sustainable and I doubt will exist in any form at the end of this broadcast agreement, better to get in front of the game and build something that is sustainable long term, hopefully a TT comp, but as that is doubtful we will just have to grow up and stand on our own small footprint.

It will however be interesting to see what the NZRU do when it becomes blindingly obvious that Super Rugby is dead. As for SARU, IMO it doesn't matter what they think as the ANC will be the ones telling them what they think and it revolves around quotas.

That said a withdrawal from Super Rugby is not a withdrawal from SANZAAR and the RC should be able to go ahead as usual, which is what WR (World Rugby) would want given they have funded the Argentine inclusion.

Finally I hope the ARU current board and executive resigns en-masse and they are replaced with some competent people who will see this done and can restore not only local faith in management but international faith, which has IMO been on the downhill slide since JON MK1 shafted the NZRU with sole hosting right for the 2003RWC (even if the NZRU failed on their promises to deliver clean stadia JON should've helped them to deliver not jumped into cut them out so quick), since then its been a massive slide in prestige and respect to the point the ARU is now the kid at the school dance standing in the corner nobody talks to looking geeky and wondering why, while he picks his nose and eats it.

 

[Killer]

Yes agree, I think last years NRC showed that State and large Regional tribalism is alive and well. Also agree on the RC.

 

[wamberal]

The really sad thing is that the 2003 RWC was sensationally successful at just about all levels, and in all aspects. Just about, okay we didn't win!!


But we were living at Wambie at the time, and there was an incredible buzz everywhere. The Irish were based at Gosford, and there were Irish supporters everywhere.


Where did it all go wrong? That's the 64 million dollar question. By the time of the next RWC, our national team was in disarray, the ARC was launched and widely ignored, and then JON made his triumphal return which achieved nothing.

 

[Inside Shoulder]

and then JON made his triumphal return which achieved nothing.

Well it put $2m in his kick when he left

 

[wamberal]

Incidentally, not sure whether it is widely known that the main reason that he left was that the board refused his wish to be appointed Executive Chairman. In other words, he wanted to be effectively the boss of the whole game in Australia, with no checks and balances at all.

 

[Pfitzy]

And fuck that.

 

[RedsHappy]

Incidentally, not sure whether it is widely known that the main reason that he left was that the board refused his wish to be appointed Executive Chairman. In other words, he wanted to be effectively the boss of the whole game in Australia, with no checks and balances at all.

Nah. There was much more to it than that.

Just one example of the 'ego gone wild' that was JO'N Mk II and that ultimately contributed to JON's demise in 2012.

When in April 2011 JO'N engineered the quite remarkable contractual re-signing of Deans for another 3-4 years (even though he had not yet confronted the RWC 2011), he also got himself re-signed as ARU CEO for at least another 3, maybe 4, years. (The details of this ridiculously indulgent contract extension for J'ON that should never have been agreed to by either party and the highly generous terms of this extension led in significant part to the even more outrageous payment to JO'N of well over $2m when he was effectively - though quietly - sacked in late 2012.)

This inexplicable oddity of mutual extension was all then justified to the outer world on the grounds of 'important continuity of these 2 key positions/the close partnership that must exist between CEO and Wallaby HC/the value of Deans and how hard it was to find good HCs', etc.

However, to the absolute horror of the ARU board, a board typically under the spell of JO'N's every wish and command, it was discovered that just before RWC 2011 JO'N went to England to be interviewed for the highly lucrative post of CEO of Manchester City football club no less!

This was only a few months after JO'N had convinced the hapless ARU board that he must stay on for many more years at the ARU to 'see things through, and for continuity'!

Such a 2011 trip to seek out a different CEO position vividly highlighted JO'N's hypocrisy, vanity and utterly self-centred posture.

Given these circumstances, many boards would have there and then sacked the CEO concerned for not acting honestly in relation to them in requesting and arguing for his contract renewal on the grounds of a commitment to longer-term continuity etc and then immediately thereafter showing in truth he was enticed by greener, more financially lucrative, pastures.

Whatever, for some ARU board members this was the long overdue wake up-call to the real state of JO'N's MO. Roughly a year later he was quietly ousted retired but Hawker had agreed such ludicrously favourable (to JO'N) contract terms for JO'N that JO'N was able to press for the unconscionable payment he received when asked finally to leave.

By 2012 the ARU's cash finances - under JO'N's watch - were deteriorating very badly towards insolvency and no genuinely code-loving and code-respecting CEO would have enforced his contract so's to take such a relatively vast $ sum for himself under these circumstances in what is in truth a not-for-profit community position vs say an ANZ or a BHP.

And no decent self-respecting board owing its loyalty to solvency and the rugby community should have allowed that huge $ payment to be made, even if it had to go to Court to avert it being made.

 

[blues recovery]

Nah. There was much more to it than that.

Just one example of the 'ego gone wild' that was JO'N Mk II and that ultimately contributed to JON's demise in 2012.

When in April 2011 JO'N engineered the quite remarkable contractual re-signing of Deans for another 3-4 years (even though he had not yet confronted the RWC 2011), he also got himself re-signed as ARU CEO for at least another 3, maybe 4, years. (The details of this ridiculously indulgent contract extension for J'ON that should never have been agreed to by either party and the highly generous terms of this extension led in significant part to the even more outrageous payment to JO'N of well over $2m when he was effectively - though quietly - sacked in late 2012.)

This inexplicable oddity of mutual extension was all then justified to the outer world on the grounds of 'important continuity of these 2 key positions/the close partnership that must exist between CEO and Wallaby HC/the value of Deans and how hard it was to find good HCs', etc.

However, to the absolute horror of the ARU board, a board typically under the spell of JO'N's every wish and command, it was discovered that just before RWC 2011 JO'N went to England to be interviewed for the highly lucrative post of CEO of Manchester City football club no less!

This was only a few months after JO'N had convinced the hapless ARU board that he must stay on for many more years at the ARU to 'see things through, and for continuity'!

Such a 2011 trip to seek out a different CEO position vividly highlighted JO'N's hypocrisy, vanity and utterly self-centred posture.

Given these circumstances, many boards would have there and then sacked the CEO concerned for not acting honestly in relation to them in requesting and arguing for his contract renewal on the grounds of a commitment to longer-term continuity etc and then immediately thereafter showing in truth he was enticed by greener, more financially lucrative, pastures.

Whatever, for some ARU board members this was the long overdue wake up-call to the real state of JO'N's MO. Roughly a year later he was quietly ousted retired but Hawker had agreed such ludicrously favourable (to JO'N) contract terms for JO'N that JO'N was able to press for the unconscionable payment he received when asked finally to leave.

By 2012 the ARU's cash finances - under JO'N's watch - were deteriorating very badly towards insolvency and no genuinely code-loving and code-respecting CEO would have enforced his contract so's to take such a relatively vast $ sum for himself under these circumstances in what is in truth a not-for-profit community position vs say an ANZ or a BHP.

And no decent self-respecting board owing its loyalty to solvency and the rugby community should have allowed that huge $ payment to be made, even if it had to go to Court to avert it being made.

Not to mention the ARU Boards agreement to allow him to take on a highly paid Chairmenship of a high profile Listed Company whilst still ARU CEO.
Good reminder I guess that the rot didn't just set in a couple of years ago.

 

[RedsHappy]

Not to mention the ARU Boards agreement to allow him to take on a highly paid Chairmenship of a high profile Listed Company whilst still ARU CEO.
Good reminder I guess that the rot didn't just set in a couple of years ago.

Yes, another ridiculous and unconscionable allowance to JO'N when he was re-signed in 2011 (as per my post) for 'continuity and commitment'.

Oh, but now he can be 'committed' to another organisation as well as the ARU without diminution of his contact terms from the ARU!

I was just aghast at all this at the time, I was appalled, I have worked all over the world in CEO positions in business and I had rarely if ever seen board governance as bad, or as brazen and unapologetic, as was this.

This is but one egregious example in a long, long line of them of an ARU board acting with no conscience or conscientiousness towards the broader constituents they are meant to the serving, namely the code itself and the Australian rugby community.

Remarkably though, as in other posted observations I have made here, when all this was going on 2011 there were numerous dedicated posters here making excuses and apologies for the ARU's conduct and arguing they were somehow doing 'the best job possible and were all good people'.

FFS.

 

[p.Tah]

Despite what you think of JON you have to give him credit for his negotiating skills, shame they didn't bring him in to do the SANZAAR negotiations and earn some of that $2m.

 

[blues recovery]

He certainly was a stronger presence in World Rugby than the current lightweights

 

[Gnostic]

Despite what you think of JON you have to give him credit for his negotiating skills, shame they didn't bring him in to do the SANZAAR negotiations and earn some of that $2m.

I do not actually. Being a bully and getting your way is much different to negotiating a sustainable deal that enhances long term relationships. After JON MK1 the NZRU was humiliated personally, even though they set that ground themselves, JONs negotiating skills got the ARU a shit load of short term cash but compromised the long term relationship, which it can be reasonably said is bearing poisonous fruit today. As for JON MK2 I remember him be less than warmly welcomed but IRB people and other Union heads because of what was termed his abrasive style. Like I said sustainable deals enhancing long term relationships, might not show as big a profit up front, but you can build on the solid foundations they produce. Do we have foundations?