lou75
Ron Walden (29)
Although a good article and well-researched, the essential truth of it has been pointed out many times here by a number of us, and long before this type of analysis has caught on as important. (For a long time the ARU forelock tuggers posting here flatly refused to see it all for what it was and excused the ARU all manner of obvious delinquencies in the way it conducted its 'expansion strategy' in VIC.)
Namely, and I say this with no discourtesy to Rebels fans, the Rebels as an ARU expansion strategy and business and code investment has been an abject financial and commercial disaster of large proportion. More or less, the ARU has tried to cover up or deflect away this truth.
I do not blame the Rebels as such for this in the major case.
The ARU consistently picked numerous inadequate Rebels CEO's, poor local boards, and equally poor HCs and assistant HCs.
Then they compounded these serious errors with the type of mistake the Reds have been making for a number of seasons now: the thought that recruiting expensive 'prestige and elite' players - irrespective of local coaching quality - would do the trick and build playing success and a viable Super franchise out of Melbourne.
The ARU entered the VIC market with no serious, well-planned strategy to attain local rugby excellence. Instead it did what it typically always does - bumble onwards with insider mates, core policies lacking foresight, adequate research and any bias to execution planning and execution excellence.
And also in response to “On the trail of the SuperRugby heist” I have to say that if you are going to look at one side of the ledger you should really look at the other side as well. ARU has pumped some start up money into the Rebels but the ARU has benefited from Victorian Government policies to the tune of one hundred million dollars in the past ten or eleven years:
1. 1996 the taxpayers of Victoria bailed out the ARU when the State government of Victoria struck a five year deal with the ARU to bring two Bledisloe games, a Mandela cup game and a British lions game to Victoria bringing patrons through the turnstiles like no other state could.
2. 1997-2016 we had three similar deals whereby the Victorian Major events paid well in excess of twenty million dollars to attract four Bledisloe cups, two British lions, numerous world cup games and a host of other test matches to Melbourne
3. That’s about one hundred million dollars if you calculate an average ticket price of one hundred dollars in to the coffers o the ARU.
So to say the Melbourne Rebels has cost the ARU about $20 million over and above player costs is a misrepresentation of the true picture and should be balanced with the $100 million the ARU has earned as a direct result of Victorian government investment in that same Rugby code in Victoria. IE: NO RUGBY IN VICTORIA = NO $100 MILLION IN TURNSTILE REVENUES FOR THE PAST 10 YEARS.