Thursday’s Rugby News sees the Force win the right to an appeal in the Supreme Court, Hooper calling for a warm-up match, a very bewildered RUPA and the Wallaroos serving revenge upon the Irish.
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Force granted leave to appeal axing
Man, this entire Force-ARU court case has got more thrills, spills and drama than Game of Thrones! After the Force were announced as being the team to be axed following the arbitration meeting, RugbyWA were granted leave to appeal against the ARU’s decision by New South Wales Supreme Court judge David Hammerschlag, who has now begun to hear their case.
RugbyWA has argued that the ARU has broken a commercial contract, arguing they guarenteed the Force a place in Super Rugby until December 2020. This appeal also has the backing of Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest, and comes after Twiggy’s offer to underwrite the Force’s financial costs and to contribute $50 million to pump into grassroots around the country was rejected by the ARU in Adelaide yesterday.
Many found the ARU’s decision stunning, especially when considering that they had decided to cut the Force predominantly because of ‘financial concerns.’
Twiggy himself released a statement, saying that the ARU were open to working with him.
“The ARU committed to working with the Western Force … to develop a new international competition,” he said.
“This will be based in Western Australia, with a focus firmly on the Indo Pacific region and a time zone that WA shares.”
ARU Chairman Cameron Clyne issued a statement about the meeting, describing it as ‘extremely constructive.’
“We had a long discussion with Andrew today and have provided in detail the position of the ARU and the factors that have led to our decision to discontinue the Western Force Super Rugby licence,” Clyne said in the statement.
“While we fundamentally disagreed on the number of teams in Super Rugby, we had an extremely constructive session and have agreed to work together to ensure that Rugby has a strong future in Western Australia.”
“We were genuinely appreciative of Andrew’s generous offer to back the Western Force and Australian Rugby, however, given the position we are in we are unable to work towards retaining five teams in Super Rugby.
“We are at the final stages of this process and Australian Rugby’s constituents have voted to reduce Australia’s Super Rugby representation to four teams and we have made commitments to SANZAAR.”
However, RugbyWA’s blunt statement told a different story.
“RugbyWA is incredibly disappointed to hear that yesterday’s meeting between Mr Andrew Forrest and ARU Chairman Cameron Clyne and directors Brett Robinson and John Eales failed to reach a positive outcome. Particularly given Mr Forrest’s incredibly generous offer to donate many tens of millions to support community rugby as well as financially underwrite the Western Force.
RugbyWA Chairman of the Board Tony Howarth says: “It is now clear that the ARU did not attend the meeting in Adelaide with the intention of resolving a mutually acceptable agreement, as said previously by ARU Chairman Cameron Clyne.”
RugbyWA is adamant that if the ARU can afford to refuse approximately $50 million to support grass roots rugby then the decision to cut an Australian franchise cannot logically be based on the ARU’s financial position. Therefor the basis on which the ARU has decided to remove a team needs to be fully explained.
Further, we understand that during the meeting the ARU Directors were adamant that a Senate Inquiry as requested by Senator Linda Reynolds, had no place or role to play in Australian Rugby. While Federal Sport Minister Greg Hunt is firmly behind a national footprint for rugby in Australia.
RugbyWA strongly supports the call for a Senate Inquiry based on the ARU’s misinformation as to their financial position and their lack of information available for the reasons for removing the Western Force.
You know it’s about to become a real shit show when even the pollies are talking about it.
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Bloomin’ Bewildered
Staying with the Force-ARU case, many were stunned by the ARU’s decision to reject Andrew Forrest’s $50 million offering. It is important to consider the ARU’s reasoning behind it: Forrest himself (as has been pointed out by many, including the lads on the podcast above), was very late to the show on supporting the Force, and also (as mentioned earlier by Clyne) the ARU has made a commitment to SANZAAR to have four teams next year.
But then, there’s the flipside: straight up turning down $50 million of much needed cash to be pumped into grassroots and Australian rugby in general. And many, including Rugby Union Player’s Association boss Ross Xenos, can’t believe that the ARU apparently rejected the offer without even considering it.
“We’re deeply disappointed, surprised, and bewildered at the fact that a very generous offer to secure the long-term future of the grassroots game was not, as far as we’re aware, deeply consulted or engaged with by the ARU yesterday,” Xenos said to the ABC.
RUPA has been pretty outspoken the last couple of months during the whole Super Rugby saga, and certainly didn’t hold back on how much this entire debacle was hurting the players welfare. This was echoed by Matt Hodgson in a heart-wrenching Facebook post that was released yesterday.
“This is a really difficult time for that group of young men. We have got a situation where this protracted SANZAAR review keeps going,” Xenos echoed.
“They remain unbelievably united and unbelievably positive about the future of Rugby in Western Australia.”
Xenos believes, should Twiggy attempt to create an alternative league, that it would in fact be possible for said league to exist, with interest from Asia being a strong contributing factor.
“[It would be in] Very early stages but as we understand, it would be a competition in Perth that also expands up into the Asian regions,” he said.
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A return of the warm-up match?
Remember the days when the Wallabies had a warm-up match against the likes of Samoa or Fiji before the start of the Rugby Championship? Wasn’t it great? Well, it turns out we weren’t the only big fans of having a warm-up match. Wallabies captain Michael Hooper is open to it too.
With the thrashing this week just gone, many have been concerned that the Wallabies lack of actual game time in the four weeks between the Brumbies exit and Bledisloe 1 played a major role in their defeat.
The All Blacks, during their preparation, had time for a trial game. While they did cruise to a combined 106-7 victory over Counties Manukau and Taranaki, the fact they took the time to play together says a lot about the methods of preparation.
Hooper, while speaking to the Sydney Morning Herald in New Zealand, admitted that doing a trial match would make a lot of sense, but that a lot of things would need to be ironed out first.
“It definitely has some merit … it may have helped having a warm-up game.” Hooper said.
“I don’t think an in-house game is the way forward. If you are practising and using calls, there’s no point playing a game where the other team knows them too.
“But against another team? We did it back in 2013 against a club on the Sunshine Coast and it wasn’t productive at all because we were too dominant.”
The solution, according to Hooper?
“If you could find an Aussie BaaBaas [Barbarians] or something like that, then there might be some good merit in an idea like that. Obviously there is the risk of injury to consider as well.”
Much of the media focus this week in New Zealand was aimed at how the world’s best were able to have nearly thirty points shipped past them in the second half of the Bledisloe in Sydney. Many have wondered whether Steve Hansen‘s men will come out a much more dangerous beast in Dunedin.
“People say they [New Zealand] were so far in front and so on, but the reality is they’re the best team in the world and we scored 30 points. So that’s positive from us,” said Hooper.
“However, we did fall down last week against these guys and we can flip 30 points just by doing the things we said we were going to do but didn’t carry out into the game.”
“It would be foolish to not think they’re going to get better,” he clarified about the All Blacks this week.
“It was their first game against Test opposition. So they’ll be better. But we have a good opportunity to close that gap and the short turnaround is good for us.
“If we’d gone out there and did what you wanted and they beat you anyway, then you’d go ‘sheesh’. But there is a different feeling between last year’s loss and this year’s loss.”
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Best served cold
The Wallaroos have had a topsy turvey World Cup campaign so far in Ireland. After a heartbreaking loss to hosts Ireland and a thumping at the hands of the French, the ladies pulled back some respectability with a win against Japan to finish in 7th overall, and set up a fifth-eighth play off match against the Irish hosts again.
And, as a wise man once said, revenge is a dish best served cold.
The ladies made up for their loss against the hosts, beating them 36-24 in Belfast. The match was 12-12 up until the half hour mark, but then the Wallaroos turned it on, putting 24 points past the hosts either side of halftime. The Irish were able to grab two late consolation tries, but in the end it was a strong performance by the Wallaroos. Finally, a national rugby performance we can cheer about!
“I’m really proud of the way the girls played tonight. They executed the game plan we laid out for them and kept the pressure on the Irish throughout the match,” Australia coach Paul Verrell said to The Daily Telegraph.
“That win secures us a place in 2021 World Cup which was our goal today. It was also great to reverse the score from our first encounter against the Irish in Dublin.
“We knew as a team that we could produce a better performance and today we did in front of a vocal home crowd who were behind their team.”
The win sees the ladies head into their final match of the World Cup, a playoff for 5th place against Canada, who outclassed Wales 52-0 in their play off.
New Zealand will be vying for a record fifth World Cup crown when they take on fellow heavyweights England in the Grand Final in Belfast. The Kiwis brushed aside the United States 45-12 in the semi-final, while the English also made light work of the French, beating them 20-3. The tournament will come to it’s end on August 26th.
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