We’re not mugs: the future of Australian Rugby, if there is one

In recent years Aussie rugby supporters have had to get used to disappointment when it comes to on-field performance. It’s not been pleasant, but there’s usually been something around the corner that’s made us feel that things could get better; often a ‘backs to the wall’ performance. What we won’t stomach being treated as though, are mugs – which has become a disturbing default in recent years, and surely has reached new lows in 2014.

When the ARU board renewed John O’Neill’s contract and then paid him out two million dollars when he became too busy with the duties of other boards, they surely thought we were fools. Stupid enough we wouldn’t notice that after a ‘global search’ to find the next CEO, he turns out to be the Chairman’s old private school buddy with absolutely zero sports administration experience.

Some may say that these indiscretions border on old news. I’d say the mind-boggling turn of events we saw in 2014 were largely the result of a woefully naive ARU executive team being eaten alive.

Unfortunately it wasn’t just our own national body who saw us as mugs. Of the many, many aspects of the Beale debacle that debased the game of rugby in Australia this year, most insulting must surely have been the way in which the majority of the media colluded with the Beale camp to produce a one-eyed character assassination of both Patston and McKenzie. These two careers and private lives were thrown under a bus purely as last ditch effort to bolster the earning potential of a player we knew to be guilty as charged.

It’s now laughable when you recall some of the arguments they spruiked to muddy the waters – like the line that yes, Beale sent one offensive message, but not two. While I might not be able to tell the difference between the two images, I can tell that the damage Beale’s gutter defence caused the victim was far worse than both of those two images combined ever did.

But what of the damage to Australian Rugby?

At the beginning of the Beale fiasco, Bill Pulver stood up and said that the ARU could not countenance bullying in the workplace and so Beale must go. The strength of that ‘decision’ lasted all of five minutes and we are now in the situation where Kurtley Beale looks likely to be re-signed by the ARU, having sailed through a stacked tribunal and now being under the protection of Michael Cheika as Wallaby coach.

There are so many wrong messages given by this outcome, it’s hard to know which one to pick. The core is this though – that when it comes to certain players versus coaches, the ARU, or Rugby – the latter are dead meat. This would be a problem in any sporting code, but in a code verging on bankruptcy – both in terms financial and good will with the supporter base – it’s a death sentence.

Let’s imagine (it’s not very hard) that Bill Pulver’s attempt to pull a rabbit out of a hat with a 2016 TV deal fails. In its current form Aussie rugby goes bust. Finally, we get a cost base re-set; player salaries are smashed into line with other well paid professionals and extravagant (albeit well-meaning) investments like the Rebels are ‘efficiency dividended’. Stars leave, the code contracts. Australian rugby is in the wilderness.

With a healthy grass roots supporter base, we can fight our way back. Sure, the Wallabies will probably lose for a while (what’s new?) but for the average rugby punter who pays the bills (you and me), there’s still the game we love. Talent will come forward. We’ll find a way through because there’s still that special code we can put our sons and daughters through so that they too can enjoy the special bond it forms between us.

But will that supporter base be there? The ARU’s double-down bet on the tip of the talent pyramid pulling the whole lot through has failed. It seems that every conceivable strategy has had a go – new super franchises, league converts, sevens tournaments – anything other than serious investment at the base of the pyramid. Meanwhile my son comes home with NRL balls after a free week’s league clinic at school and AFL makes headway into GPS schools.

Indeed, far from investment, in 2014 we see a mixture of taxation, funding withdrawal and administrative burden heaped onto club rugby. Into these open wounds comes the salt of the Beale fiasco. How much abuse and misrepresentation of their code can a supporter base take?

From the feedback I receive from the G&GR community – many at the coal face of the Aussie Rugby – for many it’s already too much. In some, a thread has been broken. In many others, right now they’re just ‘over it’. We can only hope a new year and an overindulgence in cricket through the summer somehow recharges the batteries enough to re-kindle a flame at least at super rugby level.

What I do know though is that 2014 signalled Australian rugby is no longer in a battle against AFL, League and even the A-League to be at the top table of Australian sport. That battle has been lost. The battle now is to survive as a code with our fundamentals intact. For that to happen, players, administrators and the media need to stop treating supporters as mugs and as the lifeblood of this sport that they are. The future of Australian rugby depends on no-one else, but them.