The Game

Australian Rugby Union

Tackling the future: growing Rugby at all levels will keep Australia a leader

The story of Australian Rugby is one of opportunity born out of adversity. A game that has been around in Australia for more than 150 years has been catapulted from a sleepy amateur boutique sport into a multimillion-dollar mass entertainment business.

And in 2003 the biggest show of all comes to Australia in the form of Rugby World Cup 2003 – with a cumulative television audience anticipated to be around four billion, an expected tourism influx in excess of 40,000 visitors, and 48 matches played across the country in 10 cities.

To put this show on, the Australian Rugby Union (ARU) will outlay a minimum A$120m, which it hopes to recoup through the sale of approximately 2.2m tickets.

The fifth Rugby World Cup will be the second of the professional era in Rugby and, in a sense, it will be the first ‘grown-up’ Rugby World Cup.

Going pro
But this story could have been very different if not for the tumultuous events that reshaped the game in 1995, the year of the third Rugby World Cup.

The creation of a Rugby World Cup was an achievement against the odds in itself, given the fierce opposition to the concept first floated jointly by Australia and New Zealand in 1985.

That opposition from northern hemisphere nations was only defeated by a single vote when the International Rugby Board (iRB) Council voted on the issue that year – and only then when the two English delegates to the Council split their vote: one for, one against.

Rugby was still very much an amateur ‘players’ game’, competing against sophisticated professional sports in Australia like Australian Rules and Rugby League, both of which had established strong domestic competitions. Rugby’s allure was its international flavour, its traditions and values. However, the hard cash of Rugby League had seen some 94 Wallabies and many others walk away from the code.

The 1995 crisis
Financial reality rocked the game during 1995. Firstly the threat of Rupert Murdoch’s Super League challenge to the authority of the Australian Rugby League saw the rival camps eyeing off Rugby Union talent in order to bolster their ranks. In the face of a unrelenting raid on player ranks, the game had no choice but to end the amateur era, in order to preserve its elite player base.

Super 12 and Tri Nations
No sooner had Rugby bitten the bullet to go professional than it faced its own rebellion in the form of the World Rugby Corporation, which threatened to annex the game’s best players for a private Rugby circus. Eventually, amid chaos and recrimination, the establishment won the day and a new entity called SANZAR began the task of building the new game through two new competitions: a 12-team inter-provincial championship called Super 12, to be followed by a three-nation contest in the form of the Tri Nations series.

South Africa New Zealand Australian Rugby (SANZAR) signed a A$555m 10-year broadcast deal with News Limited, which ensured that the players were paid and that the matches had a home on free-to-air and pay television. In a short space of time, Rugby had been turned on its head, and the contrast with the past could not have been more stark.

Changing venues Before the advent of the professional era, Rugby Tests were played at just two grounds in Australia – the Sydney Football Stadium in Sydney and suburban Ballymore in Brisbane. Change first came in 1996 when the Wallabies played the All Blacks at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane, then in 1997 with a more dramatic shift when 90,119 watched the Bledisloe Cup at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. The following year Test matches were played in Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, Melbourne and Canberra. This year, during Rugby World Cup 2003, the Wallabies will play their first match in Adelaide. The Wallabies now play their Sydney Tests at Telstra Stadium (pictured), where a world-record 109,874 crowd watched the 2000 Bledisloe Cup.

Looking back
If you cast your mind back to 1980, you may recall a great year for Australian Rugby.

The Wallabies defeated the All Blacks two Tests to one to claim the Bledisloe Cup. Great players such as Mark Ella, Tony Shaw, Michael O’Connor and Simon Poidevin were at their best for that series.

The incoming President, Sir Nicholas Shedadie, noted in the annual report that his predecessor Bill McLaughlin had passed on to him a well-organised and financially-sound Union.

The New Zealand tour that year boosted turnover by 52% on the previous year. Turnover in 1980 was A$1.3m. Tiepins and plaques were a line item in the ‘income and expenditure’ account – A$2218 to be exact.

In 2002, the ARU reported turnover of A$68m, and the game’s key indicators were healthy across the board. Attendances at Test matches averaged more than 60,000, while the Super 12 provinces (New South Wales Waratahs, Queensland Reds and ACT Brumbies) each broke home-ground attendance records. One thing hasn’t changed – all income earned is still ploughed back into the game.

Australian Rugby Union’s Managing Director, John O’Neill, had achieved his stated ambition of turning Rugby into a mass entertainment business – a business competing for the hearts, minds and wallets of consumers.

“We had to recognise the commercial and social realities of modern life,” he noted when launching the biggest season on record for Rugby in Australia. “That involved coming to grips with the need for dramatic change in our game, taking a deep breath and getting on with it. It was a massive leap of faith coming out of the amateur era and perhaps too much of a leap for some people, who questioned where we were taking the game.”

Rugby’s strategic starting point, a document titled Creating a Future, was followed by a national conference in 1999, a ‘Strategic Issues Forum’ in 2001, and another national conference in 2002.

“We didn’t exactly sing this from the rooftops,’ said Mr O’Neill, “but all of this activity has provided the strategic framework for Rugby Union in Australia to grow across all the key performance indicators.”

Springboard for growth
What of the game? Participation has grown from 98,000 in 1996 to more than 147,000 in 2002, with close to 800 Rugby clubs across the country.

The hallmarks of the past eight years have been further participation growth, a growing television audience, more sponsorship support, and ever-increasing gate and licensing revenue. The Wallabies have now won two Rugby World Cups, and have effectively become Australia’s winter national team.

None of these achievements has come easily. But the success of the Super 12 and Tri Nations concepts, and the success of Australian Rugby’s jewel in the crown, the Wallabies, have ensured the game’s continued growth.

The Australian Rugby Union plans to use Rugby World Cup 2003 as a further springboard for growth.
A number of legacy projects have been established, including a national Rugby education program, a nationwide travelling Rugby roadshow, and a commitment to a rolling five-year plan to grow the game.
The Australian Rugby Union will renegotiate its deal with News Limited in 2005, when it hopes to take the game to the next level of this extra-ordinary growth.

It hopes to include a fourth Australian team in the Super 12 competition in order to provide a wider professional playing base and potentially a greater national presence for the game, with Perth and Melbourne both vying for the new side.

For 2003, however, the focus is on winning the Rugby World Cup for a third time. The ARU, along with the International Rugby Board, is also committed to hosting the ‘best ever’ Rugby World Cup, in order to showcase Rugby in the best possible light to the widest possible audience.

At the same time the ARU is running ‘business as usual’, because unlike the last big international sporting event to hit Australia, the Sydney 2000 Olympics, Rugby keeps going long after the teams and fans have departed from RWC 2003.

Friendship and fun
How the game of Rugby Union will look in another 10 years is anyone’s guess, but surely it will be even further removed from its drowsy past.

One thing won’t change, however. Every weekend, on suburban grounds across the country, hundreds of thousands of Australians will pull on their boots and play Rugby for the love of it, and the enjoyment of the friendship and fun the game has offered for more than 150 years.

Australian Rugby Union – Rugby World Cup 2003 Host Union
Websites: www.rugby.com.au
www.rugby2003.com.au