Rugby 360. We’ve been here before.
On Tuesday the SA Rugby Union was one of eight major Test countries to warn players that if they join the breakaway R360 league, they will be unable to play Test rugby. The other unions are England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Italy, New Zealand and Australia.
The joint statement from the eight noted: “We all welcome new investment and innovation in rugby and support ideas that can help the game evolve and reach new audiences. Any new competition must strengthen the sport as a whole, not fragment or weaken it.
“Among our roles as national unions, we must take a wider view on new propositions and assess their impact on a range of areas, including whether they add to rugby’s global ecosystem, for which we are all responsible, or whether they are a net negative to the game.”
It is moot whether R360 will add to rugby’s, ahem, “global ecosystem”, a network that is run by, and provides for, the good of the eight unions behind the statement. Does R360 care if they do or not? Should it be noted that Wales is not on that list of eight, or is that just being both hasty and a tad nasty?
The Times reported on Thursday that the Welsh Rugby Union supported the statement “but its selection position is less clear because of the uncertainty around the professional game in the principality, saying it ‘reserves the right’ not to select R360 players for Wales”.
Which is Cymraeg (Welsh) for “Well, if someone else is going to pick up the tab for the players’ salaries, you never know, boyo.” World Rugby is not sustainable in its current format. It relies on the income from Rugby World Cups to survive. Its other streams of revenue are pocket change. Rugby has to change and evolve and adapt to a changing ecosystem.
We have been here before. During the 1995 Rugby World Cup there was a battle behind the scenes as the World Rugby Corporation (WRC), which was tentatively backed by Kerry Packer, the man behind World Series Cricket, had agents running around SA trying to sign the best players. Rugby was still amateur until August that year, two months and two days after the World Cup final at Ellis Park.
The presidents of SA, New Zealand and Australian rugby met in the cafe on the mezzanine floor of the Sandton Sun. English journalists, who were eating nearby, tried to listen in as the three outlined the agreement for the 10-year, $555m deal that sealed Sanzar’s future. When they left, one of the journalists found the bill they had paid: R30 for three coffees and a toasted sandwich. R30 for $555m, then the biggest sports rights deal outside the US. Bargain.
The late Ross Turnbull, a one-Test Wallaby prop and attorney, led the charge of Packer agents in SA, as Edward Griffiths, CEO of SA Rugby, noted then: “We are in a Wild West situation with a lot of cowboys in town.”
Francois Pienaar was one of those, working as a WRC agent in a deal said to be $300,000. Step up Michael Watt, a New Zealander who formed CSI, the broadcast rights experts. He had deals with many of the football, cricket and rugby organisations and was also a backer of Michael Jackson’s History tour and Riverdance: The Musical.
Watt brokered the Sanzar deal that essentially started professional rugby. When The Guardian asked him in 2020 how he had managed to get the huge sum of $555m (which increased to $700m with options) for an amateur sport, he laughed: “We just asked for it. The only science in such a deal is politicising and bullshit.”
Does R360 have a Watt in their ranks, someone who can politicise and bullshit their way to become a reality? Will they be another WRC, dead in their tracks, or will they become rugby’s Indian Premier League, a franchise system that will prove too attractive for those players who won’t become Springboks, All Blacks or Wallabies?
The United Rugby Championship would be wise to be wary. A player’s career and moneymaking years are increasingly limited, and the cash sounds tempting. International rugby is not the be-all and end-all.
This is World Rugby’s 1995 moment. We have been here before, but has World Rugby learnt the lessons from those Wild West days?
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.