A few years ago I was waiting for a NSW Waratahs media conference to start at the Super Rugby team’s headquarters at Moore Park in Sydney. I started chatting with a television reporter who told me she was an AFL fan and supported Greater Western Sydney.
At this point in the Giants’ history they could not win a game and suffered some huge losses. I asked the journalist if it was frustrating to follow a team that rarely won. Her answer was enlightening.
She told me the Giants were established as a young team designed for the long term and the fans were growing with them. The supporters knew their side would not win many games in the first few years, but when they did there would be no more excited fans in the competition than they.
Patience would be the key to the Giants’ success. This is exactly what happened.
It occurred to me that Australia’s two Super Rugby expansion franchises, the Western Force and Melbourne Rebels, had been set up completely wrong. In both cases the teams sought instant gratification rather than sowing seeds for the future.
The Giants overcame “insurmountable cultural barriers” to succeed in rugby league’s heartland in western Sydney, but this is something neither the Force nor the Rebels have been able to achieve in AFL-dominated markets.
I remember covering a Wallabies Test in Perth in 2012. The Beach Boys were staying at the team’s hotel and invited the players to their concert. I tagged along. During the show The Beach Boys frontman Mike Love tried to rev up the crowd by calling out: “Let’s hear it for the Wallabies!” Dead silence. A bemused Love then yelled out: “Let’s hear it for the Eagles!” And the crowd roared.
That demonstrated to me rugby was still an emerging sport in Perth six years after the advent of the Force.
The Force were highly ambitious when they entered Super Rugby in 2006. Initially backed by fuel technology company Firepower, they recruited former All Blacks coach John Mitchell and aggressively poached big name players from the east coast, such as Wallabies second rower Nathan Sharpe.
Without any concessions from the ARU, the Force argued they had no choice but to raid the established franchises at the Brumbies, Queensland Reds and NSW Waratahs. More leading Wallabies such as Matt Giteau and Drew Mitchell headed west.
But success on the field eluded the Force. The closest they came to making the playoffs was when they finished seventh in 2007 in just their second season. The problem for the Force was that their heavy recruitment of star players from the east coast raised expectations that were never realised. It was a castle built on sand.
Just like GWS, the Force should have been a young team designed for future growth. By trying to fast-track success on the field the Perth-based operation ultimately had to be bailed out by the ARU.
When the Rebels entered Super Rugby in 2011 the ARU were keen to avoid repeating those mistakes, but managed to make new errors in the process. The Rebels were Australia’s first privately-owned Super Rugby franchise, with wealthy media buyer and humanitarian Harold Mitchell the major share-holder.
Mitchell is a smart man, but he admitted he knew nothing about rugby. He thought a prop was something you found in a theatre. He supported the Rebels as an act of philanthropy, but even his deep pockets were not bottomless.
In an effort to dissuade the Rebels from poaching star players from the other teams as the Force had done, the ARU gave Melbourne a foreign player allowance, which enabled them to sign 10 imports outside the salary cap. The ARU had hoped the Rebels would sign young foreign players who would become eligible to play for the Wallabies, but they chased big names on big money – players like England five-eighth Danny Cipriani.
The Rebels also signed expensive, high-profile Wallabies like Stirling Mortlock, players who were past their prime. They also had to pay inflated salaries to journeymen in order to entice them to move from Sydney and Brisbane. Soon they poached Test stars Kurtley Beale and James O’Connor in a desperate bid to become competitive.
The Rebels were spending more money on players than any other team, and that came with an inevitable result. Mitchell, who burned an estimated $8m, gifted his shares to the Victorian Rugby Union and the ARU ended up taking over the running of the franchise.
Having cost the ARU of millions of dollars, the Rebels are back in the hands of another private owner, Andrew Cox, of Imperium, but the club’s future remains uncertain with the ARU looking to cull the Rebels or the Force for the return to a 15-team format next year.
Out of necessity the Force and the Rebels, who play each other in Perth on Friday night, are now focusing on developing young teams which could grow over the long term. The saddest of ironies: it’s something they should have done in the first place.
