This was posted from Brett Papworth, and I thought it good to share
This is a response by Brett Papworth to an article by Geoff Parkes that was published on The Roar website last week.
Subject: Last week's article. Truth the first casualty.....
Hi Geoff,
I read your article early in the week, and I completely understand your point of view. I also completely respect the rights of the rugby community to have a different point of view to mine, and encourage the debate with all my heart.
You make perfectly valid points, as you usually do, so I wanted to engage in a discussion with someone who I think has a reasonable appreciation of the game’s issues. I must confess I don’t read the rugby forums like the Roar, or Green and Gold, etc, apart from a couple of writers who I sense have some sort of intelligent view of things. Certainly don’t read the comments of the anonymous warriors who don’t have the courage to write their name.
Please allow me to put a couple of things in the proper context:
What appeared on the Foxsports site was a very early draft of our collective thoughts. Somehow found its way to a journo, and we shouldn’t be surprised. RUPA jumped on it to distance themselves which was understandable, but we actually have, in writing, the President’s comment. We didn’t use it ultimately, because we don’t want to upset anyone. But don’t confuse RUPA’s public statement with reality, because RUPA are funded by RA, and they can’t be seen to support anything that might have an effect on future funding, or the financial well being of the professional players they represent. It’s politics, not reality.
To try and give you the real context for why we are proposing an Association of Australian Rugby Clubs, let me start by painting the picture of where rugby is; in the view of some very smart and passionate rugby minds:
You mentioned field hockey in your piece. In the view of plenty in rugby, we are teetering already on the brink:
At every level, from schools and juniors upward, our elite players are coming from an increasingly (decreasingly??) smaller pool, which simply means they actually don’t have to be as elite. A player who has to be better than 200 players will be, by definition, a better player than one who has only had to be better than 50.
As the various levels of our game have been devalued, the values and lessons of our game have devalued accordingly. Taking cricket as an example: as the Sheffield Shield and First Grade cricket has become nothing more than a “plaything”, the players who emerge from those pathways are nowhere near as seasoned as those who had to fight to dominate a serious first grade competition. After a while you get players who strut around, highly paid, who have never really had to show anything other than potential. Eventually you get players whose grip on reality is so skewed they think sandpaper on a ball in a test match is ok! Cricket has never spent more money, but I defy you to identify any test quality middle order batsmen on the horizon? And in Cricket’s case they spent, in the last reportable 12 months, $91 Mill on Admin and Operations alone. In essence, cricket is generating serious revenue wherever they can, so they can spend it on themselves!! Rugby unfortunately learns from its sporting brothers and sisters and does the same.
Because of a focus on elite junior identification and development, over more than 15 years, we now play “Collision Rugby”. Why? And How? Well, we essentially pick players now, in every position, based on size. From about 15 years of age, but even younger in some cases, we pick the bigger blokes. What that leads to is players who know nothing other than physically dominating/bullying their opponent. As the little guys (yet to develop) drift away, unwanted, into the arms of the AFL, our big boppers in the elite squads keep running into three defenders because they win 90% of the time doing that! Before long you have a generation of players who know nothing else. When it comes to beating NZ (or for that matter any serious rugby nation), you have to bring much more than that to the table.
And as the player pool shrinks, and with it our elite player numbers, we end up with just a handful of schools playing the game at a high level. We end up with some players at elite rugby schools getting to 18 years of age having almost never lost a game, and therefore rarely having to learn anything. They are selected to play in Australian Schools teams, or U20s, having actually not had to be better than very many others, nor work that hard at being better. We then send them out to learn their lessons against the Chiefs or Crusaders, and they can’t figure out why it doesn’t work!
So what does our governing body do, consistently? More of the same: more money on the top, more irrelevance for those levels that actually matter, and more highly paid staff who focus every day on the funding of their empire, not the participation of kids in our game and the growing of player numbers at junior and school level, which is essential if we ever want to return to the top. The size of the revenue pool means little when the game has no-one playing it, and therefore no-one following it.
So let’s debate that, yes?
No? It is easier to pick on Alan Jones, and confuse his dealings with political issues with his views on rugby matters. It is like me deciding that Raelene is a really bad mother, because I don’t like the way she manages rugby! It isn’t relevant. But it would get a headline, and create “clickbait”!!
You are right when you refer to “us” as pre-dating professional rugby. Yep, we are old, and have had our day (Damn right). It doesn’t necessarily follow that we don’t understand the modern commercial world, and its impact on world rugby. I think you might find that we know a bit about how the game is funded, and how international TV rights work, and also that the funding model is entirely dependent on that “bubble” not bursting, which it is going to do because the broadcasters are currently spending way more than they can afford, globally, and will not keep paying “silly” money for sub-standard content. Not to mention “streaming”, and the rapidly changing way our young people consume sport……
You also mentioned our motives, and ask why we wouldn’t be working with RA more closely? Ahhhh, Geoff!! I/we have been doing this for more than a decade, since I first wrote to John O’Neill in 2006 regarding the path he was taking us down. Five changes of ARU hierarchy later, we are still at it. O’Neill had $57 Mill in the bank in 2004, and spent it (on approx. 200 players, and Head Office). O’Neill took $2.168 Mill personally, as salary, in his final year as CEO in 2012, and left the game virtually insolvent to Bill Pulver. Do you think any rugby journalist ever wrote a word about it? I have been there Geoff, every step of the way, arguing and fighting for those in the game who volunteer their time to make it work. And I’m still here, and I have no idea why I bother…..
I have been “inside the tent” since about ‘01, as Director and President at Eastwood, and currently VP of the Sydney Rugby Union (who have a seat at the NSWRU Board table). I have seen from the inside how the mug volunteers are treated. We are not paid to know anything, and our motives do not align with those who “take” from the rugby trough. I fight those battles every single day, from as far inside as I can get.
You wrote the following:
“That’s not a criticism of anyone, just a reflection of the relative size of the ‘rugby market’, the sports broadcasting environment, and the extent of domestic competition from other successful sports.”
“Why is this important? Because in a global, professional sport, this is what determines Australia’s ability to generate sponsorship, broadcast rights revenue and to contract leading players – and from there, win World Cups and fund its domestic amateur/community game.
“Any strategy that turns its back on the rugby world in favour of warm and fuzzy dreams of returning to the glory days of Coogee Oval ignores reality and is doomed to destroy Australia’s competitiveness at the elite level”.
This is where we fundamentally disagree:
Our administrators have had exactly the mindset you describe: Global, TV Revenue, Sponsorship, focus on the top!! And it has lead our game to here: Uncompetitive at elite level, declining crowds, declining interest, declining sponsorship, declining participant numbers.
I don’t need to remind you that we actually won world cups on the back of the structures left by the amateurs. The winners of the world cup in ’99 were essentially a group of players who had come through an amateur system of development. When the modern administrator (Arbib report) changed our constitution and recommended “independence and diversity”, we have conveniently forgotten what it was that made us strong. It is now about money and political correctness, not the game.
And how is that going????
Are you saying that we should continue down this path? We disagree, strongly. The success of the AFL and NRL would suggest that a domestic focus works just fine!! Why, because tribal, meaningful and accessible footy gets our juices flowing, not Global, meaningless matches against people we don’t know about or care about.
Just because we are seen as old, doesn’t mean we are not progressive. There is not an ulterior motive between any of us, and whilst we understand we will be accused of all sorts of things, we have nothing but the best long term interests of the game at the forefront of our thinking. None of us earn one cent from our game, so come at this from a fairly unique perspective don’t you think? We know we are not going back to the “warm and fuzzy” days at Coogee Oval, but there does need to be a focus on kids playing the game, and investment in the future player pool. It is our view that this “investment need” trumps the needs of the professional players and the administrators who like spending money on themselves. 145 staff at last count, and annual spend of $130+ Mill.
Yet, there is currently Zero investment on the player pool that will enable us to pick a team for the 2039 World Cup. That is our motive, and we are happy to debate it. I can guarantee that our governing bodies don’t give it a thought, because they are completely consumed by paying yesterday’s bills, which they are struggling to do!
We believe that the 99% of the game that does the grunt work deserve a voice. As for it being a Sydney or “east coast” thing? It will be a national body, representing the game in every corner, even Victoria!! It won’t be we old crusty blokes running it, it will be those decided upon by the clubs.
I understand that not everyone will like us, or agree with us. If we worried about the mud-slinging we wouldn’t get out of bed. But we are in a position to give the clubs a voice, where they may not be able to have one. It will be up to them. And it may be our last throw of the dice.
Truth is absolutely the first casualty. You had that 100% correct, but not why you think.
Sorry for going on a bit! I am a bit prone to doing that! Always happy to discuss or answer any questions.
Kind regards,
Brett Papworth
