The ARU just lurch from one problem to another - and when it's quiet on the SANZAR/IRB front they pick a fight with their major supporters by imposing a tax on the people who support the game and without whom there would be no game.
None of us are consulted about what we think should happen: once a year we are asked to complete a survey about whether we'd go to more games if the jerseys were a different colour.
They'd rather leave the true diehards - i.e. the posters on here, with our disparate views but our common passion for the welfare of the game - to speculate for a further 2 months, while any sane person would be de-investing their emotions from all of the 3 franchises said to be under threat.
I reckon their should ba "fan" seat or 2 on the ARU board: not bank gouging execs or former wallabies but people who have lived the grass roots.
Directionally, some of the wisest words ever uttered here.
The ARU is not competently or correctly structured for the tasks it has to perform in the sporting code and market competitive landscape of Australian pro sport as it's largely been for the last decade and a half.
Bankers, lawyers, cruise company CEOs, ex-Wallabies, ex-marketing data analysis execs as CEO, etc. (And predominantly Sydney-centric btw, that is another, but secondary, issue.)
The pattern of people sought for the ARU board and its dangerously self-referencing bias is very clear. Yet this is altogether the wrong type of 'prestige assemblage'.
What is desperately needed is a far greater bias to ARU board members demonstrably experienced in the skills and accumulated knowledge associated with building and leading and administering a successful mainline professional sports code or codes of some kind. This is absolutely a special skill set - pro sports codes' development paths are NOT the same as many other businesses, they require specialised competencies and knowledge and particular backgrounds of success and achievement.
Then I agree with you, at least 1 board member directly experienced in and passionate for our code's grassroots and elected by our fans, in some formally organised process every say 2-3 years.
We have no ARU directors of that type, none, zero.
People need to start realising that the central reasons the current ARU appear so bound to seemingly endless and supine deference to SANZAAR and 'the broadcasters' and so on, and with so few substantive ideas of their own to radically reform and thus save the code in this country, are that (a) deep down they know their recent strategies for the growth and even preservation of the code in Australia are a major fail and, relatedly, (b) the ARU does not have within it or at its direct disposal the calibre and type of board members and executives able to do any better.
