Rugby's Big Try For Boot Hold
The Age
Saturday February 20, 1999
The astute networker who is a guest at Coles Myer is well advised to be briefed on the Victoria Titans basketball team - the company's chief executive, American Mr Dennis Eck, part-owns the club. Visitors to BHP will probably get a soft sell on the successful launch last year of the Melbourne Storm rugby league club from the head of its minerals division, Mr Ron McNeilly, who's on the Storm board.
And if you get your books done by Ferrier Hodgson, the best way of establishing a personal rapport with principal Mr Tony Hodgson might be to mention you are interested in rugby union. Mr Hodgson, along with boardroom luminaries including former Shell chairman Mr Ric Charlton, former Herald and Weekly Times chief Mr John D'Arcy and Ernst and Young heavyweight Mr Tom O'Brien, are part of a push to establish a professional rugby union team in Melbourne.
And if that's not enough to encourage a break from the AFL script for fear of social or corporate death, the rugby coterie group gatherings include media personalities Rob Sitch (Frontline, The Panel), Ross Greenwood (BRW, Healthy Wealthy and Wise) and 3AW breakfast host Dean Banks.
Premier Jeff Kennett, his appetite whetted by the bonanza of two Trans-Tasman Tests at the MCG, is ready to strap on the boots for the cause when required.
But this week may not be the best time to raise the subject with Melbourne rugby's movers and shakers. On Monday, their hopes of fielding a team as early as next year were dashed when the controlling body of the Super 12 competition - the elite provincial teams of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa - ruled out any expansion until at least 2001.
The setback has not dented the confidence of the Super 12 project coordinator, Victoria Rugby Union general manager Mr Ron Steiner, that although it will not happen overnight, it will happen.
It may seem odd that Mr Steiner admits he knows little about the game or that Victoria's existing competition is light years away from Super 12 standard. The latest outing of the Victorian representative team - all amateurs - he describes wryly as ``a resounding win over Sri Lanka".
But in modern professional sport what matters is a solid business plan, corporate backing and television exposure. If those things (the product, in boardroom parlance), are right the Super 12 licence, top players and the fans will follow, says Mr Steiner.
He slaps two ring-binders on his desk and starts spruiking the business plan. ``Melbourne is the second most important commercial centre in the country and clearly the best sports-patronage city. It has already got all the facilities, and rugby can satisfy the need for international competition," says Mr Steiner, 42, a former management consultant and operations manager at the Australian Cricket Board.
Market research indicates a Melbourne Super 12 team could attract average home crowds of 12,000 to 15,000 - similar to Melbourne Storm - from day one. Preliminary approaches have been made about playing at Olympic Park, the Docklands and to Eddie McGuire for use of Collingwood's Victoria Park.
Best of all, the potential following (boardroom speak: the demographic) has a creamy layer of executive men brought up with the game at private schools or in an earlier life interstate or overseas. The type who sign their companies on as sponsors, buy the first-class match-day package and for whom a pay TV subscription is loose change.
But it is pay TV that is one of Melbourne rugby's biggest problems. The financial backer of Super 12 is Foxtel, now a partnership of Murdoch-Packer-Telstra interests, which pays about $70 million a year for the Super 12 rights. This underwrites a substantial part of each team's costs of about $4.5 million a year. Before the Murdoch and Packer camps became pay TV allies, they lost tens of millions in their war to control the other rugby code, rugby league. As they slugged it out, Super 12 got off to a successful start in 1996 and has developed a strong pay TV following. But, with the media moguls still counting their losses from the Super League fiasco, they are reluctant to put more money into extra Super 12 teams.
Even if Australia does get another licence, Melbourne is no certainty to get it. Perth's business hierarchy is also peppered with rugby union devotees intent on joining the exclusive competition.
The managing director of the Australian Rugby Union, Mr John O'Neill, told The Age there was a good chance of Super 12 expanding after 2001. Any new Australian licence would be put to tender. Melbourne was well placed because of the size of its market, State Government backing and the ``insatiable appetite for top-quality sport", but WA rugby had better playing strength and supporter enthusiasm.
Mr O'Neill said there was no chance ``for the forseeable future" of relocating Australia's smallest Super 12 franchise, the ACT Brumbies, from Canberra to Melbourne or Perth.
The Melbourne Brumbies? Not, perhaps, the best name to be backing around influential boardrooms these days.
© 1999 The Age