Rugby Australia accused of ‘shrinking the sport’ as Rebels consortium set to sue governing body
Split with Rugby Australia's Phil Waugh and businessman Leigh Clifford.
Rugby Australia (RA) will be taken to court by the private consortium that attempted to save Melbourne Rebels after their bid was rejected.
The consortium, backed by businessman Leigh Clifford, confirmed they will look to sue Rugby Australia after the governing body rejected their bid to take over the Rebels, resulting in the side being axed from Super Rugby Pacific.
First and last knockouts
The news landed on Thursday as the Rebels head to their final regular season game in Fiji before the club’s first-ever appearance in the knockouts of what will be their last campaign in the competition.
RA saw issues with the financial viability of the consortium’s proposal while also claiming it lacked documented evidence to support the indicated AU$18 million funding.
Clifford hit back at the governing body’s decision, not only accusing RA of “shrinking the sport” but also favouring other teams as he referenced the extensive financial support of the Waratahs.
“The Melbourne Rebels never want to go to court, but Rugby Australia’s actions to turn their backs and not negotiate on a commonsense $18 million rescue plan has left the club no choice,” Clifford said.
“Rugby Australia is shrinking the sport, [has] abandoned any pretence they are a serious national competition and cut off the pathways for girls, women, boys and men to live their dream of playing professional rugby for their local team.
“The fact that Rugby Australia recently chose to provide millions of dollars in financial support to the NSW Waratahs and provide not a cent to the Rebels says everything Victorians need to know about their priorities.”
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Lack of transparency
Chief executive of the RA, Phil Waugh, responded by strongly suggesting that any money spent in a court battle is robbed from the game itself. He also called out the consortium’s lack of transparency.
“Every dollar that we spend in court is a dollar that doesn’t get invested into the game of rugby around Australia. It’s disappointing that if that is the path it goes down, then those individuals that have had the best interests of rugby at mind choose to damage the game going down that path,” Waugh told reporters.
“We’ve given an enormous amount of time to that consortium to come forward with information. We split that information into five different requests for information
“The first one being financial viability. The second one being governance and risk. The third being commercial strategy. The fourth being high performance. And the fifth being growth of the game.
“We finally got the information or some of the information that we’d requested in the middle of last week in a data room. We’ve analysed that information at great lengths. And then we met with one member of the consortium earlier this week.
“Again, giving the consortium every possible opportunity to put forward a compelling case to support the Melbourne Rebels in 2025.”
Tough timing
Waugh said RA would consider a Rebels return in future but, for now, a decision had to be made.
Meanwhile, chairman Daniel Herbert insisted there was no good time to tell the players and staff but thought it was more suitable to warn all parties before the play-offs.
“We’ve got an open mind. I think we’ve been put under enormous pressure on the timeline that we needed to work to in terms of giving players certainty into their futures and staff certainty into their futures,” said Waugh.
Herbert added: “Once these decisions are made generally it’s hard to keep it under wraps. And we had committed to the players and the staff that we would share that information with them as soon as we arrived at that decision.
“If we were to do it next week leading into a final, their first final, I think that would have been worse.
“And then to hold off another week after that after Super Rugby potentially was over or whether they were through to another final then you’re just kicking the can down the road and you just run out of runway.”
