Matt's views on Rugby and the professional era

As a young fellow growing up on the Far North Coast of New South Wales I came under the spell of Rugby through my Dad's association with the Coffs Harbour Rugby Club: The Snappers!

It was of course an amateur code then, a game played for the love of it, not money. Rugby is still largely dependent upon amateurism for its survival as only the elite levels of the game receive fiscal rewards for their efforts on the paddock. However when I was growing up Rugby was the great sporting bastion of amateurism throughout the world. Rural rugby clubs of today like yesteryear remain, on the whole, amateur and they survive and thrive because of the determination of a bunch of people believing in the local club. Coffs Harbour was and is no exception to this rule.

Having been around the Coffs Harbour Rugby Club since I was a baby the red and black of our strip was a familiar and comforting sight. It stirred up a sense of allegiance long before I really knew what the game was all about. It has to be said that my main sporting interest was cricket when I was a boy. Around the age of ten to thirteen cricket held a great deal more appeal and in hindsight this was largely thanks to television and the manner in which it made the game particularly accessible to me, as a spectator. Dad and I used to make a trip once a year to the Sydney Cricket Ground, and thanks to friends, we managed to get seats in the Members and watch the Australian First XI do battle with bat and ball. Then as my tentative teenage years began I was drawn to Rugby and watching more regularly the efforts of the Club that Dad had coached for ten years before he advanced onto take charge of the NSW Country Team and later the NSW B and NSW Rugby sides.

I regard myself as having had a very privileged relationship with Rugby because of these things. Especially when one considers the fact that I have never played the game and remained ensconced on the sidelines.

The Coffs Harbour Rugby Club allowed me an opportunity to participate as an active member and contributor to its fortunes by asking me to be the Club's correspondent for the local newspaper, The Coffs Harbour Advocate. For three seasons, 1986 through to 1988, I wrote the pre and post match Rugby reports for the paper. It was a wonderful experience for me because it enabled me the opportunity to participate in the Club and vicariously play at all levels. I wrote about all the grades and recounted the hopes for the approaching match, and the details of the games played and as a consequence I found a voice and opportunity that allowed me to feel a part of the game.

Meanwhile, because Dad was coaching some of the best players in Australian Rugby at the time, I also had the opportunity to meet some of these fellows. The first of whom was Simon Poidevin. I met him at the Sydney Cricket Ground after the Wallabies had played the All Blacks in a one off test in 1984. Dad had taken me into the dressing sheds after the match and he pointed out a player who had his back to me, who had a great many sergeant stripes all over him thanks to the stray boots of the All Black pack. As an impressionable young fellow I was struck by the strength and toughness of Poidevin. I would later come to appreciate him as a good man and fine player whose uncompromising play would eventually be rewarded in him being among the First XV to win the Webb Ellis Trophy in 1991.

My Rugby appreciation began then in the amateur years and continued on during the tumultuous dawning of the professional era to the present day. And I had the good fortune of being a spectator who enjoyed the thrills of the local rugby club experience whilst also seeing, meeting, knowing and vicariously experiencing the highs and lows of those at the heart of our national team. I have been privileged enough to see the game played the whole world over, and I have met and conversed with some of great internationals.

Therefore in considering my views about the professional era it is worth doing so by taking the time to have a look at rugby in a historical sense so that my opinions and gut feelings are placed within the context of time.

I will borrow heavily here from the text in The Story of the Rugby World Cup, by Nick Farr-Jones which I assisted him in as a researcher.

Rugby is of course a game without borders, played by people of all shapes, sizes, and abilities and enjoyed by spectators and followers just as diverse. From the balmy islands in the Pacific to the chilling pitches of northern Europe, across the expansive landscape of southern Africa and within the small municipality of Monte Carlo, you will find a rugby club. There will be a playing position and a home for the young seven-year-old starting up in the touch version of the game as there will be for the seventy-year-old die-hard who still thrills from running into sweaty bodies even though the colour of his shorts precludes him from being tackled.

The physical aspect of the game is often uncompromising. It is a contact sport that exacts its measure of punishment, but from this there comes that sense of having done one's bit that is known to all sports people. Players will go hammer and tongs for eighty minutes but once a game is over, rugby lore deems that by-gones be by-gones as players depart the pitch together and the usual post-match festivities or third half, as the French call it, commence. It is something rugby players from the local clubhouse in Maitland in rural Australia share with players from other coal mining villages like Neath in Wales. A rugby man from Waikato in New Zealand might not speak French but given half a chance he will have a great deal in common with a player from Brive in France Profond (deep France) once a rugby ball is placed between them.

This traditional and international appeal has allowed rugby to thrive ever since the day the young schoolboy footballer, William Webb Ellis, from Rugby School in England decided, against the rules of his game, to pick up the round ball, tuck it under his arm and run with it. His defiant actions became a hallmark for future combatants. But with the tradition that quickly developed there also came a reluctance to change. The story of the Rugby World Cup is as much about revolution as evolution and it tells of those who dared to stand up to the traditionalists and, like Webb Ellis, engender a sense of innovation. By so doing, these visionaries not only created one of sport's great events, but also inadvertently gave rugby a sense of strength and conviction that enabled it to remain intact as the game shifted from being a pleasure to a business, from being an amateur pursuit to a professional career.

Although rugby was included in the modern Olympic Games on four occasions it was dropped after 1924, the American Eagles being the last team to win Olympic gold. For decades various players and administrators from the four corners of the world muttered about the need for a global event. Unfortunately none were in ultimate positions of authority.

The traditional custodian of the game, the International Rugby Board (IRB) was controlled by the Home Unions: the English, Welsh, Irish and Scottish Rugby Unions. They were the founding fathers of the game and were steadfastly opposed to any talk of a world tournament, believing such an event would pose a direct threat to the amateur status of the game, the tenet upon which rugby sought to distinguish itself from other football codes. Determined to kill off the concept of a world tournament, the IRB passed a ruling in 1968 disallowing any national rugby body to host any international competition of the world cup type.

By the 1980s other member Unions were invited to join their esteemed British colleagues on the holy IRB. South Africa, France, New Zealand and Australia now had their say on the future running of the global game. The overbearing conservatism of the four Home Unions did not rest easily with the new members and a power struggle ensued.

Without a Rugby World Cup tournament there was constant conjecture as to which team held the mantle of the world's best in any given generation. The Home Unions and France played each winter in the traditional 5 Nations tournament and the mighty All Blacks clashed regularly against the Springboks from South Africa. This was halted in the early eighties following the signing of the Gleneagles Agreement banishing South Africa from the world stage until they got their political house in order. And the Wallabies each year played against the All Blacks for the Bledisloe Cup. The debate as to who was the best would intensify on the marvellous occasions when teams from opposing hemispheres clashed or the legendary British Lions toured as they did every four years.

Despite these intense battles, or possibly because of them, a few believers remained steadfast in the vision they harboured to create a proper competition to determine the world's best, a competition that would also showcase rugby and further establish its international credentials. While no one man can be given the credit for thinking up the Rugby World Cup concept, there are a few individuals who are central to its story.

Such a rugby revolution required men with strong rugby pedigrees, of significant credibility, political nous and above all possessing strong wills. One such man was Sir Nicholas Shehadie from Australia. He had played 30 tests for the Wallabies in a career that lasted from 1947 to 1958, testimony in itself to his playing ability and tenacity. He was a big, uncompromising man, widely regarded as the cornerstone of the Wallaby pack having mixed his career between the front and second row. He was a natural leader who would have responsibility bestowed upon him without seeking it and would go on to captain his country with distinction. Shehadie was widely respected, evidenced by being given the rare honour of playing for the British Barbarians against his own Wallabies in 1958.

Following his distinguished rugby career, Shehadie turned his attention to business and also became involved in local government, going on to serve the city of Sydney as Lord Mayor. He would later Chair a number of organisations including the Sydney Cricket Ground Trust and the television broadcaster SBS. When he assumed the presidency of the Australian Rugby Union (ARU) in 1980, Shehadie was determined to create a Rugby World Cup tournament.

The need to bring about structural change to the game increased in the early eighties as rumours spread that players were being offered vast sums of money to join a break-away professional coup. Acting as the front man, Australian journalist David Lord had reportedly signed up a number of the leading players and the urgency to protect the game increased. Shehadie had observed the revolution in Australia's summer sport some years earlier when media magnate Kerry Packer had dramatically illustrated how television and sport could create gold when he stormed the cricket world creating a rebel world series cricket event.

Shehadie flew to New Zealand to meet with his Kiwi counterpart, Cec Blazey. There was mutual respect and it was quickly agreed that New Zealand administrator Dick Littlejohn would team up with Sir Nicholas to convince the IRB of the need for a Rugby World Cup to maintain rugby's relevance and further heighten its attraction to the participants at the top level.

It was never going to be an easy task and the two men faced significant resistance from the member Home Unions opposed, as always, to change. Shehadie recalls being summonsed before the IRB in London in 1985 to defend his proposal. The Home Unions were determined to quickly kill off any radical change. But Shehadie and Littlejohn would not back off and argued their case whilst rebutting the claims that a global event would tear at the very heart of the game. Not that everyone in the room was opposed to the concept, as the chairman of the IRB that year was the affable Dr Roger Vanderfield, a true believer in the ideas being defended by his brave antipodean brothers.

Finally it came to a vote. Without knowing exactly how the numbers fell, some leaks gave an insight into the positions adopted. The South Africans abstained, as they no doubt felt disinclined to commit to an event they would not be invited to take part in. The French, distrusting things British, are believed to have voted for the plan. Their administrative style can often be compared to their playing style - daring, exhilarating, sometimes frustrating, but most often dramatic. For the Rugby World Cup to get up, however, at least one of the members from the Home Unions had to break away. While it is unknown to this day who that was, there is strong evidence to suggest it was England who jumped ship and made the vital break with the past.

The Rugby World Cup could now become a reality and fittingly it was decided that the inaugural event would be co-hosted by Australia and New Zealand.

The majestic Irish and British Lions winger of the 1950s, Dr A J (Tony) O'Reilly said of the Rugby World Cup that, 'For over 100 years the pleasures of rugby for players and spectators were confined almost monastically by region and by class, and now to echo the words of W. B. Yeats, "All is changed, changed utterly." The change agent has been the Rugby World Cup and it is the nature of this change that is so exercising and so exciting. If the change is inclusive and imaginative, it will improve the laws and extend the horizons of the game. But if it is narrow, defensive and crassly commercial it will damage the soul of the game and endanger the Corinthian values which have captured the imagination of rugby people.' There was much to look forward to.

It was perhaps ironic that within a decade of the inaugural Rugby World Cup the code at the top level turned professional. After all it was the conservative British hierarchy who had avoided the arrival of the global event fearing it would professionalise the code and ultimately change the fabric of the sport.

But the pressure which drove this change did not come from players demanding a slice of the huge profits being generated from the Rugby World Cup tournament, but rather came from the fierce and acrimonious battle between traditional rugby authorities and the World Rugby Corporation (WRC).

The announcement of this professional revolution was fittingly made in Paris. The southern hemisphere nations had pushed hard for the professional game. Their players had been tempted by the big money being bandied about by WRC together with Super League and they had secured the ten-year money from News Corporation for the Super 12 and Tri-Nations series. As such it was not surprising that the ARU, under former banker John O'Neill, was well prepared for the start up of the professional game. Recruited to head up the ARU O'Neill brought with him the extensive business skills required to manage the change and ensure the books balanced after player salaries had been paid.

But not everyone in rugby circles was happy with the on-set of professional rugby. Little funding seemed to end up at the traditional grass roots. Rather the bulk of the New Corporation funds seemed to disappear directly into players' pockets particularly after they threatened to sign WRC contracts. Smaller rugby nations felt they would fall behind without the support of their bigger brothers. They were not a part of the lucrative Tri-Nations or in the north Six Nations championships and could not afford to pay their players. Forced to remain amateur, it was inevitable that they would lose their leading players who would go abroad in search of the all-important contract. In such a climate the gap between the big and the small was bound to widen.

The players soon discovered that normal or day jobs would have to be sacrificed as they were now 100 per cent accountable to their new employers and would be on call throughout the day. This manifested itself in a new mind set as players accepted whatever administrative decisions were thrust upon them. Nick Farr-Jones recounts the story from when he was newly appointed the Wallaby captain Back in 1988, when for the first time the ARU had negotiated the logo of a Japanese communications company to appear on the jersey. Nick and the team had not been consulted and as players who still pulled on the jersey for the love and honour and not the money Nick as the new captain, had angrily confronted the President Joe French, insisting this could not happen without the players' consent. As Nick saw it he and the team were the ones who were accountable to past Wallaby traditions. The upshot was that the logo disappeared. In 1997 however the ARU at the behest of its new sponsor Reebok, paraded a totally new jersey that was correctly described by Peter FitzSimons as looking like 'volcano vomit on a rag…where there used to be a kind of holy sheen, there is now a commercial catastrophe.' The players, well aware of where the money was coming from to pay their lucrative contracts, were incapable of objecting and irrespective of their inner thoughts went along for the ride.

The first two years of professionalism were turbulent. Michael Lynagh retired at the end of the 1995 Rugby World Cup and Phil Kearns took over the job. He then suffered from injuries and his part in the professional negotiations and was replaced by John Eales as Captain. The team struggled to find the rhythm it had enjoyed in previous years and coach Greg Smith battled on in unenviable circumstances during a period of time that looked as if it was the same as before, but which was incredibly different. None of the familiar landmarks really existed as they had and players, coaches, administrators and as a consequence spectators struggled to comprehend what was really happening.

It is within the context of these changes that I felt a shift in my own appreciation for the game once it became professional.

Obviously as a young man I was spoilt through my aforementioned associations with the game. I had come to know some of the best players in the world and I have always believed that it in part amateurism provided the opportunities for that to take place. It is no coincidence that once the professional era began many of those whom I had known personally to wear the green and gold had mostly retired. One fellow who had not was Phil Kearns, the great Wallaby hooker, and his last years in Rugby parallel my own relationship with the game.

During his period of injury and banishment my allegiance to the great game had waned. I still enjoyed watching New South Wales play, and I went to Test matches and heartily supported our national team but a particular disenchantment had set in. Partly it was due to the understanding that the sport had become less significant in my life. I suppose this was initially inevitable, as the needs of creating a career and finding an independent life meant others things became a priority. And of course in seeing my friends and connections retire from the game my emotional ties were no longer as strong.

Professionalism had introduced a controversy of its own to the game, and sullied its reputation it seemed to me. A tone of individual self interest had crept into the vernacular where before the team and national interest had been the tenant upon which all others things depended. It no longer felt like my game, which was a churlish attitude in hindsight, but one I felt keenly.

However, this loss of interest was not due to the fact that the Wallabies were not necessarily performing as well as they had in recent years. In fact I bristled when supporters would dismissively declare the team's efforts as hopeless whenever they failed to win, or in fact won but not by a margin that was expected.

Unlike a great many Johnny Come-Latelys to the game I had followed the fortunes of the Australian Rugby team in the early and mid eighties and painfully witnessed the All Blacks defeat us from any where between one point to twenty. I never underestimated what it took to beat any of the Home Unions either at home or abroad. I had grown up on a diet of Rugby folklore wonderfully presented by the likes of Peter Fenton's The Running Game so I knew victories were few and far between for our small playing nation in the past. I had stood in despair with others to see Serge Blanco score in the corner of Concord Oval for France to bundle us out of the Inaugural Rugby World Cup semi final. I had suffered the ignominy of attending Bledisloe Cup Test matches at the Sydney Cricket Ground, Concord Oval and the Sydney Football Stadium as an Australian supporter only to find that there were more people wearing black and flying the silver fern than our own green and gold, even when the match was played in our country!

But it was during the season of 1998 and 1999 that I again found some of my interest and passion of before enlivened. It was obvious to me in particular on the evening that I went out to watch the Wallabies play the All Blacks at Stadium Australia in 1999 in what was their last match before heading to Wales for the Rugby World Cup.

I was more excited about that particular match than I had been in years. I had even placed 20 dollars on the boys for a win at odds of 8:1.

On paper it seemed we were doomed to lose. Stephen Larkham and John Eales were injured and could not play; Rod Kafer was belatedly slotted into the pivot's role. The All Blacks were getting stronger and stronger, they had beaten us in the slush of New Zealand and they were headed towards the Rugby World Cup with the aura of favourites wrapped tightly about them. However, I had a sixth sense that this was actually going to be our night and when the players arrived to belt out the National Anthem the new stadium shook.

From the moment the Wallabies assembled to face the All Blacks and their haka I searched for the figure of Phil Kearns, and I smiled inwardly when I saw him. Kearns was standing, as always, not so far away from the shouting All Blacks, bearing a facial expression that suggested he was bemused by the antics, but which you knew was masking a fierce determination to get on top of his old nemesis yet again. He was wearing the Number 2 for the last time on Australian soil. He had previously announced this would be his last year of Rugby after having played for the last decade with a tenacity that was matched by ability and commitment in the toughest combatant position on a Rugby paddock. And it was a moment of some significance even for me.

I had met Kearns in 1989 or 1990 after Bob Dwyer had picked him from obscurity to tackle the Kiwis on the Wallaby tour of New Zealand of '89. He was then and remained a friendly fellow who never seemed to busy to say hello and share a word or three if we ever came across each other. In the years between his first Test and this, his last in Australia, Kearns had experienced the immeasurable highs and lows of Rugby. He had been a member of the 1991 victorious Rugby World Cup Wallaby side and had enjoyed victories over the South African and All Black Rugby sides in historical encounters. Kearns had known the best of the amateur days and the worst of professionalism. Having been captain of his national side at a time when the media barons made a move on the game professionally to own and exploit the sport Kearns was one of those men who found themselves placed in a position of decision making for which they had never applied. And then he suffered the ignominy of a crippling injury to his Achilles' heel that all but threatened to kill dead his Rugby career. However, demonstrating a physical and mental toughness he over came the worst of days to enjoy once more the best of days. In much the same way that Tim Horan demonstrated an incredible single mindedness to look beyond his awful knee injury and to return to the world stage as the greatest player of the 1999 Rugby World Cup so did Kearns manage a rehabilitation that is a testimony to any man or woman coming back from injury.

On this night that Kearns took on the Kiwis I realised that he was the last Wallaby of that era of Rugby I had been fortunate enough to know intimately. He was the link with my immediate past, when Nick, Simon and Steve Cutler and Peter FitzSimons had been around and so it was of a powerfully personal moment to be there. As the All Blacks completed their war cry and wandered to their positions for the kick off, the adrenalin not only poured through their veins, but mine as well. There was an expectation in the air that this was going to be special and from the moment that the kick off was taken it was a match of gladiatorial proportions.

When Australia emerged at the end of a torrid eighty minutes emphatic victors I was about the happiest I that have ever been at a Rugby Test. It was the stuff of legend and the team had proven itself in a way that would only be surpassed by their victories in the Rugby World Cup final, and against the British and Irish Lions and in the Tri Nations in the following years. It was a victory and display that won me over to the professional era and I waited until the very last so that I could watch Kearns walk around the field, holding the Bledisloe Cup and lapping up the spectators cheers. It was a terrific moment and although Kearns would be cruelly robbed of the opportunity to lift the Webb Ellis Trophy through injury once again, his part in the transition was completed on a positive note. And that was enough for me to restore my faith in the game.

The success of the 1999 Rugby World Cup campaign for the Wallabies presented me with a very real appreciation as a spectator for the way in which professionalism could work. Rod MacQueen had brought about a structure to the business plan and fostered a re-identification with the historic principles of being a Wallaby, both on and off the paddock. Blessed with men like Horan, Kearns, Matt Bourke, George Gregan and Eales Rod MacQueen had players that appreciated that there is a need to give something to the game's name and that the currency of choice for its support base was not the dollar. The fact that Bob Templeton was the Assistant Coach was undoubtedly a contributing factor to this shift.

Therefore I regard professionalism now as something that is working well and if managed correctly on a provincial and global scale the game and its people will benefit greatly from it. Of course had Rugby not turned professional our game would have been plundered by the league. It is a testimony to all involved that it largely held itself together on the international scene. What has yet to be shown is that the powerful, wealthy nations are in a position to look after the minnows and whether club franchises, as they exist in England, will become increasingly powerful to the detriment of the international calendar.

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