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Why Raelene Castle was never the right person to lead Australian rugby
This past week will be one remembered in the history Australian rugby as one of its most bruising, yet not a ball has been kicked, a whistle blown or a hand shaken.
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In fact, the Australian sporting public witnessed the once silent, and some never silent, protagonists in Australian rugby’s ‘Cold War’ put more than shots across each other’s bows.
Shots were fired, shots were landed and the former CEO of Rugby Australia Raelene Castle has gone down with her ship.
What was at stake? The prize each faction sought is not to plunder the practically empty treasure chest of Australian rugby but the power to reform and refill it.
So, why could Castle no longer be part of that struggle? Why did she no longer enjoy the support of her faction?
It is because at the time she became employed Rugby Australia in 2017, her days were already numbered as she had inherited a code that had multiple issues of significant proportion – none of which were of her own doing.
In saying that, she was never the right person for the job given the task that lay ahead.
Before the overly or even mildly woke spit out their herbal tea or avocado on toast in protest, thinking this is an attack on Castle because she is a woman, button-up hippie, it is not.
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You see, this week has been a long time coming for the game of rugby in Australia, and sadly for Castle she just happened to be carrying the can when these days of reckoning occurred.
Did she contribute to her own demise? I believe she did.
However, as interim Rugby Australia chairman Paul McLean suggested during the week, ‘dark forces’ have been at work.
It’s unclear what Paul means, but how rugby has been collectively administered in this country since the game went professional at the end of 1995 also has its part to play.
When the guns lay silent at the end of the 1995 rugby wars, peace was declared, and News Limited paid the New Zealand, South African and Australia rugby unions $550 million for the right to broadcast provincial and test rugby for 15 years.
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SANZAR was born and along with it came the Tri-Nations and Super 12 competitions that it would administer.
It was party time in downtown ‘Rugbyville’ and it was good. For a period of time.
Move forward 15 years to 2011 and Australian rugby was hardly in rude health, but it was holding its own.
The glory years of 1998-2002 were a speck in the rear vision mirror in the limousine travelling along a road to that would eventually intersect with Castle on April 23, 2020.
But for context, a brief snap-shot of history;
In 1996, the then Australian Rugby Union divested itself of the National Coaching Committee that was established in 1975.
This committee had been pivotal in developing how Australian rugby was to be coached and played from the grassroots up, not from the Wallabies down.
Australian rugby subsequently enjoyed stunning success between 1975 to 1996, including victories over a legendary Welsh side and the All Blacks, with Bledisloe Cups won at home and in New Zealand.
That period also included Australia’s only Grand Slam in 1984, their first-ever World Cup success in 1991 and victory over the returning Springboks in 1992.
Furthermore, those golden Wallabies of 1998-2002, the nation’s greatest era, all were nurtured as youth under the such coaching programs.
By 2005-06, the Wallabies’ ability to scrum had deteriorated or simply failed to keep pace with their competitors, and rugby league wingers were examples of player development de-jour.
In 2008, Robbie Deans, a five-time Super Rugby champion with the Crusaders, was appointed to the Wallabies head coaching role after he failed to secure the same position with the All Blacks.
The Australian Rugby Union had settled for a man who had put Australian rugby second.
He replaced John Connolly, himself a successful Queensland coach who had risen through the club ranks but was not afforded a second opportunity after the Wallabies bowed out of the 2007 Rugby World Cup quarter-final after narrowly losing to England.
Connolly was not handed the latitude of Sir Graham Henry, who was retained by the New Zealand Rugby Union after the All Blacks also exited the 2007 tournament after a quarter-final defeat to France.
During the Deans era, the Wallabies performed admirably, but Australian rugby never truly harnessed the abilities of the ‘three amigos’ – Quade Cooper, Kurtley Beale and James O’Connor – as an attacking force.
All were errant individuals at times who were either not properly managed by Australian rugby or curtailed by what appeared to be an absence of a cogent ‘team-first’ culture.
Had any of them seen the inside of a colts or premier grade shed before being ushered into the professional game? Did it all come too quickly for them?
Although there were moments of brilliance, the amigos played like rock stars but without a number one hit to back up the swagger.
A review into the governance of the game, and how board membership was obtained, changed in 2012.
Candidates were now vetted by a nominations committee as opposed to being placed there by a representative union.
By 2013, 15 years had passed since the first sale of the broadcast rights and Super 12 rugby had grown to become Super Rugby, yet the party was coming to end as money was getting tighter.
The windfall of the 2013 British Lions series was gladly received into the coffers and that was about the only real success Australian rugby could boast from that series.
The Wallabies were deservedly beaten. Daniel Craig shouted champagne at the Opera House and Deans’ tenure as Wallabies coach came to an end.
John O’Neill had also finished his second tenure with Australian Rugby and was replaced by Bill Pulver.
Enter Ewen McKenzie, regrettably exit Ewen McKenzie.
Along came Michael Cheika as the Wallabies’ ‘White Knight’ in 2014.
Bill Pulver finished as CEO three years later, while Cheika showed signs of being more like the ‘Black Knight’ from the famed classic film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and so arrived Castle as Pulver’s replacement.
Upon commencement as CEO of Rugby Australia, Castle inherited a sport with straining revenue.
A sport whose revenue streams were tied to a tired, complex, unmeritorious, high-cost Super Rugby competition that was now being played by across multiple times zones and did not appear to be attracting new fans.
Even the test matches were losing credibility with South Africa at one stage fielding essentially a second XV to play Australia.
All at a time when rival domestic codes, the NRL and AFL, were on top of their game.
On the international stage, the Wallabies were performing inconsistently at best.
There was a dislocation between the community and the professional game, forcing the voices of discontent from within the rugby ranks as to ask how the game was being run, and rightfully so.
Those issues should lay fairly and squarely on the shoulders of past governance.
Was there any money left at the end of the initial 15-year broadcast deal? If so, how much?
Were there successful development systems in place at the end of that deal that ensured both player and coach development? Was there a meaningful connection between the community and the professional game?
If a board were looking for a CEO that could lead them through that fog, why did they believe Castle was the right person for the job?
It was not the case that Castle enjoyed stunning success in her previous role in at the NRL’s Bulldogs that demanded her recruitment to be the chief executive of Rugby Australia.
The two codes may be connected by DNA, but the skills and experience of running an NRL club, to no great success, did not align with the skills required to operate within global and domestic markets that Rugby Australia works in.
Those attributes also failed to fit the bill in bringing success to the Australian game that had been starved of such since the early 2000s.
A @wallabies star believes an overhaul of the @SuperRugby format is needed once rugby returns to action after the coronavirus lockdown. #SuperRugby https://t.co/OzvnuNOkiY
— RugbyPass (@RugbyPass) April 27, 2020
What was required was a person who not only possessed the requisite skillset and experience, but also a deep understanding of the game and how rugby in Australia had gone from producing sides that could not be bested by all comers to a side that deservedly hovers around sixth or seventh in the world rankings some 20-odd years later.
How could have Raelene Castle ever truly have grasped that?
Those from the rebel, or non-Rugby Australia faction that made clarion calls for a change to the way the game was being governed, have a fair point and have grounds to be aggrieved.
Those calling for Australia’s involvement in Super Rugby had to come to an end as it is a competition that the nation has served well, but is no longer serving its best interest despite the revenue it provided also have a fair point.
It is evident the model is not working and had not been working for some time, yet it is understood Rugby Australia was committed to it.
I understand there is now talk of a domestic tournament that operates within more viewer-friendly time zones for Australian fans, and even a global domestic finals series of sorts in time.
It is gobsmacking to have taken this long for such a model to be seriously considered.
It’s not as if it wasn’t on the table in 1995 during the rugby wars where the Kerry Packer-backed World Rugby Corporation wanted exactly that.
On her performance, Castle did her best under difficult circumstances, but clearly it was not good enough, otherwise the board would have not lost confidence in her.
Not the exact board that hired her, granted.
There is no definitive moment in the tenure of Castle that anyone could pinpoint as being a moment of administrative genius, but how the Scott Johnson-Dave Rennie combination works out for the Wallabies will be intriguing.
That, along with the alignment of the junior development systems, has been promising thus far.
What’s admirable about Castle is her tenacity, loyalty and her exhaustive efforts to put Australian rugby on a successful path.
Ultimately, though, she could not be the agent of change required to overcome issues inherited and issues faced during her tenure.
The handling of the TV rights issue is telling, as it is understood that Fox Sports, a broadcast partner since 1996, did not wish to deal with her.
Why? Was it because she took the rights to market after turning down their initial offer?
After all, Fox Sports had been a stakeholder and partner in rugby for so long, so why were the rights taken to market? Did Rugby Australia overestimate their worth and underestimate the value of the Fox Sports relationship?
Who is really going to pay top dollar to broadcast Australian rugby? It is not as if Australian Rugby is at the top of its game and the Wallabies, Super Rugby and NRC competitions are compelling TV viewing.
Nor is it the case that old media, such as free-to-air television, is flush with cash.
Did Fox Sports deliver a wakeup call that Rugby Australia could not see themselves? That the product of professional Australian rugby is not as valuable as Rugby Australia thought and Fox Sports are not prepared to pay premium prices for it?
Internet streaming is no doubt an option, but did potential suitors have the ability and the cash to deliver?
There was talk of a broadcast deal weeks away before the COVID-19 outbreak, but if that were the case, why did the board lose confidence? Rugby Australia have stumbled in their managing of the broadcast rights for 2021 and beyond.
Then there’s the issue of the 2019 balance sheet.
There are reports of last year’s loss being $9.4 million, but also reports of it being closer to $16 million. Can we get an audited answer?
Neither figure is encouraging and neither is the difference in-between, but should we not have a clear answer?
The fact that RUPA could not get to see the numbers for such a period did her no favours.
On the face of it, the handling of both of these issues are not favourable to Raelene Castle.
Moving forward Rugby Australia should seriously examine its governance model and welcome the notion of an independent review into such, as has been suggested by some of the protesting former Wallabies captains.
Mistakes have been made in administration by various boards in the Australian rugby sphere over several decades, and that is evident by where the game finds itself today.
On April 23, 2020, Raelene Castle and the effect of those collective mistakes intersected and the Australian sporting public witnessed the most recent administration of this game starting collapse as a result.
It’s pleasing to hear that there is a dialogue between Paul McLean and Nick Farr-Jones.
Stability will be found, healing will occur, but Australian rugby must take an honest look itself, reconnect with its people, reform and deliver from the grassroots to the international stage as one.
The game and its people deserve nothing less than that.
Comments on RugbyPass
Super rugby is struggling but that has little to do with sabbaticals. 1. Too many teams from Aust and NZ - should be 3 and 4 respectively, add in 2 from Japan, 1 possibly 2 from Argentina. 2. Inconsistent and poor refereeing, admittedly not restricted to Super rugby. Only one team was reffed at the breakdown in Reds v H’Landers match. Scrum penalty awarded in Canes v Drua when No 8 had the ball in the open with little defence nearby - ideal opportunity to play advantage. Coming back to Reds match - same scrum situation but ref played advantage - Landers made 10 yards and were penalised at the breakdown when the ref should have returned to scrum penalty. 3. Marketing is weak and losing ground to AFL and NRL. Playing 2 days compared with 4. 4. Scheduling is unattractive to family attendance. Have any franchises heard of Sundays 2pm?
8 Go to commentsAbsolutely..all they need is a chance in yhe playoffs and I bet all the other teams will be nervous…THEY KNOW HOW TO WIN IM THE PLAYOFFS..
2 Go to commentsI really hope he comes back and helps out with some coaching.
1 Go to commentsI think we are all just hoping that the Olympic 7s doesn’t suffer the same sad fate as the last RWC with the officials ruining the spectacle.
1 Go to commentsPersonally, I’ve lost the will to even be bothered about the RFU, the structure, the participants. It’s all a sham. I now simply enjoy getting a group of friends together to go and watch a few games a year in different locations (including Europe, the championship, etc). I feel extremely sorry for the real fans of these clubs who are constantly ignored by the RFU and other administrators. I feel especially sorry for the fans of clubs in the Championship who have had considerable central funding stripped away and are then expected to just take whatever the RFU put to them. Its all a sham, especially if the failed clubs are allowed to return.
9 Go to commentsI’m guessing Carl Hayman would have preferred to have stayed in NZ with benefit of hindsight. Up north there is the expectation to play twice as many games with far less ‘player management’ protocols that Paul is now criticising. Less playing through concussions means longer, healthier, careers. Carter used as the eg here by Paul, his sabbatical allowed him to play until age 37. OK its not an exact science but there is far more expectations on players who sign for Top 14 or Engl Prem clubs to get value for the huge salaries. NZR get alot wrong but keeping their best players in NZ rugby is not one of them. SA clubs are virtually devoid of their top players now, no thanks. They cant threaten the big teams in the Champions Cup, the squads have little depth. Cant see Canes/Chiefs struggling. Super has been great this year, fantastic high skill matches. Drua a fantastic addition and Jaguares will add another quality team eventually. Aus teams performing strongly and no doubt will benefit with the incentive of a Lions tour and a home RWC. Let Jordie enjoy his time with Leinster, it will allow the opportunity for another player to emerge at Canes in his absence.
8 Go to commentsLove that man, his way to despise angry little men is so funny ! 😂
4 Go to comments“South African franchises would be powerhouses if we had all our overseas based players back in situ. We would have the same unbeatable aura the Toulouses, Leinsters or Saracens of this world have had over the last decade or so.” Proof that Jake white does not understand the economics of the game in SA. Players earning abroad are not going to simply come back and represent the bulls. But they might if they have a springbok contract.
22 Go to commentsA lot of fans just joined in for the fun of it! We all admire O'Gara and what he has done for La Rochelle
4 Go to commentsThe RFU will find a way to mess this up as usual. My bet is there will be no promotion into the the Premiership, only relegation into National League One. Hopefully they won’t parachute failed clubs into the league at the expense of clubs who have battled for promotion.
9 Go to commentsWell that’s the contracts for RG and Jordie bought and paid for. Now, what are the chances we can persuade Antoine to hop over with all the extra dosh we’ll have from living at the Aviva & Croke next season…??? 🤑🤑🤑
14 Go to commentsWow, that’s incredible. Great for rugby.
14 Go to commentsYou probably read that parling is going to coach the wallaby lineout but if not before now you have.
14 Go to commentsIf someone like Leo Cullen was in O’Gara’s place I don’t hear Boo-ing. It’s not just that La Rochelle has hurt Leinster and O’Gara is their Irish boss. It’s the needle that he brings and the pantomime activity before the game around pretending that Munster were supporting LaRochelle just because O’Gara is from Cork. That’s dividing Irish provinces just to get an advantage for his French Team. He can F*ck right off with that. BOOOOO! (but not while someone is lying injured)
4 Go to commentsDid the highlanders party too hard before the game? They were the pits.
1 Go to commentsWhat a player! Not long until he’s in the England side, surely?
5 Go to commentsHe seems to have the same aura as Marcus Smith - by which I mean he’s consistently judged as if he’s several years younger than he actually is. Mngomezulu has played 24 times for the Stormers. When Pollard was his age he had played 24 times for South Africa! He has more time to develop, but he has also had time to do some developing already, and he hasn’t demonstrated nearly as much talent in that time as one would expect. If he is a generational talent, then it must be a pretty poor generation.
6 Go to commentsThe greatest Springbok coach of all time is entirely on the money. Rassie and Jacques have given the south african public a great few years, but the success of the springbok selection policy will need to be judged in light of what comes next. The poor condition that the provincial system is currently in doesn’t bode well for the next few years of international rugby, and the insane 2026 schedule that the Boks have lined up could also really harm both provincial and international consistency.
22 Go to commentsJake White is a brilliant coach and a master in the press. This is another masterclass in media relations and PR but its also a very narrow view with arguments that dont always hold water. White wants his team to win, he wants the best players in SA and wants his team competitive. You however have to face up to the reality of a poor exchange rate and big clubs with big budgets. SA Rugby cant compete and unless it can find more money SA players will keep leaving regardless of Springbok eligibility and this happened in 2015 - 2017. Also rugby is not cricket. Cricket has 3 formats and T20 cricket is where the money is at. When it comes to club vs country the IPL is king but that wont happen because the international calendar does not clash with the club calendar in rugby. So the argument about rugby going down the same path as cricket is really a non-starter
22 Go to commentsNZ rugby seem not to have learnt anything from professional rugby. Super rugby was dying and SA left before they died with the competition. SA rugby did a u turn on their approach to international players playing overseas and such players are now selected for Bok teams. As much as each country would love to retain their players playing in local competitions, this is the way the world is evolving my friends. Move with it or stay 20 years behind the times. One more thing. NZ rugby hierarchy think they are the big cheese. Take a more humble approach guys. You do not seem to have your players best interests at heart.
8 Go to comments