‘Enough on our plate’: Why new rugby boss won’t react to NRL raids

Rugby Australia: Daniel Herbert takes over from Hamish McLennan, says NRL raids not his priority

In his quest to bring back the 15-man code, Coming Rugby Australia chairman Daniel Herbert says he will not allow himself to be distracted by the possibility of the NRL stealing players.

Following the departure of Hamish McLennan, which was forced by six states, including the Queensland Rugby Union, Herbert takes over at a bad period for Australian rugby. Herbert has 67 caps for the Wallabies and has represented the Reds both on and off the field.

Daniel Herbert has replaced Hamish McLennan as Rugby Australia’s chairman.
 

Simmering internal difficulties, like as rugby union’s multimillion-dollar purchase of Sydney Roosters star Joseph Suaalii while seemingly neglecting its own player pipelines, came to a boil after Australia’s miserable World Cup performance.

Chairman of the Queensland Rugby Union Brett Clark stated on Monday that one of the problems that resulted in McLennan’s dismissal was the ongoing “leakage” of young talent to the NRL.

Opening

There have been concerns that rugby union’s revival would take even longer due to speculation that NRL clubs might take advantage of the lingering uncertainty and poach additional players.

Herbert, meanwhile, was determined that the prospect of poaching raids and having to fight the NRL for every player would not get to him.

Herbert responded on Monday, “No, because we’ll be concentrating on ourselves and what we need to do.”

“I believe we have enough issues to deal with at the moment; the NRL and the league will decide what to do.

“I believe that the rugby community wants us to really concentrate on that because we have enough talented athletes.” We wish to accomplish a great deal of internal growth rather than attempting to artificially create a means of (winning) major events.

Rugby trumpeted the signing of Joseph Suaalii from the Roosters.

 

According to Clark, McLennan lost the QRU’s backing because of the poor choice to choose Eddie Jones as Wallabies coach, as “no one really wanted to take ownership of the Eddie Jones decision.”

However, Clark emphasized that the NRL’s ongoing loss of young talent, highlighted by former Churchie student Kalyn Ponga, was a longer-term issue that required immediate addressing.

He questioned how a player like Suaalii could command such a high salary yet local talent in the game was unable to be persuaded to play in the NRL and NRLW.

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In Queensland, we have a scenario where traditionally we have been a net exporter of talent, therefore there were decisions made about attempting to attract NRL talent, according to Clark.

We haven’t been able to keep the rugby players in our system, whether it’s through private schools or other channels.

“At the moment, there are schools whose first team contracts are mostly with the NRL. We have called on RA to provide more finance and resources so that we can stop this leakage.

“While club rugby is growing, you read in the media that a single player is receiving a large sum of money, under-19s … that’s where community rugby breaks down.

“There’s over 70,000 registered players in Queensland playing rugby, and 14,000 of them are women but we still can’t pay women the amount of money they deserve.”

Herbert acknowledged rugby union needed to do more to keep “good athletes – men and women, boys and girls” – in the code, particularly at the point where they were leaving the school system.

At the same time, Herbert said he was not looking to scrap the contract with Suaalii, who had been a McLennan target and is due to join the code in 2025.

Herbert is anticipated to approach reform in a different way than McLennan, who favored greater central authority.

While Herbert attempted to concentrate on the future, which included the selection of a new high performance director and subsequently the new Wallabies coach, McLennan implied that the states’ power struggle, not his own subpar play, was the cause of his collapse.

According to McLennan, “they want a bigger say.”

“We’ll see how it plays out; at the end of the day, this is all about money and control.”

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