Force Goooooooone
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He can because as long as his players are registered with the ARFU all they have to do is apply for an international clearance to be able to play in a match overseas. Provided the players are not holders of any ARFU professional contract there is no valid reason for the ARFU to withhold the clearance. About the only impediment looks to be the players local club and they can only withhold their clearance if they have not paid their subscription (or not returned all club issued gear). Similarly all incoming players only need a clearance from their home union.
Having said that you are right, it will cost him a huge amount of money to run so unless he gets some major buy in from the Japan RFU it will mostly have to come out of his own pocket as sponsorship is unlikely to go anywhere near covering the costs.
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Hodgson responds to Supreme Court call
An emotional Matt Hodgson fought back tears while vowing to fight back with the Force, after Rugby WA's appeal was dismissed in the Supreme Court this morning. Hodgson, mining magnate Andrew Forrest and coach Dave Wessels all fronted media in Perth this morning, in response to the Supreme Court decision. Fighting back tears, Hodgson spoke with pride when asked about the Force's future in a rebel competition, which was announced by Forrest moments before the ex-captain fronted the cameras. "We will always be known as the Force," Hodgson said. "We will always represent WA, we will always wear the blue proudly and we will always wear the gold as well. "We always want to represent what we have done here in the last 12 years, we don't want to forget what we have done, we are just pushing forward as a club and as a unit. "We may not be called the Force, they might take that away, we might send them a bill for it but we will always be known as the Western Force and as long as Western Australia is in our name somewhere we will be proud to put that on." Hodgson expressed his frustration, once again, with the way the decision has been handled by the ARU board. "Again, today, they're not here," Hodgson said. "No one has called me, no one has talked to meI thought I did good for the sport for 12 years, representing and captaining my country and no one has spoken to me about this. "A phone call would be nice, a reason would be even nicer again."Apparently there is a Test match on this weekend that both of them will be watching so I am free Friday night if they want to come over for dinner and we can talk about these decisions." Asked how fans would react, Hodgson said he expected them to wear blue or black - as a sign of mourning - to the Wallabies' clash with the Springboks on Saturday night. "Fans will be angry," he said. "The process, the reason, the transparency, the corruption, it's been frustrating. "I don't think the fans or the players will deal with it well. "Shrinking the game, taking away half the country and the fastest growing juniors, 5000 people on the hill to watch the Perth Spirit, you're taking that away from them." (...) -
He also said he had plans to set up a new six-team rugby competition in the Indo-Pacific region, with a Perth-based team to participate.
Perth, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Cook Islands?
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Ghost of Kerry Packer looks down on Twiggy Forrest and smiles
"I love seeing this shit," said Packer.
Ghost of Kerry Packer looks down on Twiggy Forrest and smiles
The philanthropic mining magnate announced heâll start a rival rugby competition to Super Rugby similar to the IPL cricket championship that will guarantee the future of the Force. Speaking to The Advocate through a local spirit medium, Mr Packer said he was happy to see another billionaire give something back to the punter. âGood on him for going rogue,â said Kerry. âSeeing a bloke back himself against the establishment is just the best. Reminds me of me crushing the old cricketing guard. Shit I crushed them,â âAnyway, I wish the best of luck to our new little ârebelâ Twiggy and good on him. Ciao.â The medium then collapsed and writhed around on the floor speaking in tongues. At the press conference this morning, Mr Forrest said today marked a bright new dawn for the struggling football code, which has waned in popularity recently. âIf you look at it this way, itâs a big fuck you to the ARU and every fluffybunny involved in it,â said Forrest. âThis is what happened with cricket. Iâve got money coming out my fucking ears and I love the Western Force more than Tame Impala or a cold Export Tin on Rottnest,â âIâm doing this because I love rugby more than I hate the ARU.â More to come. -
A footnote: a few people have asked of Twiggy Forrest's whereabouts, particularly with his $50M offer in tow, over the last few years.
Its a good point, but someone pointed out that Fortescue Metals Group (Twiggy's main interest) has sponsored the Force for years.
I had a look, and it appears they're a jersey sponsor for Matt Hodgson. So hardly in the order of $50M, even if he was involved.
Not that this makes the ARU look any less like a pack of shunts. They say they'd be insolvent by end 2019 with 5 teams. But there is fairly solid evidence they'd be insolvent by the end of 2020 with 4 teams, too.
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Pretty shitty that it's the Force that had to go - they seem to be the most family orientated / rugby values at the fore of all the Aussie teams. True, they haven't won much, and at times have been nothing other than whipping boys, but I always thought it was good to have them in there.
Over the years Ive made an effort to watch the kiwi teams against the Force, I've made ZERO effort to watch them play the Rebels, and latter, the Sunwolves.
I fear for the future of Super rugby, and as a follow on, professional rugby in New Zealand. Super is such a shambles, and the crowd numbers are terrible. The Safa's have their foot in the NH now, and with them being the dependent cash cow to the Super tournament, and then being on an equal footing with the NH, it makes so much sense for them to dissolve Sanzaar and focus on the NH.
The decision to keep the Rebels and dump the force, just reeks of the sort of thinking that has seen the tournament become what it has.
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To keep the Force alive, Forrest has now launched his alternative competition. To be played parallel to the NRC. And he wants the ARU's endorsement. Now, why would they endorse a competition that is likely to kill their NRC?
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@Stargazer said in Force Goooooooone:
To keep the Force alive, Forrest has now launched his alternative competition. To be played parallel to the NRC. And he wants the ARU's endorsement. Now, why would they endorse a competition that is likely to kill their NRC?
Well the ARU hasn't done anything logical so far... so he's probably hoping that they won't start now.
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Sound more and more like Twiggy's promise of "IPL Rugby" every day.
The architects behind the Indo-Pacific Rugby Championship are confident of getting the competition on free-to-air television in Australia, broadening the reach of the game. The absence of Super Rugby on FTA television has long been a gripe of many devout rugby fans, who often point to that as part of the reason the popularity gap is widening between rugby and the other major football codes in this country. But IPRC chief strategist and legal director Eugenie Buckley said there had already been interests from several broadcasters, including free-to-air stations. "With the eyeballs that the Indo-Pacific can bring, we are confident of getting some really good commercial return," Buckley said. "We will be centralising broadcast, key merchandise, marketing, mainly to offset administration costs but also to do marketing and all the rest of it. "We have actually been approached by a number of broadcasters and we are looking to sell those broadcast rights on a platform neutral basis. "We can't obviously reveal the names of those broadcasters in commercial confidence." When asked whether the goal of broadcasting the competition on free-to-air television was within reach, Buckley had a short and sharp response. "Absolutely," she said. Eyebrows were raised yesterday when Andrew "Twiggy" Forrest said the competition would go dollar for dollar with the level of money on offer in Europe and Japan. Buckley explained Forrest's comments in more depth, with each IPRC contract slated to cover four months per year. "When he (Twiggy) says toe-to-toe he is talking about the quantum of money and salaries for the players that are earned will be absolute proportionate to what is earned in those top competitions throughout Europe and Japan," she said. "We want our players for those four months - that sacrosanct period - after that they can play wherever they like." Where the IPRC will aid Australian rugby is the ability to match the amount of money the likes of Liam Gill, Digby Ioane and Matt Toomua are earning overseas. If Forrest forks out the cash to match what these players earn in four months in Europe or Japan, the Super Rugby clubs and the ARU will only have to come up with two thirds of their annual salary to get back on a level playing field. "I think one of the great bi-products of this concept is that through this contracting period we can attract that talent back and then they can get back into Super Rugby in that repatriation sense," Buckley said. "We will be looking at retaining our best players in our region for longer and looking at repatriating players that are overseas. "There are about 130 that are overseas and we understand that at least half of those are Super Rugby standard so we've got an existing pool." The competition will run from August through to October, with players, at this stage, eligible to play for the Wallabies while being contracted with the IPRC. The NRC looks as though it will suffer, though executive director Stu Taggart said the competitions were on a different level to one another. "Our position is that these competitions co-exist," Taggart said. "We see the IPRC as a Tier 2 competition, Super Rugby standard, supporting the elite pathways, the NRC retains its status as a Tier 3 in the Australian elite rugby pathway." Where things will get particularly tricky is the balance of talent, as a team in China or Sri Lanka will obviously need plenty of propping up, given the shallow local talent pool in those countries. "We will work with each of our markets on a market by market basis," Buckley said. "What we are developing is a centralised elite talent pool and then we need to work with the locals so the teams can be supplemented by local talent. "That talent will be distributed to teams that may need to bolster their ranks." Those talent pools will also be bolstered by a marquee player, Buckley hinting there are already two "very high profile" players eager to get on board.What happens when he runs out of money?
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Very good, moving article written by Western Force's Pek Cowan. It illustrates how bad this whole process (and its outcome) is, and has been, for all involved and the utter failure that is called the ARU.
Free-to-air television on the cards for IPRC
