Peter Fitzsimons: Doing the business is more than just business

COMMENT

History, as they say, is written by the victors.

And inevitably, those victors often take reality's wonky lines, strange turns, propitious winds, unexpected cul-de-sacs, shafts of sunlight and swamplands and impose a far more ordered landscape.

By the time they're done the reader can usually see a tidy main highway constructed by that victor, a highway that was always going to lead to that famous victory because the victor was so damn clever.

Cue Sir Clive Woodward and his book Winning!

I have nothing but admiration for England's ascension to World Cup glory, and offer sincere congratulations, but it is worth noting that if a stray puff of wind had blown Johnny Wilkinson's last-minute match-winning field goal away from the sticks, there is no way Clive could have made his account of the path to victory look so damn straight and well-constructed.

(For a start his title of Winning! would have to change to Drawing, and we can also safely assume that the Sir would not be in front of the author's name.)

For he is very keen to make it clear from the beginning that the team he inherited in 1998, was something akin to a hopeless joke when it came to serious achievement.

He writes: "Until this team came together, England rugby hadn't managed to string together more than three wins in a row against any southern hemisphere team for more than 100 years".

But what chance did that weight of history have against the forensic force of the new English coach? Tell em, Sir Clive.

"I felt sport should have a huge fascination with business," he writes.

"When I started as coach, I was determined to run the England rugby team like a business, so over the years I've canvassed hundreds of sources for new business techniques in line with all my experiences in the corporate and small business world."

And we all know the result. Super Sir Clive analysed to the nth degree his assets and liabilities; his net income of tries and penalties against his outgoings of points conceded against opposing teams.

Then he worked out how, by applying his economies of scale and all his business tricks, he was able to make the England team sports millionaires and World Cup victors.

A main highway through the jungle, constructed by him, along which his forces could march in straight formation to their manifest destiny.

Sigh. Double-sigh. Wan look.

Despite all my entirely uncalled for cynicism on the subject and the fact that it in no way fits in with my own notion of the way sport should be, I must reluctantly - extremely reluctantly - acknowledge that it sounds almost exactly the same approach taken by the victorious Wallaby coach of the 1999 World Cup, Rod Macqueen.

A millionaire businessman well before he took over the Wallaby reins, Macqueen made no bones about the fact that when he said he meant business with the Wallabies, he meant it literally.

Many a sportsman has made money by teaching the golden rules of success in sport, and how they can work equally well in the corporate world; Rod Macqueen did exactly the reverse.

"So what we're going to do, guys," Rod Macqueen told the Wallabies in their first serious session behind closed doors, as every player listened with the issued pen and paper before them, "is some SWOT analysis."

The Wallabies looked back at him blankly. SWOT what?

"SWOT analysis," Macqueen explained, "is Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats of the opposition."

It was the beginning of a cultural revolution, a professional approach to preparing the team under a corporate management structure that did achieve extraordinary results and which continues to this day.


My point - you knew I'd get there eventually - is that saying modern elite rugby is built on corporate management structures and a professional approach is to say that it also includes scrums and lineouts.

They all seem to be built on those structures these days.

What I find most encouraging is the counter-revolution, where it is being acknowledged that it ain't a business ethos alone that does the trick and that plenty of other factors come into play.

I cite Denis Keeffe, chief executive of the North Queensland Cowboys rugby league team, who from out of nowhere have done so extraordinarily well in the NRL.

It had evolved over the past three years, he said last week of the club's success.

"We set out to base our principles on a real footy club.

"I think those principles were lost a bit when Super League came along. Everyone talked about franchises, products and corporates.

"We've made a concerted effort to go back to being a real footy club by talking about our experiences as juniors at grassroots level.

"The Cowboys are as professional as anyone else, but we wanted to generate a footy club atmosphere."

RAH!

* Rugby writer Peter FitzSimons is a former Wallaby