Rugby wins, even in Melbourne

By GREG ANSLEY Australia correspondent

Talking footie with Richard Elvins may seem out of place surrounded by a spaghetti of g-string bikinis in a women's swimwear shop, but this is Melbourne, where real men can eat quiche.

Elvins, proprietor of Sportsbody Swim in the city's silvertail Collins two3four mall, is of course a big Australian Rules fan, as is almost everyone else in this mock gothic and skyscrapered city of 3.4 million.

But kick any ball into the air in Melbourne and half the population will rush to catch it while the rest scramble for tickets to watch the resulting ruck, as they have done before for the Bledisloe Cup and assorted Wallaby games, and now for the Rugby World Cup.

"Melbourne people love sport big time," Elvin says. "We can really get into the Rugby World Cup, because we can appreciate it's a world level sport. I'll be watching it."

Outside Sportsbody Swim, banners of a grinning John Eales holding the Webb Ellis Cup cascade down a towering atrium more used to gold cards and brand names than rugby heroes.

Beneath them sits Brian Hockings, another AFL fanatic unmoved at the moment but quite prepared to be: "A good game is a good game really, isn't it?"

This is the home the All Blacks have chosen for their cup campaign, Australia's second-biggest city, where the local gods run up each other's backs and bounce balls in tight, tight shorts, and where rugby is a very distant speck on an horizon blinded by AFL.

Last Thursday night, State Premier Steve Bracks and about 300 dignitaries turned out to welcome the All Blacks, Italy and Canada to town, with a small cluster of cameras that gave small downpage coverage to the arrival in town of the favourites to win the world's biggest sporting event this year, and a campaign that will pump more than $A100m into the Victorian economy.

Outside, a mass dancing lesson in the bitter forecourt of the eccentric Federation Square - soundtracked appropriately by Singing in the Rain - appealed much more to the Age, which ran the story big on page one.

Big as they are, the All Blacks vanish in Melbourne, which is probably one good reason to be here.

Living out of Somerset Botanic Gardens in St Kilda Rd, about 15 minutes' walk from downtown Melbourne and an easy hop to the restaurants and night life of beachside St Kilda, anonymity becomes All Blacks on the warpath.

"That part of Melbourne beats to a different drum than anywhere else," says Herald-Sun rugby writer Karl deKroo. "Down there they'll be able to go and get their coffees without anyone caring too much, outside of going, 'Gee, that's a sexy tracksuit'.

"Training's one thing, but it's nice if you can leave your hotel room and you don't get mobbed by people searching for autographs or whatever.

"There's going to be a little bit of that, but it will be nowhere the same as if they were in Brisbane or Sydney."

There was more than a little of it when the All Blacks arrived at Tullamarine Airport on Wednesday night, to be greeted by a haka and about 500 cheering, flag-waving Kiwis and a battery of cameras at a packed press conference.

But captain Reuben Thorne indicated that deKroo was right on the button: "I'm sure there will still be plenty of pressure at times, but I think it's good.

"We're a wee bit out of the main rugby centre and that's good for us to be able to do that."

It's good also for John O'Neill, chief executive of the Australian Rugby Union, who has every intention of using the pulling power of the All Blacks and the natural enthusiasm of Melburnians for anything that involves a ball to drive his business plan right through the centre of the city.

With a war chest of about $A45 million in profits from the cup, O'Neill intends taking on both the AFL in Victoria and Rugby League in New South Wales and Queensland to make rugby the dominant football code in Australia.

He already has development officers and programmes running in Victorian schools and a solid base of about 40,000 New Zealanders in the state, who already are the backbone of the sport there.

There is also, says deKroo, growing and powerful support for rugby at the big end of town.

Corporate backers, organised through the Weary Dunlop Club - named after war hero and one-time rugby international Sir Ernest "Weary" Dunlop - are already pushing for a Melbourne-based fourth Super 12 team, and working on raising the $A7 million needed to fund it.

At lunches that attract more than 1000 guests are some of Australia's biggest business names, such as Carlton and United Breweries, John Holland Construction and Bundaberg Rum.

But even with the All Blacks living there and the World Cup, Melbourne will be no pushover for rugby.

Ryan Eagan, an expatriate from Rotorua who plays for Boorondarra (formerly Kiwi Hawthorne) and who is programme co-ordinator for the state under-16s, grins slowly when asked about O'Neill's hopes of biting out a big chunk of AFL support.

"Well, quite a few of the under-16s are Kiwi kids ... well, actually probably half ... no, virtually all of them are," he says. "One or two are Aussies."

Just under 4000 people play rugby in Victoria. That compares with 141,000 AFL players and 26,300 who play soccer. League is also struggling.

More telling is the money, which follows the crowds. While rugby across Australia hauls in about 450,000 spectators, AFL pulls 2.5 million, league 1.5 million and soccer, 620,000. Rugby's World Cup profits compares with revenue of almost $A160 million for AFL, and $A80 million for league.

But with rugby chipping away through the schools, O'Neill's pre-rugby reputation as a tough and very successful banker, and World Cup hype that has seen 280,000 tickets sold for Melbourne games, the other codes are starting to get nervous.

"I think there's scope," deKroo says of hopes for significant rugby inroads.

"In a way they've been spoiled here because they only get the best games, like the Lions test, the Bledisloe ... They're the cream of the crop.

"There's plenty of money that says a [Super 12] franchise would be supported here, they're having some success in getting programmes into schools and when they start doing that - and if you do bring in an elite presence on a more permanent basis, well, you never know."

For the moment, Melbourne is treating the World Cup and the All Blacks very well indeed.

The team's home is the four-star suites of the Somerset Botanic Gardens, a discreet address opposite King's Domain, where rates run from about $A200 to $A320 a night, with TVs in lounge and bedrooms, marble kitchen benches, and a spa, sauna, gym and pool below.

They are not wanting for support: Eagan and his Kiwi mates met at the Maori Chief, a pub in South Melbourne, before heading to Saturday's game against Italy; others were gathering in similar tribes for the contest at the massive, and mercifully roofed, Telstra Dome.

The mass-circulation tabloid Herald-Sun, with 1.5 million readers, has been pumping the cup for a couple of weeks. The more conservative broadsheet the Age has been much slower and more sparing, but on Friday picked up with a special cup wraparound that included a "bluffer's guide" to rugby to help bemused Victorians follow the action.

Yesterday, the Herald-Sun Sunday led its sports pages with the All Blacks' victory over Italy, and the front page of the Sunday Age was dominated by a four-column picture of an All Black fan in full flight.

For Sunday Age writer Rohit Brijnath, the game was one of a list of what sports fan should experience before they die, up there with a home run by the New York Yankees, or an "opposition crowd shouting down Old Trafford's soccer warriors".

Downtown, where dozens of World Cup flags and banners flap in the wind, cup clothing and paraphernalia are doing a roaring trade.

In Elizabeth St, the entire frontage of sports store Fifth Ave is ablaze with World Cup team jerseys, scarves, caps and the like.

They may not understand it, but Victorians know what they like: a ball, any ball - especially when AFL is over for the year.

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