Andrew Forrest. Photo / Supplied
Billionaire mining baron Andrew Forrest has enough money to be aboard the first passenger shuttle to the moon, so landing a rugby star in Singapore, Hong Kong or Shanghai as part of his new competition is no problem in his eyes.
The emotion and angst swirling around Perth at the Western Force losing their court fight to stay in Super Rugby has taken the spotlight from the Forrest plan to create an ambitious Indo-Pacific competition.
The knee-jerk reaction that he is creating a "rebel competition" in the role of a modern Kerry Packer is wrong. He wants the Australian Rugby Union inside his tent for the complementary tournament.
"If the Australian Rugby Union can put aside the divide-and-conquer warfare, the common sense has to be to find ways to build a future in rugby where there is better funding everywhere," said John Welborn, Western Australia's first born-and-bred Wallaby.
"The 'when, where, who' is a challenge but one grand vision and strong capital behind it is a great place to start I would have thought."
Welborn, who flew into his footy with a few fists during the old-school flashpoints of his career in the 1990s, is now a gold mining company chief.
He is also on the steering committee of Forrest's new rugby venture, which loosely embraces the concept of clubs in places like Singapore, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Perth being spiced up with the star power of hired rugby guns.
It would likely be a short sprint six- or seven-week tournament that tears up some of the worst pages in rugby's law book, has players wearing mini-GoPro cameras, greater fan interaction and so on.
"The idea of shrinking Australian rugby back to the small suburbs of Brisbane and Sydney can't be the future," Welborn said. "You want aspirational pathways. So imagine a Perth Spirit side, not in the [Australian national competition] but in a much bigger competition.
"The problem with Australian rugby is not the depth coming into four or five Super Rugby sides but not having 2000 players feeding those clubs from the level below."
Take a step back for a moment and ponder why Forrest would contemplate such a bold, money-draining venture. For any businessman, there has to be commercial sense.
Forrest has huge interests in iron ore and protein, aka beef cattle, which talks to China and other trading partners in that Indo-Pacific region. Why not create a sporting product for TV screens in that region?
The plan was never for this to kick off in 2018. The demise of the Force has rushed forward a whiteboard idea that was being tossed around for 2020 when the current Sanzaar deal ends and all ideas are on the table.
Forrest has also talked up dirt-poor women's rugby and sevens rugby coming along for the ride.
These are grand ideas but reality can be a ball-and-chain as New Zealand rugby boss Steve Tew said this week. "Anybody who attempts to set up a professional rugby competition in this part of the world will see how hard it is," Tew said.
The bottom line is that anything with "$50 million or more" in a sentence needs to be looked at by the ARU because they surely don't have it.
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