How Andrew Forrest, a billionaire from Perth, made rugby’s Twenty20
owen slot, chief rugby correspondent
No one got nine points for a try last week but, for the first time, the full nine-pointer was available. For the first time, also, a professional game was 70 minutes long. For the first time too, a red card was a 20-minute penalty, not the whole game.
The game in question was in Perth last Friday night, when Western Force beat a World XV 26-16. More interesting than beating a World XV, though, was whether this may, in any way, change the world game
Rugby union stands at a critical point in its history. Last week, in Paris, leaders of the world game gathered to discuss how it may change to become safer, to protect players, to reduce injuries, particularly concussions. You may have read about it; my colleague, Alex Lowe, was in Paris reporting on it.
You may say that such a summit was overdue and you would be right. The point, though, is that the leaders are embracing the phenomenal responsibility that happens to have landed on their shoulders at this time when the game’s very future is threatened.
History will be the judge of how successful they were. It may also record the events that took place 9,000 miles away, two days after the Paris symposium had come to an end.
It was with that Western Force game in Perth that Global Rapid Rugby was launched by Andrew Forrest, the local iron ore billionaire. Forrest describes his creation as a “petri dish” for the game in which experiments with rule changes can be conducted. He wants to see if he can get Rapid Rugby to grow. Having an Aussie’s can-do positivity and a wealth that has had him ranked for a decade among Australia’s top ten richest people, he most definitely believes he can. When I spoke to him last week, he was pretty persuasive too.
There is some backstory to all this. Two years ago, Western Force were one of the five Super Rugby franchises in Australia where, collectively, an unsustainable balance sheet and an even worse results sheet meant that something had to change. The decision taken by Rugby Australia was to euthanise one of the five franchises. When it decided that Western Force would be the one to go, it hadn’t accounted for Forrest.
Forrest — known as “Twiggy” — led a sustained rearguard action. He underwrote Force’s legal challenge. When that eventually failed, he stuck two fingers up to the establishment and said: “Well you still can’t kill us off, Western Force might not be welcome in Super Rugby but they can play in my own international rugby competition instead.”
Thus, last year, he launched World Series Rugby, a sequence of exhibition matches against teams from Hong Kong, Samoa and Tonga as well as some Super Rugby teams. He pledged, at the time, to have a proper league up and running for 2019, with teams from the likes of Malaysia and Sri Lanka. He hasn’t completely managed that; his 2019 edition is instead a 14-match “showcase series” from six venues including Hong Kong and Singapore.
His masterplan may take some time — and I need some persuading that it will work. What is fascinating is what is in his petri dish.
Last year, he trialled the “power try”, which earned a team seven points if they scored from an attack that started in their own 22. This year, that has been upgraded to a nine-pointer (though with no conversion).
His thesis is that rugby has to adapt to survive. He wants to return rugby to a game that caters for all shapes and sizes. He wants family audiences rather than a beer-and-boys brigade. And he wants entertainment.
“What the audience doesn’t like is the ball continuously being kicked out deliberately,” he said. “Running the ball is what people love to see. When the ball is moving, that is action, that is gold, that is what rugby can deliver. When you kick it out or slow it down deliberately, that is what turns audiences off.”
How can rugby ensure a healthy future? It needs to be entertaining and it needs to be safe. From our conversation, Forrest sounded inspired marginally more by the former. He wants less stop-start and a 15 per cent increase of ball-in-play time. For instance, those teams in Global Rapid Rugby gain nothing from kicking the ball out on the full from within their 22; instead they concede a lineout from where it is kicked. This should bring longer periods of play and more pressure on the defending team to run from deep.
Now it gets interesting. More ball-in-play time equals a more aerobically challenging game, which requires athletes who are conditioned differently, with less power and more speed and endurance. Partly with that in mind, Forrest has reduced the game to 35 minutes each way. This has had it dismissed as rugby’s version of Twenty20 cricket. Whatever. More interesting, though, is what it can do for the game outside Forrest’s own private domain.
At the Paris symposium, World Rugby discussed reducing the numbers of substitutes. Fewer substitutes would oblige more players to be conditioned differently — just like Forrest’s Rapid Rugby players. However, every change that World Rugby wishes to test needs to be trialled. Think about that: you want a whole league of players to recondition, just for a trial? That is a big ask. World Rugby is fortunate that Forrest is indirectly trialling this for them.
It may not be such a surprise, then, that World Rugby gave Rapid Rugby the endorsement it required.
As Lowe reported from Paris, World Rugby wishes to trial a new “50-22” law, whereby the attacking team would be rewarded with the lineout throw if the ball was kicked from within their own half and bounced into touch inside their opponent’s 22-metre line. The intention would be to persuade opposition wings to hang back to defend the kick — and this, in turn, would create space for an attack. It just so happens that Rapid Rugby is playing a version of this law change too.
Often the player-welfare debate turns to the use of red cards. As we know, one way to change players’ behaviour — at the tackle, for instance — is to show more red cards. The objection here is that red cards can cast too great an influence over the outcome of a game. How helpful, then, that Rapid Rugby is making a red card merely a 20-minute penalty (and the carded player cannot come back on, with a team-mate sent on his place).
Forrest says that “it took guts for World Rugby to endorse” his competition. I am not sure how brave World Rugby was being, given that Agustín Pichot, its vice-chairman, is on the Rapid Rugby board.
Nevertheless, Forrest has a point here: “This is an opportunity which World Rugby are taking: ‘Hey, we really want to see all these innovations work. Let’s trial them at international competition. That is a massive strategic exercise. Who can do that? Global Rapid Rugby. Thankyou.’ We will swim against the tide of tradition and endorse a new competition.”
This Friday, the new competition sees Western Force play the South China Tigers, the Hong Kong franchise which happens to star Tom Varndell, the all-time top try-scorer in the English Premiership. Two weeks later, they play the Asia Pacific Dragons, the new Singapore franchise. In May, teams from Fiji and Samoa join the fray.
Next year, Forrest wants to expand further. I don’t know about that. I do know, though, that his competition has been unfairly dismissed by some as a wealthy man’s gimmick.
Rugby needs to embrace change. It is, at last, slowly and tentatively doing so. In western Australia, meanwhile, change sweeps through the game like a whirlwind. And it may be showing the rest of us the way ahead.
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