Western Force
Almost 25 years after Kerry Packer attempted to change the face of rugby with a global series, another Australian has gone one step further. In May this year, Perth’s mining billionaire Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest, helped Western Force rise from the ashes with the launch of World Series Rugby.
In July 2017, Western Force played their last-ever game of Super Rugby. They didn’t know it at the time, but the 40-11 destruction of Australia’s most recent champions, the NSW Waratahs, was to be their parting shot. Their owner, Perth-born billionaire Andrew Forrest, sensed fans’ uncertainty, telling them, “Be assured that surviving is not an issue, you will survive, and you will win.”
Captain Matt Hodgson, playing what looked to be his final game before retirement, echoed the thought, “I guarantee you we’re still not finished,” he said, “we’re here for a few more years for sure.”
They were both right. Although, even allowing for hyperbole and pumped-up matchday cheerleading, probably neither expected the next game to be a packed house against Fiji Warriors, as part of a global series involving sides from seven different nations.
Before we get to that though, the end – or the beginning, depending on which way you look at it – first looked a possibility months before the Waratahs game. “It started after one of our games,” says Matt Hodgson, now head of elite performance, at the club. “We were playing a New Zealand team in Perth, I’m pretty sure it was Auckland, and literally as soon as we came off the pitch, the coaching staff and some of the admin staff told us in the sheds.
“It didn’t really sink in, but Australia were going from five teams to four,” he continues. “We then had to go straight into the press conference. A couple of months after that it was the end for Western Force.
“It was bizarre how we got thrown into it like that, it was a big shock,” he admits. “We were told that it was going from five to four then, all of a sudden, 73 hours later, the decision was that they’d limited it down to Melbourne and us. Then it was an off-field fight. It went on for a couple of months and, in the end, it went into the courts, with the supreme court making the decision a week or so after the last [Super Rugby] game.”
Before the outcome was known, there were games still to play in the Super Rugby, with the players deciding the only thing they could do was perform on the pitch to prove a point. “I think probably, initially, when they said it going from four to five, our first thought was to fight to keep it at five, because it would be stronger for Australian rugby,” he says. “We didn’t view it as us versus Melbourne, but as time went on, that fight became quite hard, so we thought it was up to us to do what we could on the field – we needed to prove that we should survive from a rugby point of view.”
In three of their last four games, they took on and beat Australian rivals, thrashing the Reds in Queensland 40-26, the Rebels 31-22 at home, and then the Waratahs, helping them to second place in the Australian conference. “I think considering our performances were under so much stress, we performed quite well,” says Matt, “we were unlucky to finish outside the top eight.”
Even before the end was signalled by the courts, uncertainty had spread through the squad. “If you talk to a lot of the players,” continues Matt, “the first option was to play for the Force, but once it got down to a clearer vision of what might happen, then some players left for their own wellbeing after being in limbo for so long. A lot went overseas, a lot to other Australian teams, some stayed. One thing I can’t do is ever blame players for that. We lost a lot of great players because they had to look for security and a future.”
When this chapter ended, it was in true Millennial style. “I was actually having lunch and was just scrolling through social media and the decision popped up on my Twitter feed,” says Matt. “Half an hour later, after a few phone calls, we saw an email from Australian Rugby. It’s disappointing, that’s the way the club gets notified, after 15-odd years.
“The next morning we all got together, faced the media, spoke about the decision,” explains Matt. “Then we met as a group and spoke about how the players could keep the Force legacy alive, even doing it in different colours. It’s about what we do on and off the field.”
Despite claims that there was going to be pathway for players in Western Australia, Matt and his Western Force colleagues knew nothing about it. “We were left in limbo,” he says, “there was no correspondence from Rugby Australia, there didn’t seem to be any plans for rugby in the state.”
At the time, Matt had been in conversations about prolonging his stay for another year, but what happened off the field led to a change of heart. “I still loved playing and felt I was good enough to play football at the highest level,” he says. “But during the ordeal, seeing how the game was being run, how it dealt with the club, I fell out of love with the game.”
Only days after Super Rugby said goodbye to Western Force, Andrew Forrest took matters into his own hands. “I caught up with Andrew Forrest two or three days later,” says Matt, “and he told me some of his ideas. He’d been involved in the negotiations with Rugby Australia trying to find solutions to keep Force in Super Rugby, but after that decision was made – despite the injustice – we had to have a plan B. He told me what he’d been working on – basically attacking rugby from the west coast of Australia through Asia.”
Matt’s initial role was to join Andrew and travel across Asia and the Pacific, looking for sides to join a new series. “We travelled around talking to countries like Japan, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Fiji,” he says. “We went to countries who were rugby strong but didn’t have a competition.
“Rugby through Asia was the next obvious step,” he continues, “it felt like the future for Western Force. It worked with the timelines, and we could play week-in, week-out without the jetlag. I flew to Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia – one day apart – and there’s no jet lag. It’s not like travelling for 32 hours across three different time zones for a game. The same people who watch a game in Japan, can also watch it in Hong Kong. And we have the Rugby World Cup in Japan as a good selling point too – this can be the future.”
Once they hit the road, they were buoyed by the interest, changing travel plans constantly to meet newly interested parties. “All the Asian countries came to a meeting in Japan, and they talked and we listened to what they wanted and how they wanted to be involved – all of a sudden we had 31 countries, World Rugby and Asia Rugby, all listening to what we had planned.”
Asian countries were soon joined by Pacific nations. “Countries like Fiji, Tonga and Samoa have great teams with great players but they only come together once a year, so why not get them in a competition and playing a high level of football more often.
“That’s going to build them up and then, when it comes to world cup, it’ll be a case of ‘wow, which team is going to win?’”
That’s not forgetting New Zealand, who have alternative options beyond Super Rugby, such as the Maori All Blacks and NPC/ITM sides.
The Western Force outreach team came back from a whirlwind trip with enough interested parties to form a fixture list for an inaugural home World Series Rugby 2018. Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, Panasonic Wild Knights (from Japan), Hong Kong, New Zealand’s Crusaders and even old foes Melbourne Rebels were lined up.
The button was pressed on the new dawn on January 8th 2018. “I got a phone call on from Andrew to say ‘let’s fill the void’,” explains Matt. “We weren’t fully endorsed by Rugby Australia yet, but I had full approval to put together a squad of 35 players.
“We had seven home fixtures, 13 sponsors and a broadcast deal linking free-to-air which is huge in Western Australia. Andrew just said, ‘let’s do it, we need rugby and we need content from February through to pretty much September’.”
The first recruits were the handful of Western Force players who were still in the area, and they helped make up the dozen or so Western Australians in the debut squad. They scoured for the right players the world over, from Britain, France and Italy to USA, Japan and New Zealand. “I’d done a lot of research knowing that one day it was going to happen, so I had a hit list,” says Matt. “Often people just aim for top stars but I had to build a nucleus – I needed a core group who wanted to be part of it and bought into my and Andrew’s vision for the future. The players we wanted had to be the right type of people for the rugby we wanted on the field and right people off the field too. Now, the biggest problem for 2019 will be fitting so many players into the squad.”
Australians wanting to have ‘another crack’ at the world cup returned, players such as Keiran Longbottom from Saracens. New Zealander Johan Bardoul arrived from Japan, Fiji Olympic Gold winner Masivesi Dakuwaq took the trip from rugby league and George Pisi flew in from Biarritz. Former All Black Jeremy Thrush also had his head turned, likewise Josh Furno, an Australian who’d played for Italy. “Jeremy was the last piece of the puzzle,” says Matt. “We didn’t want to just sign anyone willy-nilly, they had to tell me why they wanted to come, why Western Australia was right avenue for them, and what was the reason behind it.
“When we started in February we had about seven or eight players, we brought in junior academy for training and then each week we’d have a couple more, I had about 22 signed up before I even had a coaching team to train them.”
The new vision for Western Force wasn’t just about getting games and players to play them, they also wanted entertainment, both on and off the field. “Rugby tragics will go to the game anyway,” says Matt, “but to get more bums on seats you need more.”
That ‘more’ was on-field entertainment, not just in terms of tries, but also match action – literally giving fans more bang for their buck. “The first game against Fiji we had 38 minutes ball-in-game time,” boasts Matt. “I think the world record is the women’s world cup, when it was 42 minutes. We want to beat that record – that’s my aim, so when you’re here you’re [literally] watching more rugby. And they’re watching the style of rugby we want to play, our full back made 22 carries and our wings 18 and 15 each, figures unheard of these days.”
Off the field, hard rock band Wolfmother did a set, a rugby ‘creche’ was set up to give kids coaching sessions while parents watched the match and there was even a magician. Opposition sides were also embraced, with a huge Fiji flag draped across the pitch. “It’s their match as well,” says Matt. “We’re starting to plan for Samoa and we’ve already got 1,000 Samoans turning up wanting to be involved.”
Against Fiji Warriors, they sold out, with 19,500 packed into nib Stadium. “My biggest fear was that we put so much attention and focus in what was going off the field, that the rugby would live up to it. To see 19,000 people turn up and see great rugby, even days later I was still pinching myself. We then backed it up the next week after Tonga, with another sell out, and the phone hasn’t stopped ringing. People saw that this could actually work.
“Everyone was surprised, but Western Australia backed us and the rest of world took notice that we’re not just throwing this together, we’ve got some thought process and we can put on good show.”
After more talks, both of the opening games were endorsed by both Australia and World Rugby. “We wanted to get Wallaby eligibility for Western Australia,” says Matt, highlighting the importance of a rugby pathway for talent to make it to the international scene. “We don’t want to be around for a year or two, we want to be around forever.”
The next step is to turn this year’s trial series into a home and away competition. “We’re looking at multiple markets,” explains Matt, “it’s who‘s not going to be involved, rather than who is. We’ve got eight sides in the competition, 14 fixtures and then semi-finals, so that’s 56 games in the front end of the year, it’s pretty exciting.
“We’ve hit the world market,” he continues. “People laughed at us with the ideas of a world series, but now I think they think we can do this, they’re very supportive. World Rugby are trying to get into these markets but didn’t have the capability, financial or otherwise, but we flew to London for discussions and they’re going to help to make it work. World Rugby need people who have the best interests of the game at heart, and we do.”
With Super Rugby forever in the headlines for the wrong reasons; Australian rugby sides averaging just over 11,000 attendances and last year’s Brumbies quarter-final against Hurricanes only pulling in 9,000, the southern hemisphere’s flagship tournament is in need of change. “Yeah, definitely,” agrees Matt. “Super Rugby needs to evolve and change and look at different avenues from the current model, because we all know it’s not working, especially in South Africa with the decision they’re making there.
“Does Argentina work? Does it work for Japan? What’s best for Australia? And New Zealand? The telling point is the viewing figures.”
Western Force might even be better off without Super Rugby. “One door has shut but another one has opened,” he says. “We’re doing the right thing, we’re playing great football on the pitch and we’re doing things right off the field too. We’re now at the forefront of where rugby should be going in Australia.”
Words by: Alex Mead
This extract was taken from issue 3 of Rugby.
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