Rugby Australia signed off on a “seismic” secret plan that would have structured the game to favour NSW and Queensland at the expense of other states.
The secret plan, titled Winning Rugby, amounted to a brutal recasting of the sport in an attempt to boost the national side and is expected to form a key part in the grilling of RA chief executive Phil Waugh in the Federal Court on May 18.
Waugh is a star witness in the lawsuit brought by the directors of the now-defunct Melbourne Rebels that alleges RA acted unfairly by withdrawing support for the club during its 2024 financial collapse.
Former RA chief operating officer Richard Gardham and former RA chief executive Andy Marinos will also be called to give evidence during the three-week trial in Sydney.
The Rebels were stripped of their licence by RA in 2024, months after the club entered administration under the weight of about $23 million in debt, including $11.5 million owing to the Tax Office and another $6 million owing to members of the club’s high-profile board.
The proceedings could offer an unprecedented look into the inner workings of one of the country’s most powerful sporting governing bodies, shedding new light on why RA chose to provide emergency funding to NSW Super Rugby team the Waratahs and the ACT’s Brumbies.
Waugh, who has championed a “centralised” high-performance model since taking the helm, is expected to answer claims that the Rebels were victims of a predetermined strategy to diminish the role of the club in the league rather than market forces.
RA is vigorously defending the claim. A spokesman said it had always fulfilled its obligations to the Rebels and insisted the Winning Rugby plan was never implemented.
“As custodians of the game, RA took necessary steps to safeguard the broader Australian Rugby community from the crippling debts incurred by the experienced businesspeople, lawyers and accountants that constituted the board of MRRU [Melbourne Rebels Rugby Union],” the spokesman said.
Central to the Rebels’ case are internal documents usually marked confidential, including board minutes and Winning Rugby, a confidential strategic proposal put together by Waugh andGardham.
The document was put to the RA board in July 2023, just months before the Wallabies’ horror showing at the 2023 World Cup in Paris.
The proposal outlines a plan to revolutionise the competition by centralising Australia’s elite talent into three powerhouse teams to improve the performance of the national squad – a move that would have allegedly harmed other teams in the competition, including the Rebels.
“[The restructure] is a seismic but arguably necessary change in direction for the governance, management and delivery of professional Rugby in Australia. It challenges the status quo and the belief that all teams are treated equally,” the document says.
RA has said in its defence to the claim that the plan was discussed and some elements in it were approved by the board at the July 23, 2023, meeting, but the organisation never implemented the deal.
Why the Rebels entered into administration
Source: PwC administration report into the Melbourne Rebels
PwC administrator Stephen Longley found the club’s disastrous financial state is likely to result in:
- “A history of trading losses, exacerbated since 2020 by the negative impact on revenue from the COVID-19 pandemic and reduced funding from RA since that time;
- Insufficient revenue being generated from sources other than RA, such as membership, sponsorship and game-day revenue;
- An increasing expense base, including rising wage costs;
- Lack of readily available alternative funding sources to meet the material net asset shortfall and trading losses; and
- Failure to manage its statutory and lease liabilities.”
Extracts of Winning Rugby have been included in court documents filed in the case, but the full document has not been released.
“Reds and Waratahs, as the primary markets for both players and fans, the focus will be on retaining talent at home to create narrative and connection with local markets and concentrate the majority of the potential Wallabies, from a high-performance perspective, within Australian Rugby’s core markets,” the Winning Rugby document states.
According to the proposal, the Brumbies would retain their established role as a high-performance club with strong talent scouting and development role with “a team sourced from local market and players identified as nationally significant and requiring starting position opportunities and specific performance development”.
Under the plan, WA franchise the Force was to be given a higher salary cap to allow it to recruit more players from overseas.
As for the Rebels, the documents suggests the team could merge with the struggling Moana Pasifika team (which announced in April that it would fold), “to activate the expat Pasifika community in Melbourne and provide a clear point of difference in the market and ownership of the pathway in Victoria”.
The Rebels allege RA shared information about its funding capabilities with the financially challenged Waratahs and the Brumbies clubs and not the Rebels despite knowing of the Melbourne club’s solvency issues since May 2023.
The Rebels claim this was because RA assumed Rebels president Paul Docherty would continue to privately fund the club. Docherty declared himself bankrupt in 2025. The Rebels allege that after RA endorsed this secret plan, it still let the club’s directors think that the sports governing body supported the club.
This included Waugh gushing over the role that the Rebels played in supporting the sport in Victoria at an event in November 2023 – two months before the Rebels went into administration – and hugging Docherty in front of the crowd.
“Everything you are doing in this jurisdiction in this region is bringing that connection closer together …, I genuinely feel as if the game is as united as it’s ever been.”
Victorian Minister for Sport Steve Dimopoulos said on Sunday that the state government remained committed to the game.
“The way Rugby Australia treated the Rebels showed me they did not care for Victoria and the rugby tradition at that time. I have made my views known to them very clearly, and I remain committed to the people who love the sport in the state.”
An RA spokesman insisted it had continued to support the Rebels despite the team’s financial troubles – which it says were caused by the club’s directors.
“Despite receiving more funding from RA than any other Super Rugby club, MRRU was found by an independent administrator (whom the MRRU directors appointed) to have been trading insolvent since at least December 2018 with debts exceeding $23 million. Furthermore, each director is now personally liable for tax debts exceeding $10 million.”
The spokesman said the directors of the club were “once again leaning” on the Australian rugby community to pay for their personal liabilities.
“These are the same directors who deserted the club, its fans, players and staff in January 2024. RA then funded the running of the club for the duration of the 2024 Super Rugby season.”
Rebels director Georgia Widdup said ahead of the trial that the Rebels’ case would outline how RA was kept informed of the club’s financial position through regular updates – something RA denies.
“Whilst RA has made many allegations in the media about the lack of financial information, the test will be how it effectively rebuts the detailed evidence that will be produced by the Rebels,” she said.
“RA withdrawing support from the Rebels was a direct consequence of a series of inexplicable financial decisions RA had made over a number of years which, we believe, had put the sport in a catastrophic financial position.”
Last month, RA announced it had pulled off a financial turnaround in its 2025 results off the back of the hugely successful British and Irish Lions tour, allowing it to pay out $80 million in debt while also posting $70.6 million annual profit, compared to a $36.8 million loss a year earlier.
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Sarah Danckert is a senior reporter who specialises in investigations and corporate wrongdoing. She is a two-time Walkley Award winner, and has won six Quill Awards and two Kennedy Awards.Connect via X or email.