Australian Rugby’s Flexible Future
A flexible contract will keep Bernard Foley in Australian rugby for the next three years, but the cost of the exercise for the ARU is still very much unknown.
The ground-breaking deal will allow the classy pivot to play for the Wallabies and the Waratahs while also being able to chase an easy payday in the cashed up Japanese domestic competition – albeit it after the 2015 rugby World Cup and following the 2016 Rugby Championship
Nonetheless, ARU and Waratahs powerbrokers were all but forced into agreeing to the deal – the first of its kind in Australia – after Foley announced he had in fact signed on to play in Japan months ago.
"This probably hasn't been as comfortable a process as what we would have liked," Waratahs CEO Greg Harris said.
"But at the end of the day, the deal was done and we've got to work with what's there.
"There was some difficulty involved in trying to arrange the contract around the two stints because the two stints had been agreed to prior to really