Former Manly Marlins president David Begg has replaced Rob Millner as head of the Sydney Rugby Union, the governing body for Sydney’s 12 Shute Shield clubs. After an eventful 2016, Rugby News caught up with Begg to hear about his plans for the years ahead. 

Can you explain what is happening with the Shute Shield broadcast deal?

The ABC made a decision in February 2015 to stop broadcasting the Shute Shield and obviously the clubs were very keen to maintain a free to air footprint, particularly as the Shute Shield is the only rugby competition broadcast on free to air in Australia. We managed to organise a free to air deal with an organisation called Club Rugby TV – the two shareholders are John Murray and Nick Fordham. That deal is between the Sydney Rugby Union and Club Rugby TV, they then have a contract with Channel 7, so the SRU doesn’t have a direct contract with Channel 7.

Part of that deal is that as well as providing the content, the SRU has to provide either cash or additional advertising revenue to Channel 7 to ensure that all parties meet their contractual obligations to allow matches go live to air. In previous years, that has been in large parts indemnified by the ARU or the NSWRU but as we understand, that’s not likely to take place this year.

Currently, we’re looking for corporate partners to assist us and gain brand visibility and in return, we’ll get cash or advertising revenue to meet our ongoing agreement with Channel 7, via our deal with Club Rugby TV.

Right now, we’re confident we’ll be live on 7TWO for round one on the 1^st of April.

Last year, some Shute Shield matches were watched by over 100,000 viewers in NSW. That must help the situation?

We had four or five Saturday’s last year with an audience in excess of 100,000 viewers and the interesting thing is that those games weren’t the high profile matches you’d expect. Our highest rating game last year was Warringah and Parramatta and it depends on a variety of factors like weather and travel but those figures are really positive. We understand Channel 7 were happy and keep in mind it was only CRTV’s second year of production. We saw a clear improvement from year one to year two and we expect to see that continue.

Some of those matches are out rating Super Rugby games. At what point will the SRU and the clubs benefit financially from the advertising revenue?

Hopefully we are getting closer to that point but at the moment, the most important thing for the clubs is that we are on free to air TV. It’s a discussion that will come soon if the ratings continue and we’ll have those discussions with a number of parties. We want investments back into the game, we don’t want to be constantly investing.

If the strong ratings continue, will clubs need to continue to invest money into the broadcast deal?

Ideally no. My long term goal is to turn the broadcast situation so that money can be reinvested back into the grassroots game. I’d love to get on a main channel. There’s nothing wrong with 7TWO but some people, not many but some, can’t access it. Ultimately, we’d like to get both Sydney and Brisbane club rugby on free to air TV right around Australia.

Last year the ARU released it’s controversial strategic plan. From an SRU perspective, what were your thoughts? 

I think the ARU will acknowledge that there was definitely a lack of recognition of the role we play and as you know, the ARU are currently reviewing that document. We are playing an active role in that review. From my own experience, having been a club president of a reasonably strong Shute Shield club, we’ve helped significantly develop a number of players who are now starting for the Wallabies. So there is a direct while line correlation there. The Shute Shield, along with the Brisbane and I guess Canberra competitions, are where Wallabies are created. If not created, then they are certainly nurtured and it’s where they improve their skills and become great rugby players.

In terms of participation, the Shute Shield is much bigger than 12 teams. All clubs have a number of grade and colts sides, some have women’s teams and they have feeder clubs as well. It’s a community and that’s the most important thing. You’ve got players, fans, coaches, volunteers, referees and although every club is different we all share a love for rugby. Sydney Uni and Eastwood are two very different clubs but they have both had lots of success. Southern Districts has a very different look and feel to Randwick but both have been successful so while all clubs are different in their own ways, the community in rugby is at their core.

What are the SRU doing to ensure rugby is strong in western Sydney? 

I’m really confident that Parramatta have outstanding new leadership, a great president, good coach, great development and I think they are now starting to really tap into all of their resources in regards to public and private schooling out there so I think Parramatta will be a big improver in 2017.

Penrith also have new leadership with a new president and coach and the SRU are monitoring things on a monthly basis and tracking playing numbers, growth, development etc. From a commercial perspective, the business space in Penrith is massive so maybe we need to be doing more to get local businesses involved in what will hopefully evolve into a really good brand.

I’m not sure if just giving money to the clubs is the answer, although I know both of them could use some additional cash. There have been reports written about rugby in Western Sydney for more than 30 years, they are gathering dust everywhere. I don’t come from Western Sydney. I’m passionately interested in the direction that those clubs are going, but I’m not going to patronise them by saying I have a quick fix to the problem, even though I think the SRU needs to be a part of the solution.

The 2017 Shute Shield grand final is expected to be played on the same weekend as the opening round of the NRC. Why did you make this decision?

There are a couple of things to bear in mind in regards to the draw and unfortunately they haven’t been mentioned. People presume that there has been no dialogue between the SRU, NSWRU and the ARU but there has been plenty of dialogue and productive dialogue at that.

Last year, if your club missed out on the finals, you finished playing rugby on the 16^th of July. We saw that as absurd. We’ve been playing our competition for 135 years, it’s a winter competition and a lot of the clubs rely on gate takings as a major component of their budget, particularly now that they don’t receive any funding. That conversation is over, we understand that all the clubs need to stand on their own two feet now, but if you aren’t playing rugby in the last half of winter, when everyone is rugby focussed, you’re taking $50k-$100k from the clubs annual revenue. In consultation with a number of stakeholders we decided to recalibrate the draw to a more traditional rugby window. We start in the first week in April because five of the 12 clubs don’t get access to their grounds until then. That had the capacity to really distort the draw. We’ve moved the grand final back one week and one of the reasons why we did that was because we didn’t want to clash with the Bledisloe Test in Sydney on the 18^th of August. We think the NRC draw can work perfectly well moving forward without their being a clash and we’ve suggested a way to the ARU for that to occur.

You read online that the SRU and the Shute Shield are trying to destroy the NRC. I was president at Manly when we contributed $60,000 to the competition, the last thing I want to do is destroy the NRC but I need to look after my 12 constituent members and they are the 12 Shute Shield clubs. They want to play in a traditional rugby window to maximise what is the major community based rugby competition in Australia.

How much smaller are the crowds in the early parts of the season?

There’s a massive difference. Again, I’ll use my experiences from Manly. Last year we played three big games at home in April and our annual revenue was down 25-30% as a result. We’re still playing games in April, but if we played any earlier we’re competing against surf clubs and cricket.

We also thought it was really important to include a bye weekend for three reasons. One is player welfare because it’s nearly impossible to play 18 Saturday’s in a row when you are playing at a high level. We didn’t want clubs having to play make-up matches mid week and the third reason, regardless of what you might read, is we are trying to support the ARU and they are playing a Saturday afternoon Test in Sydney and we want all our players and supporters to attend.

Do you think funding for grassroots rugby will increase in the years to come?

Yes I do but probably not in the same way as we received funding in the past. For whatever reason, the ARU have decided not to go down that path and as I’ve said before, it’s not my job to perpetuate that spat. That was a decision they were entitled to make and they made it, so that’s fine. The balance sheet of some clubs is okay, the balance sheet of other clubs is creating quite a challenge. My job is to assist with sponsorship and to work with every club to ensure they are doing everything they can to get the great game of rugby back on the front foot.

I think part of my job is also to assist in the equalisation of the competition. It shouldn’t be a two or three horse race each year. The reason last year’s finals series was so successful was because you had new entrants playing at different grounds and the excitement was palpable. We want to repeat that every year.

Should the Shute Shield revert to an amateur competition?

I think everyone would love that in a perfect work but now we are competing in a worldwide rugby market. Outside of Australia, other countries are doing extremely well in rugby. There is a lot of money in rugby, just not in Australia. If we were to tell clubs that they couldn’t pay players a couple hundred dollars a win, that will encourage players even more to go and play lower tier rugby in France or Japan or wherever.

You are often asking first grade players for more than 30 hours of their time per week during rugby season, so if they are getting a little bit of cash, it’s really just a reimbursement, it’s certainly not a salary.

Some of the Shute Shield clubs are doing okay financially, but what about junior rugby clubs. Do they deserve more help? 

I would love there to be a more holistic approach to the funding of Australian rugby. The ARU’s strategic plan touches on it, but unfortunately it doesn’t touch on the money side of things as much as it should

We’ve got a lot of great people involved in junior rugby in Sydney but I’d like our junior clubs to be stronger. I’d like to see more of our elite players come from non private schools. I’d like our public school footprint to be much stronger. Back in the days of Brett Papworth, schools like Epping Boys, North Sydney boys, they were really strong rugby schools. Now the game is barely played there and I’d love to reverse that cycle.

Although we are the Sydney Rugby Union, we’d also like to help the game in the country. We are taking one Shute Shield match to the bush this year and in the years to come I think we could be taking at least three games a year out there. In the long run, I’d like all Shute Shield clubs to link with a country rugby club and share resources, not just players.

How can the SRU capitalise on the growth of Sevens rugby in both the men’s and women’s game?

That’s a really good question. The growth of women’s rugby is obviously something that a lot of people are passionate about and I include myself in that. The challenge in the Sevens/Shute Shield relationship is that Sevens is tournament based and the Shute Shield is a competition. People have asked why we don’t play a sevens match at each Shute Shield game but it wouldn’t work because the majority of sevens players come from XVs. In the long run, I’d like every club to have a women’s XVs team and a men’s and women’s sevens team that could play in various tournaments over summer. One of the other reasons we pushed the draw forward was because it was killing sevens competitions. A lot of clubs usually send teams to the Kiama Sevens but they couldn’t when the competition started earlier.

We’re definitely looking at a Shute Shield Sevens. We didn’t have things in place to get it started this year but it is certainly on our radar. The one challenge we have in that period is availability to grounds but we do have a few options. You don’t ignore the fact that 45,000 people turn up to watch the Sydney Sevens because a lot of them are Shute Shield fans.

Where will the finals and grand finals be played this year?

At the moment, the only money the SRU makes is from the gates throughout the finals series. We are trying to change that, but at the moment we only create revenue on those three weekends. This year we’ve made the clubs aware that we’ll be looking at a more commercial strategy for the finals. On the opening week of the finals (1v6, 2v5, 3v4), the higher positioned team will most likely host the match however we’ll expect each of the potential host clubs to send us a business plan outlining how they will maximise the appeal of the match and attract the biggest crowd possible. On the second weekend, the SRU will decide where those matches are played to ensure we attract a big crowd to a high quality event. We’ll adopt the same approach for the grand final.

The 2017 Shute Shield season begins on April 1.