The Melbourne Rebels were never in the Super Rugby firing line so it is a tribute to the Australian Rugby Union's capacity to bring a fight upon itself that within 24 hours of the board's vote to cut a Super Rugby team the governing body was facing the threat of legal action from club owner Andrew Cox.
Fairfax Media has been told a senior ARU official assured Cox a month ago that the youngest Australian team would be spared the guillotine in the protracted process to determine which licence the national union would revoke as part of Super Rugby's return to a 15-team format.Â
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Force or Rebels to be axed
The ARU has yet to announce either the Melbourne Rebels or Western Force will be cut from Super Rugby 2018. Vision: ABC News 24, Fox Sports
When the New Zealand businessman, who was holidaying in his homeland, awoke on Monday to headlines pitting his club against the Western Force in a Hunger Games-esque race to the bottom, and countless phone calls and text messages from worried players, coaches and staff, he was dismayed. By late Monday the possibility was real of a team never actually under the gun suing the ARU for suggesting it was.Â
Peak crazy? Almost. That is, until RugbyWAÂ served the ARU with a writ, notifying head office it intended to take out an injunction against ARU plans to shut down the Force, the team it actually owns under the terms of a 10-month-old alliance agreement.Â
![On the defensive: RugbyWA has started legal proceedings to stop the Australian Rugby Union from axing the Western Force.](/web/20170414013801im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/v/i/5/1/1/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gvi4va.png/1491826289967.jpg)
Less than 24 hours had passed since the ARU had moved emphatically to stem the bleeding from an over-extended professional footprint which, chief executive Bill Pulver said, had cost the governing body an extra $28 million in unbudgeted expenditure since 2013.
The day had started with Pulver and chairman Cameron Clyne promising to plough into grassroots rugby the un-disclosed savings from operating one less drain on the ARU purse. It ended with the ARU facing a legal fight over plans to shut down the Force and the threat of a claim for damages from the Rebels.Â
RugbyWA will argue that the alliance agreement it signed last year which, according to the ARU's 2016 annual report cost $4.8 million, contains a clause guaranteeing the Force's participation in Super Rugby for the term of the current broadcast deal, which expires at the end of 2020.Â
On Monday night the ARU had not received the writ, but it is understood RugbyWA stands a good chance of being awarded an interim injunction, which could delay the ARU's plans by at least three or four weeks before the two parties end up in court to have a judge decide the merits of RugbyWA's application.Â
"We have issued a writ just around our alliance agreement, we believe we can defend it and we believe they cannot simply axe us from the competition, without having proper process and being held accountable," a RugbyWA source told Fairfax Media.Â
In contrast to what ARU chairman Cameron Clyne said during Monday's hour-long media explainer in Sydney about the decision between the Force and Rebels being an open race, RugbyWA representatives described being presented with a fait accompli at a meeting with ARU chief operating officer Rob Clarke and chief financial officer Todd Day that ran to three-and-a-half hours in Perth on Monday.Â
Geoff Stooke, the Perth-based independent director on the ARU board who offered the only resistance to the four-team decision on Sunday, hinted at the problem on Monday morning, stopping short of calling into question the integrity of the process but saying he was "uncomfortable" with how it was playing out.Â
RugbyWA sources said Clarke and Day arrived in Perth armed with a detailed breakdown of why the Force - their alliance partner - should be axed ahead of the Rebels, much of it centring around the risk cutting the Melbourne club posed to a heads of agreement the ARU had entered into with the Victorian Government to host a suite of Bledisloe Cup Tests and a British and Irish Lions Test in 2025.
"What they wanted to present was that the ARU is not in a position to retain the Force, they must retain the Rebels, because the threat offered by the departure of the Rebels was overwhelming," the source said. Â
"They didn't come over to talk about the alliance agreement, they came over to talk about their evaluation of their own balance sheet and how much trouble they're in."Â