This week, Australian<\/a> media reported that a high-profile Rugby League player, Zac Lomax, was close to signing with R360 for an estimated \u20ac1.7 million. Several other world-class league players are also rumoured to have been offered staggering sums to join the new organisation.<\/p>\n The tactics of R360 are straight out of the playbook written by the late Australian media magnate Kerry Packer. The majority of rugby supporters were not born when Packer, the owner of TV station Channel Nine, created World Series Cricket (WSC). WSC was such a runaway success that it completely rewired the status quo in the cricket<\/a> world of the 1970s.<\/p>\n In the year before the launch of WSC, Packer\u2019s representatives had contracted the best players in the world by offering them massive amounts of money. The strategy was based on a simple principle that Packer once voiced to a room full of shareholders who were reluctant to sell their company. He famously told them: \u201cThere is a little bit of the whore in all of us. Gentlemen, what is your price?\u201d He walked out of the room owning the company. <\/p>\n Packer proved that in sporting revolutions, whoever has the most money wins. If R360 has the financial clout that it claims to have, then unions around the world have much to be concerned about.<\/p>\n The current state of rugby has many similarities to the dysfunctional environment that opened the door to the WSC in the late 1970s and the rugby wars of 1995. Compared to golf<\/a>, soccer<\/a>, NFL<\/a>, NBA, tennis<\/a> and Formula One<\/a>, rugby\u2019s leading players are being paid a fraction of the money they generate.<\/p>\n Added to this is the chaotic scheduling of the global rugby calendar, with player welfare being low on the list of priorities. The refusal of the French Top 14 and English Premiership clubs to reduce the number of games in their domestic competitions and align with a universally agreed upon calendar for both hemispheres remains a problem World Rugby appears incapable of solving.<\/p>\n For decades, players and coaches have been calling for reform that currently forces referees to award upwards of 25 penalties per match. We still see the outcome of games being determined by questionable technical penalties. This is partly caused by the system that evaluates our referees\u2019 performances. Referees are marked down if they fail to penalise minor technical infringements. They are not given any credit for the quality of the match they produce. So in turn, our officials take no responsibility for how their adjudication influences the flow and quality of the game they referee. <\/p>\n All of these problems \u2013 and many more \u2013 combine to produce matches with ball-in-play times as low as 28 minutes. We have a situation that continues to frustrate and alienate many supporters of the game.<\/p>\n What makes this scenario even more exasperating is that the world\u2019s leading teams are producing spectacular, engrossing rugby. We just need more of it. Twenty-eight minutes of play from an 80-minute match is an intolerable absurdity.<\/p>\n This has created an environment fertile for insurrection. Even some leaders within our game are expressing similar sentiments. <\/p>\n Phil Waugh, Rugby Australia\u2019s chief executive, was quoted this week as saying: \u201cI think there\u2019s an appreciation that the game needs some disruption. I think it\u2019s been a big frustration for spectators, certainly in our market, around the way the game is officiated and some of the restrictions around laws and how we make the game more entertaining. I think there\u2019s definitely been an appetite to disrupt and we\u2019re seeing that come through R360.\u201d<\/p>\n Several years ago I wrote that rugby was ripe for a rival competition and an internal revolution if there was a consortium with pockets deep enough to power a global competition. Those observations were laughed at. Today, not many inside rugby\u2019s leading unions are laughing.<\/p>\n The moral aspects of money sourced from Saudi Arabia remains highly contentious. Not in doubt, though, is the sheer amount of money available.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/1739272379918-c03b2529-1643-4e02-ab77-51ef2d1ea4b6.jpeg\"\/)
Ireland\u2019s November squad: valuable rotation or more of the same? <\/p>\n![\"World](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/QFKEGRXIS5HHBFC47RXCBE4YGM.jpg\")
World Series Cricket founder Kerry Packer (left) with England player Tony Greig in 1979. Photograph: Allsport\/Getty Images <\/p>\n![\"Rugby](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/DTMDMISOH5ANGPGGJC34MUXEQQ.jpg\")
Rugby Australia CEO Phil Waugh has acknowledged that rugby probably needed an outside influence to shake it up. Photograph: Matt King\/Getty Images <\/p>\n