Sitting in Daceyville, looking at the big blue skies and a watery winter sun, a little down the way from the achingly beautiful Sydney Cricket Ground and the newly rebuilt Allianz Stadium next to it in Moore Park, you cannot imagine anything ever being wrong with this country or its sport.
We are at the New South Wales Waratahs’ training base the day before they face the British & Irish Lions — the shimmering Pacific Ocean at Coogee Beach is a way to the east and the drop-dead gorgeous harbours are to the north. Here, though, it is rather more low-key.
Despite the Wallabies tight-head Taniela Tupou limbering up in plain sight, and the Waratahs going through their kick-off receipts and final tactical plans, there is no throng — just a tour group pottering around, being shown the new training facility. Let’s not kid ourselves — rugby union is not big-time or big business here.
The wing will be on Waratahs duty when the Lions roll into Sydney’s Allianz Stadium on Saturday
PHIL WALTER/GETTY
Having been released from the Wallabies squad, Andrew Kellaway will be in the Waratahs team to face the Lions on Saturday. The former Northampton Saints wing cannot wait for the chance of a lifetime, but what becomes clearer as we speak is how much Australian rugby union really needs the next few weeks to go well.
As fascinated outside observers, we have seen the stories of misfortune and mismanagement by Rugby Australia and how they have bombed as a national team in the past 20 years. But, on the ground, what is the state of Australian rugby?
“Well, it’s certainly a rollercoaster,” Kellaway says, before taking a long pause and an intake of breath. “What’s my take on it? Oh, geez, I probably should wait until I retire to do this. You’ve got to be careful how you answer these questions in Australia.”
Now 29, Kellaway has seen plenty. He was cut by the NSW programme, which led to his move to Saints, had been at the Melbourne Rebels when they went bust, won 39 caps for the Wallabies — including at the 2023 World Cup, when they exited at the pool stage — earned an economics degree, and was about to start a master’s degree at the University of Oxford before the Rebels recruited him.
Kellaway‘s late try helped Australia pull off a shock 42-37 victory at Twickenham last autumn
ACTION IMAGES/REUTERS
“I’m in no way qualified to make any comments about the financials but I think the game’s been poorly managed for a long time, well before my time,” Kellaway says. “The things that we have suffered through the last five to seven years are not a consequence of the people in those five to seven years. The seed was planted well before that.
“Even in England where, as far as we’re concerned, the game is rusted on, there are teams going bust. It’s not unique to Australia. But what I see now is a desperation to set things up so that it can’t happen again. I don’t think anyone’s proud of where the game’s been or how the game’s handled things.”
The issues here are obvious. Two dominant winter sports sit above rugby union — rugby league and Aussie rules. State of Origin, the epic three-match league series between New South Wales and Queensland, concludes in Sydney on Wednesday, the night the Lions face the ACT Brumbies in Canberra. Guess what Australia will be watching.
Rugby union used to be Australia’s “winter code”, out of cricket’s shadow, when the Wallabies were good in the 1990s and 2000s — winning the World Cup in 1991 and 1999. But pathways have been trashed, money badly invested, coaching quality has dwindled, and the teams keep losing. There is nothing worse than being a losing Australian.
“Without success, that’s been a really hard thing to follow for a lot of people,” Kellaway says.
The Rebels, one of five Australian Super Rugby franchises, went bust in 2024 with about £12million owed in debt.
Kellaway and the Australia prop Angus Bell alongside the Rugby Australia chief executive, Phil Waugh
MATT KING/GETTY/RUGBY AUSTRALIA
“That was scary,” Kellaway says. “The Rebels were always running on the smell of an oily rag — well, that was the perception at least. I remember coming in one day, and it was like a movie with people carrying boxes out, crying. We had to go, ‘Guys, turn the music off. If you’re not sad, just pretend to be sad because people are losing their jobs.’ ”
That taught Kellaway the second big lesson of his career. “The first is how fickle the business is. You’re loved until you’re not and then you’re gone,” he says. He learnt that when he did not earn a contract for the Waratahs as an academy kid from Coogee.
“The second was how that sort of stuff affects people. I thought, ‘Shit, people are going to suffer here.’ And sure as shit they did. There are a couple of guys who aren’t playing, they’re retired, who are easily good enough to still be playing.”
So now Kellaway speaks from the heart as a salesman for rugby in Australia. This is his pitch for his countrymen who are not yet interested in the Lions series.
The NRL attracts a much broader audience than rugby union down under
CAMERON SPENCER/GETTY
“Look, the AFL [Aussie rules] is a behemoth,” he says. “They are the gold standard on how to run your business. The NRL [rugby league] is not far behind. We just will not be able to compete with 16 NRL teams, all domestic, so there is a ‘local’ winner every year. The same with the AFL.
“But what we can offer is this unique, global behemoth of a game with concepts like the British & Irish Lions and World Cups. The Lions is a special event.
“The NRL are already trying to jump on the back of the hype and get their little piece. The challenge for us is how do you sell that to people, particularly kids playing the game, when you almost have to actively bypass the other part of the product, which would be Super Rugby? The place that rugby [union] has in our landscape is definitely under the Wallabies umbrella.
“The important thing for us as a game to remember is we are what we are. We will never be rugby league. Our rules are not going to change every year to keep the broadcasters happy. It’s important to celebrate what we are.
“Take the scrum and the lineout. They are as unique as it can get in any game. This super-structured, highly skill-based thing that can’t be done by everyone, but for some reason in Australia, all we do is bag the shit out of the scrum and lineout because it slows the game down, rather than celebrating that the blokes in the scrum are like two rhinos pushing against each other. Compare to what people can understand.
Aukuso-Suaalii, who has recovered from a fractured jaw, has superstar potential
DAVID ROGERS/GETTY
“There’s a lot of talk here about what rugby doesn’t have, but what we do have is this amazing, unique, longstanding tradition of a game that has a massive global audience.
“I’m sure that’s lost on Australians, which is fine, but at some point it will bounce back.”
He would sell the game around three players: Joseph Aukuso-Suaalii, the “freak” cross-code convert (“the kid’s special”), the prop Allan Alaalatoa (“Al is no-nonsense”), and the scrum half Jake “The Jester” Gordon (“he’s got heaps of jokes — none of which are appropriate”). But none of this is Kellaway’s job. He has a game to play.
Saturday will bring a reunion with Alex Mitchell, with whom he spent hours watching Game of Thrones and playing cards at Northampton. He says those Saints academy boys — from Mitchell to Tommy Freeman, now supplemented by Fin Smith and Henry Pollock — have something he has rarely seen in rugby: genuine friendship.
“It is certainly a special club,” he says of Northampton, before laughing at the time James Haskell let off a military-grade smoke bomb in the gym and then had to pay an invoice from the club when he forced the cancellation of a corporate event in the room next door at Franklin’s Gardens. “You can write that because it is true, although I am sure Hask will find a way to correct it!” he says, chuckling.
Dan Biggar, working for Sky on this tour, popped in before we started chatting to catch up. “The richest man in Swansea, he would make the young blokes buy him coffee at Saints!” Kellaway says.
All these touchstones to his past have reminded Kellaway of rugby’s elixir, its importance, why it should be protected.
“There are a lot of great things in place to build the game sustainably,” Kellaway says. “I hope it will set the game up to survive long past all of us.”
Time, then, for Kellaway and his Wallabies to put on a show during this Lions tour, to reconnect with a lost public and prove all that glisters in Australia can be gold.
NSW Waratahs v British & Irish Lions
Saturday, 11am
Allianz Stadium, Sydney
TV Sky Sports Main Event