Hamish McLennan has resigned from the Rugby Australia board after being voted out as the organisation’s chairman.
The embattled Sydney business figure lost the support of fellow Rugby Australia directors on Sunday night just hours after declaring he would not resign in response to a letter of no confidence from six rebel state unions.
Former Wallabies centre Dan Herbert was voted in as interim chairman.
McLennan confirmed to this masthead he had been invited to stay on as a Rugby Australia director but he declined.
“I lost the chair vote,” McLennan said in a text message. “They asked me to stay on the board but I resigned immediately.”
The resignation came after an emergency Rugby Australia board meeting on Sunday night – the fourth meeting in two days – and after a year that has seen the crisis-ridden code hit rock bottom with a disastrous Rugby World Cup campaign, and the resignation of Wallabies coach Eddie Jones last month after 10 months in the role.
Only hours before his removal late on Sunday night, McLennan posed for pictures in his North Shore home and publicly declared readiness to fight for his future as chairman, following a “coup attempt” launched by six state unions on Friday night.
This masthead revealed the rebel group – which comprised the Queensland, ACT, West Australian, Tasmanian, South Australian and Northern Territory Rugby Unions – had moved to oust McLennan, and jointly sent letters of no confidence to the RA chairman and the RA board.
Rugby Australia chairman Hamish McLennan.Credit: Edwina Pickles
With enough votes to remove McLennan as an RA director at an extraordinary general meeting, the rebel state unions urged McLennan to resign but the advice was rejected. Even after a deadline of 5pm on Saturday was extended by 24 hours, the combative chairman declared on Sunday he was prepared to take the matter to a vote at an EGM.
“Bring on an EGM and let’s clear this up once and for all, otherwise the division and backstabbing will continue,” McLennan said.
However, McLennan would have had a fight on his hands to survive an EGM, with the rebel unions confident they had nine of the 16 votes in the Rugby Australia membership locked up.
The Rugby Australia board, whose members were split on support for McLennan during their weekend discussions, called a meeting late on Sunday and the chair position was put up for a new vote.
In a letter to the Rugby Australia board on Friday, the rebel state unions said they’d lost faith in McLennan’s leadership.
“We do not believe Mr McLennan has been acting in the best interests of our game,” the state unions’ letter to the RA board said.
“We no longer have any trust or faith in his leadership, or the direction in which he is taking rugby in Australia.
“Additionally, we believe Mr McLennan has been acting outside his role as a director, exerting an undue influence on the operations and executives of Rugby Australia. This is not the best practice governance that we expect from leaders in our game.
“This request is not about opposition to Rugby Australia’s centralisation proposals – we remain committed to supporting high-performance alignment. This is instead a deep concern about the performance of Mr McLennan as chair, and the damage done to the game by his performance. We have not made this decision lightly.”
McLennan responded by saying he believed the coup attempt was linked to Rugby Australia’s push for centralisation, and driven by the two main states who oppose RA taking commercial control of their business, Queensland Rugby and ACT Rugby.
All Super Rugby states have agreed in principle to a high-performance alignment, but only NSW Rugby has so far gone further and handed full control of its Super Rugby side, the Waratahs, to Rugby Australia. The Melbourne Rebels are expected to follow shortly.
McLennan received public support on Saturday from billionaires Andrew and Nicola Forrest, who own the Western Force, and Melbourne Rebels chairman Paul Docherty, and the boss of Wallabies’ major sponsor Cadbury also backed McLennan’s leadership in a media report.
Andrew Forrest has publicly backed Rugby Australia chairman Hamish McLennan.Credit: Rugby Australia
McLennan, a well-known Sydney business figure who is also chairman of the REA Group, deputy chair of Magellan Financial Group and a former chief executive of Network Ten, became chairman of Rugby Australia during a difficult time for sport in 2020.
With rugby under major financial strain due to the COVID-19 pandemic, McLennan cut $31 million in costs from the Rugby Australia business and said later the organisation had come very close to going under.
McLennan was later instrumental in helping Australia secure the hosting rights for the 2027 Rugby World Cup and the 2029 Women’s Rugby World Cup, after putting together a high-profile bid team and lobbying World Rugby for an exclusive bidding process in 2022. In the same year McLennan also negotiated an extra $8 million a year from the New Zealand Rugby Union to play in Super Rugby in 2023 and 2024, after threatening to ditch the Kiwis and play a domestic competition.
But while many welcomed McLennan’s willingness to stand up to New Zealand and rival codes in Australia, his occasionally provocative comments and impulsive leadership style proved polarising.
McLennan came under fire after signing NRL recruit Joseph Suaalii on a contract worth a reported $1.6 million a year; a giant sum many critics argued should have been spent on community rugby. It also provoked the NRL into consideration of changing its salary cap rules to help clubs raid rugby’s ranks.
McLennan’s also wore much of the blame for the failed recruitment of Jones as coach, which backfired badly this year. Though he rejected the suggestion it was a “captain’s pick”, McLennan did the deal for Jones to return to the Wallabies on a five-year contract, but after a disastrous Rugby World Cup where the coach selected an inexperienced side and did a job interview with Japan before the tournament, the coach departed less than a year into his tenure.
