The Power Guy
Team Captain
Just an artice I found about the man at the top, it's an interesting read.
Certain he had secured the votes to ensure Australia would be sole host of next year's rugby World Cup, Australian Rugby Union chief executive John O'Neill rang Alan Jones's 2GB program from his Dublin hotel on Thursday, requesting an on-air interview the next day.
A few hours later, a meeting of the 21-member International Rugby Board validated O'Neill's confidence when it voted overwhelmingly in favour of a Rugby World Cup Limited recommendation that Australia should stage all the games in the five-week tournament.
New Zealand Rugby Union chief executive David Rutherford conceded his country received "only a handful of votes" for its application to be co-host. He then flew to Amsterdam ahead of a hostile reception in Auckland.
Even before the final vote, Eddie Tonks, a former chairman of both the IRB and NZRU, branded the Kiwi campaign "tardy and nieve [sic]" in a letter to former ARU chairman Ross Turnbull, who was recruited by Tonks to assist New Zealand's 11th-hour co-host bid.
A series of letters between Tonks and Turnbull reveal the NZRU placed its trust in a handshake agreement with IRB chairman Vernon Pugh not to make public comment.
The Kiwis believed Pugh, a Welsh barrister, would find a way. But, in the final analysis, the man of words was no match for the man of numbers.
O'Neill, a former banker, had done his sums and had warned Turnbull in a series of three handwritten letters that "an independent audit will reveal their [New Zealand's] shortcomings".
Turnbull said yesterday: "O'Neill won because he wouldn't talk to the Kiwis. That's what Pugh and New Zealand wanted. O'Neill didn't turn up in Rome last month when they hoped he'd be there for an IRB tours meeting. He wouldn't see the Kiwis when they offered to fly to Sydney.
"He refused to meet them in Dublin. Good luck to him. He's had a great victory."
O'Neill ensured he was never in the wrong place at the wrong time, perhaps because he knows the value of being in the right place at the right time.
When he worked at the State Bank as its in-house lawyer, he found himself sitting at his desk at 5 o'clock one evening, filling in the hour before he jumped on a bus and went down to Sydney University, where he coached the Students' third-grade rugby team.
Nick Whitlam was boss of the bank and, concerned about the speed with which his employees clocked off, went on a tour of the building shortly after official closing time.
O'Neill was the only worker Whitlam found in the building.
"I had a meteoric rise after that," O'Neill told the Herald last year. "I never did tell Nick that I was sitting at my desk that night because it was more convenient than going home first."
His rise was so meteoric that when Whitlam resigned, O'Neill replaced him. He will now preside over a tournament that he was always confident Australia would host on its own.
In a letter to Turnbull on March 30, he wrote: "World rugby will be enriched by tens of millions of dollars. A sensational rugby and financial outcome."
Other victories may follow. O'Neill took the moral high ground when any suggestion was made New Zealand could sacrifice a Super12 franchise to Australia in order to regain co-hosting rights. He labelled any such deal "grubby".
The Kiwis always considered it a possibility, even if they believed the deal could be done after a co-hosting agreement was reached.
Tonks, who was co-opted to help NZRU after their negotiators were found inadequate, wrote somewhat cryptically to Turnbull on Thursday: "Super 12 is an add-on but as I understand it, [Rupert] Murdoch is involved here and O'Neill was supposed to have made approaches to Fox [TV network] before any further discussion. This was NOT done until now."
If O'Neill has already made a four-teams-per-country agreement with News Ltd, it is a double defeat for New Zealand.
Whatever O'Neill's approaches to Fox, he has already proved he is as cunning as one.
And that's how Autralia got the World Cup
Certain he had secured the votes to ensure Australia would be sole host of next year's rugby World Cup, Australian Rugby Union chief executive John O'Neill rang Alan Jones's 2GB program from his Dublin hotel on Thursday, requesting an on-air interview the next day.
A few hours later, a meeting of the 21-member International Rugby Board validated O'Neill's confidence when it voted overwhelmingly in favour of a Rugby World Cup Limited recommendation that Australia should stage all the games in the five-week tournament.
New Zealand Rugby Union chief executive David Rutherford conceded his country received "only a handful of votes" for its application to be co-host. He then flew to Amsterdam ahead of a hostile reception in Auckland.
Even before the final vote, Eddie Tonks, a former chairman of both the IRB and NZRU, branded the Kiwi campaign "tardy and nieve [sic]" in a letter to former ARU chairman Ross Turnbull, who was recruited by Tonks to assist New Zealand's 11th-hour co-host bid.
A series of letters between Tonks and Turnbull reveal the NZRU placed its trust in a handshake agreement with IRB chairman Vernon Pugh not to make public comment.
The Kiwis believed Pugh, a Welsh barrister, would find a way. But, in the final analysis, the man of words was no match for the man of numbers.
O'Neill, a former banker, had done his sums and had warned Turnbull in a series of three handwritten letters that "an independent audit will reveal their [New Zealand's] shortcomings".
Turnbull said yesterday: "O'Neill won because he wouldn't talk to the Kiwis. That's what Pugh and New Zealand wanted. O'Neill didn't turn up in Rome last month when they hoped he'd be there for an IRB tours meeting. He wouldn't see the Kiwis when they offered to fly to Sydney.
"He refused to meet them in Dublin. Good luck to him. He's had a great victory."
O'Neill ensured he was never in the wrong place at the wrong time, perhaps because he knows the value of being in the right place at the right time.
When he worked at the State Bank as its in-house lawyer, he found himself sitting at his desk at 5 o'clock one evening, filling in the hour before he jumped on a bus and went down to Sydney University, where he coached the Students' third-grade rugby team.
Nick Whitlam was boss of the bank and, concerned about the speed with which his employees clocked off, went on a tour of the building shortly after official closing time.
O'Neill was the only worker Whitlam found in the building.
"I had a meteoric rise after that," O'Neill told the Herald last year. "I never did tell Nick that I was sitting at my desk that night because it was more convenient than going home first."
His rise was so meteoric that when Whitlam resigned, O'Neill replaced him. He will now preside over a tournament that he was always confident Australia would host on its own.
In a letter to Turnbull on March 30, he wrote: "World rugby will be enriched by tens of millions of dollars. A sensational rugby and financial outcome."
Other victories may follow. O'Neill took the moral high ground when any suggestion was made New Zealand could sacrifice a Super12 franchise to Australia in order to regain co-hosting rights. He labelled any such deal "grubby".
The Kiwis always considered it a possibility, even if they believed the deal could be done after a co-hosting agreement was reached.
Tonks, who was co-opted to help NZRU after their negotiators were found inadequate, wrote somewhat cryptically to Turnbull on Thursday: "Super 12 is an add-on but as I understand it, [Rupert] Murdoch is involved here and O'Neill was supposed to have made approaches to Fox [TV network] before any further discussion. This was NOT done until now."
If O'Neill has already made a four-teams-per-country agreement with News Ltd, it is a double defeat for New Zealand.
Whatever O'Neill's approaches to Fox, he has already proved he is as cunning as one.
And that's how Autralia got the World Cup
. The IRB alternative for hosting the WC.