Rugby Australia Chairman Daniel Herbert and CEO Phil Waugh believe they need to set ambitious goals if they are to take the sport to the next level.
It comes as the organisation released its Australian Rugby strategy for 2025-2029 ahead of a crucial period for the sport.
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Beating the British and Irish Lions next year, finishing top four of the 2027 and 2029 Rugby World Cups and winning the Bledisloe Cup every second year are among the goals set out in the document.
Along with this includes multiple Super Rugby Pacific titles and a 30 per cent growth in participation on the quest to become the world’s number one Rugby playing nation.
“I think you have to give public and all of our stakeholders, our fans, some very lofty ambitions otherwise what are we aiming for? We’re aiming for excellence, high performance in particular is about excellence and winning,” Herbert said to reporters.
“We want to get back to winning ways and we know that we’ve done a lot of initial work to create a platform to succeed and provided the game remains united, I think we can deliver on that.
“I think we’re a long way from where we came if you look at the last 12 months. I think we’ve come a hell of a long way but I still think we’ve got a hell of a long way to go. It will take a number of years before I think we get to that number one position but I do think we’ve got the players and I do think we’ve got the people involved across the game broadly, across the member unions and super rugby clubs to enable us to get there.
“It does require us to do things a little bit differently to what we’ve done in the past and we’ve started to set out on that journey but we’re not there yet.”
Herbert has worked on either side of the fence when it comes to strategy documents in Australian Rugby, having served various roles in Queensland Rugby Union.
He believes the greater alignment and collaboration between all stakeholders from the grassroots up will ensure they can achieve what they have set out to do.
“I think we’ve done a hell of a lot of work structurally,” Herbert added.
“If I was critical on the other side working at a member union, it was that on occasions Rugby Australia or ARU at the time would give you a strategy but you had no input into that strategy. That’s why we wanted to make sure this time it was different.
“…We’ve had three stakeholder summits across those last 10 months. We’ve had countless, dozens and dozens of meetings Phil and his team together with the Super Rugby Clubs and the member unions, that’s different. That hasn’t really happened in my time anyway.
“We’re all going to own this strategy and it’s their strategy as much as it is ours. It’s a strategy for Rugby across Australia.”
CEO Waugh pointed to the success of Ireland and South Africa as examples that sudden turnarounds can be achieved in their quest to become the top Rugby playing nation in the world.
“It’s an aspirational goal…We know that’s a short runway to get to number one and if you look at where we are right now across all our programs, we’ve made good progress.
“We’ve got a long way to go to be number one and it’s not beyond reality to envisage being number one throughout this five-year cycle.
“We’ve got a long way to go. There’s no doubt. If you look at where Ireland was a decade ago, where South Africa was a decade ago and where they are now and the journey that they’ve been on to get to our argument that the best one or two stands in the world it’s achievable.
“We just need to ensure that we deliver and executive the strategy.”
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