Furious former Rugby Australia boss slams ‘boneheads’ after major sponsor pulls multimillion dollar deal following Wallabies’ year from hell
Hamish McLennan has continued his tirade against Rugby Australia, with the ousted chairman claiming the sport’s recent loss of a multimillion dollar sponsorship deal was due to his dismissal.
Harvey Norman, though, refuted claims that McLennan’s Sunday departure was the reason behind their decision to not extend their three-year contract with the Wallabies.
“Observe what the cretins have accomplished,” McLennan stated to the Sydney Morning Herald. “They are conceited and naive.”
Rugby Australia has had an incredibly difficult year, with McLennan’s hiring of Eddie Jones backfiring spectacularly after the coach led a disastrous World Cup campaign before quitting his home nation in response to interest from Japan.
In addition to being the naming-rights sponsor for the Super Rugby season, Harvey Norman has been a significant supporter of the Wallabies. The company has disclosed that it is looking for sponsorship opportunities in other sports.
According to firm chairman Gerry Harvey, “what we do is, we do whatever sport for a while; we don’t necessarily hang on to it forever.”
We go around and play a variety of sports, so we’re big fans of sports advertising and don’t always stick to one sport.
We tend to think, “Well, we gave that a good shot, let’s move on to the next one.” Every time, we come to an end.
Harvey responded, “No, no, no, no,” when asked if the McLennan decision was the reason for the direction change. It’s only the actual sport. We thus proceed to the next one after doing that for a while.
And as an example, we’ve never played basketball together before at some point in the past. We’ll give that up eventually and return to something else.
On Thursday, Rugby Australia announced that it is currently looking into new sponsorship agreements.
According to a spokesman, “Rugby Australia wishes to thank Harvey Norman for its enthusiastic support of Rugby over the last three years.”
“RA is actively seeking a replacement and is currently in the market.”
