Waratahs chief executive Paul Doorn says he has no regrets about the decision to tighten the purse strings during COVID-19, despite a disastrous 0-5 start to the Super Rugby season that cost coach Rob Penney his job this week.
A once proud rugby state has become a laughing stock and the club's plight was summed up by Will Harrison's bloodied nose in Saturday's 46-14 thrashing at the hands of Brad Thorn's rampant Reds.
A talented young five-eighth, Harrison and his mates are lambs to the slaughter without the necessary experience or firepower to compete with the likes of the Reds and Brumbies.
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But after sacking Penney, Doorn said NSW Rugby's decision to spend far less on players than their Australian rivals was a responsible one given the financial uncertainty created by the pandemic.
Doorn sat down for a wide ranging interview with Stan Sport's Nick McArdle, who questioned the chief executive about spending $1 million under the player salary cap.
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"You can only spend the money you've got," Doorn said.
"The million dollars is, by the way the season finished, a gross over-exaggeration, unfortunately. At the beginning of the year when we started doing our planning, we set a budget which was approximately a million bucks under where we thought we were going to get because at that time, April last year, we were in a position where we weren't going to be playing any games, we weren't having a Shute Shield, our sponsors were thinking 'we've paid you all this money and yet there's no product.'
"So as the year went on, Super Rugby started, Shute Shield started, community rugby started and our revenue started to then play out, we were able to reduce that a bit.
"So we were able to get two locks from New Zealand, we got Izzy Perese back from overseas, so we were able to release some of those funds as we built forward to this year. Would we do it again? 100 per cent.
"I'm not going to be the CEO that sends NSW Rugby into insolvency, that's for sure, so that's the tough medicine we had to swallow."
The Waratahs will host the defending champion Brumbies at the Sydney Cricket Ground on Friday night with Penney's assistants Jason Gilmore and Chris Whitaker stepping up to share the coaching duties for the remainder of the season.
Doorn hoped to have Penney's 'permanent' replacement locked in by September at the latest with Darren Coleman, John Manenti and Mick Byrne among the names to bandied about as options.
"The good news is it's probably put us in a better position now to think about what it means for next year," Doorn said.
"I know our fans and members would be very disappointed with the results this year and we need to own and accept that level of feedback and criticism. But what it has done is allowed us to go 'OK, let's move forward with much better planning and resources for next year.'
Doorn accepted McArdle's point that the horse had bolted when it came to recruitment for the 2021 season.
"I have to accept responsibility, that was the downside of having to make those decisions early on and once we got further on, a lot of those players that perhaps we might have chosen first, had already gone somewhere else."
He hoped the picture would look much rosier next year and the Waratahs were working with the national talent scouts to stiffen the squad.
"We've identified the positions that we think we need and Rugby Australia are in a similar position, looking to bring back some players for the 2023 World Cup," Doorn said.
"We're working quite closely together to see who we target for next year. We probably need that little bit of experience."
Former Waratahs star Morgan Turinui also weighed in on the Stan Sport special, saying that Penney had "almost lost the war before he went on the battlefield."
"He probably should have been beating down the door saying 'look, I need this money, it's going to cost you.'
"The reporting is they spent a million dollars less than what is in their cap and then everybody else has gone and spent theirs. Now I think there is some money to go and find some players – he probably should have been banging down the door saying 'no I can't do it.' Because it's probably going to cost them more than a million dollars in damage to brand, commercial, crowds, everything that's happened through this year.
"So the numbers probably haven't added up anyway."
Turinui believed co-panelist Michael Cheika – the 2014 coach of the champion Waratahs – would not have accepted a cut-price squad.
"I can imagine if I said to Cheik 'mate, everyone else is spending five point whatever, you're going to spend four point whatever, I'd be scared of what he'd come and do banging down my door because he knows he wants to fight. Maybe Rob needed to fight in the backrooms more than on the field."
Turinui said that former Waratahs chief executive Andrew Hore, coach Daryl Gibson and general manger of rugby Tim Rapp needed to shoulder plenty of blame for the club's dire predicament.
"Hore, Gibson, Rapp, what they did wasn't good enough from 2019 onwards. They had all these top level Wallabies, ageing, some of them were obviously going to go overseas post-World Cup. They had lots of young guys and nothing in the middle.
"When the top tier went they didn't have those middle guys to come through and that's really how we've ended up where we are. And COVID put a stark light all over it and made it even worse. But they've set themselves up to be in this situation."
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