The Ticking Timebomb: The end of current FRU Board within "touchline"

The end of the current board of the Fiji Rugby Union may soon be in sight, after Fiji Leaks was able to confirm that the value assigned to the 10-team Vodafone Cup is only $350,000 for this season – as compared to $420,000 when it was the Digicel Cup last year.

It shows how little real cash is being generated by Frank’s favourite mobile company which had promised a $40m sponsorship deal but is actually offering only 40 percent of that – just under $17m in cash and player bonuses. The other $23m is corporate padding, including Vodafone corporate promotional spend of $2.5m per year, and similar padding from other regime-friendly companies like CJ Patel, Fijian Holdings, who have joined in this ill-advised consortium.

The $70,000 decrease in cash paid out to the ten major provincial unions has lit a touch paper, after the provincial unions were bamboozled by the FRU at this month’s special general meeting with talk of a 10-storey redevelopment of Rugby House and net rental incomes of $400,000 a month.

Such big talk has fuelled expectations and major unions were all united around their demands for a substantial rise with Bainimarama brother-in-law Francis ‘Killer’ Kean, who chairs the Suva Rugby Union, saying he was expecting nothing less than a ten-fold increase - $280,000 per union.

The financial terms of the 2014 Vodafone Cup have still not been relayed to the provincial unions.

Hanging over the heads of the FRU board is the prospect of the annual general meeting in April when this board – chaired by Frank’s nominee and PS Finance – have to explain how a) they blew £1m in grant money from the IRB, b) accepted a deal with Vodafone that provided for less cash for the major provincial competition than Digicel provided, c) how the FRU managed to get itself in such a legal mess with a relatively straightforward sponsorship renewal.

It is believed that a Suva – Nadroga axis is getting ready to ‘coup’ the current board.

And still not noticed or debated in the Fiji media is how the new Vodafone deal has slashed the bonuses to the 7s players – on whose back the frenzied bidding war between Digicel and Vodafone has been carried. Under the Digicel agreement, more than $66,000 was split between the winning squad. Now that has been cut to $25,000.

Those who were at Nadi Airport and saw the 7s team return from the Wellington 7s into the grinning bearhugs of Vodafone CEO Aslam Khan could not have failed to notice that they looked less than impressed at a share of $10,000 – almost half what they would have got under Digicel last year, when beaten semifinalists got $19,000.

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