Reckon you’ve got a bit on your plate at the moment? Try slipping into just one of Peter Horne’s shoes.

As Rugby Australia’s recently appointed director of high performance, Horne’s job is to oversee the Wallabies, the Wallaroos, the men’s and women’s Olympic sevens teams, all the Super Rugby teams (men and women) and all the junior Australian rep teams as well. Oh, and then there’s the entirety of Australia’s pathway systems, competition structures, junior talent development, state networks and coaching programs.

It would be shorter to list the things in Australian rugby that Horne isn’t looking after.

But even that would be underselling it, because Horne isn’t being asked to just look after most of Australian rugby.

In the wake of the disastrous 2023 season that left the Wallabies in smoking ruins, head office at war with Super clubs over funding, one club on life support and spirit of the fans at perilous lows, the unwritten part of Horne’s job description is a bit broader: he has been tasked with fixing Australian rugby.

Pressure, much?

“The fix is not just about Pete Horne, here,” Horne corrects this masthead. “I am going to be a part of the fix is probably a better way to put it.”

So who is Pete Horne, a man with one of the most significant roles in the modern era of Australian rugby but who can still (for now) walk safely down a Sydney street without a shred of recognition?

World of experience

Ask around and it doesn’t take long to establish that Horne is almost uniquely qualified to not just tackle such a mega-job but actually pull it off.

Though much of it has been overseas, Horne has spent the last 25 years building a respected career as a sports executive specialising in high performance and rugby. He spent three years in Samoa, worked at Saracens in England, and his last role, which finished 16 days ago, was a 14-year stint with World Rugby, where he ended up as head of high performance. With budgets running into the tens of millions, the Australian was responsible for the growth and development of rugby in 28 countries.

Find a success story of a smaller nation at a recent Rugby World Cup – like Japan in 2015 and 2019, or Portugal and Fiji in 2023 – and Horne’s fingerprints are all over it through years of targeted investment into coaching, pathway systems, new competitions or the creation of professional franchises like the Fijian Drua.

“The IRB [now World Rugby] began it after the 2003 World Cup; there were some pretty tragic scores there, right? Namibia getting flogged in Adelaide, and so on,” Horne said.

“The theory went that by creating a more compelling spectacle and competitive spectacle, it creates wealth. More eyeballs watching the game, to potentially generating more income off broadcast, and more sponsorship across different markets. Then it all goes back into the game.

“When you reflect now, and think where we were then, there has been some very significant change.”

Horne travelled extensively but has been based on Sydney’s northern beaches for years. All the while, however, precious few in Australia knew the extent of his far-reaching influence in world rugby.

The Canberra rugby community know Horne a little better, though. With father Mike a captain in the Royal Australian Navy, the Horne family moved a lot, and at one stage young Pete enjoyed “a Tom Sawyer lifestyle” while living on Garden Island in the middle of Sydney Harbour.

Canberra was mostly home, though, and Horne played rugby for the Tuggeranong Vikings from the age of five. A stocky prop and hooker, he played colts with Joe Roff and Justin Harrison and then 47 first-grade games under future Waratahs coach Chris Hickey. Horne later had a season under Laurie Fisher at University, too.

“He wasn’t anything out of the box but what I liked about Pete, he was a f***ing fantastic competitor and he was nice and physical,” Fisher recalls.

“And in a young university team, he had a nice hard edge to him, which I think he probably needs in the position he now holds in Australian rugby.”

The Australian way

Having worked for so long with a global perspective, Horne was attracted to the idea of working with just one nation, and, when Rugby Australia advertised for a newly created head of high performance last year, he put his hat in the ring.

The clincher was being part of an “absolutely unique” calendar of arriving international events in Australia: the Lions tour in 2025, men’s and women’s Rugby World Cups in 2027 and 2029, and the 2032 Olympics.

“For a union to have such a runway of pinnacle events is just unheard of. Normally you get one,” he said.

“Having the opportunity to work with one country, and get it right in a campaign that can bring a huge amount of pride, we have an opportunity to reconnect with the Australian public and achieve success in all of them.”

It is not lost on Horne that he enters at a testing time for Australian rugby after the tumult of 2023.

But having flown in from London and straight to a summit of Australian rugby state leaders in Melbourne last week, Horne impressed a tough crowd with his vision.

“It is a massive job but he knows his stuff and comes across as considered and thoughtful,” one state boss said. “We have been reactive for far too long.”

Is the reconstruction job in Australia any different from how he’d go about things in Georgia or Spain or Chile?

“High performance in terms of its system is fairly similar, no matter what country you walk into,” Horne said.

“What’s different is the environment and the context, and the resources. Not everyone is created equally in rugby. People talk about centralisation etcetera, but the simple reality is it is all just about working as a collective.

“Having unity and purpose about something that is bigger than ourselves. We will co-create a plan that is centrally led and locally delivered. That’s the mantra. We just need to work together.”

Future of Super Rugby

Staring at a probable shutdown, Rebels players and coaches, and the rugby community in Victoria will wonder where they fit into the plan. With court action in the works, Horne declined to speculate on the Rebels’ future or how many teams he believes Australia should field in Super Rugby in the future.

“There is a fair bit of water to go under that bridge, but it has to happen in a quick amount of time,” he said “But whatever the number is, what we need to really understand is Victoria are still a key part of the plan. Regardless of where it lands … my focus is how to maintain and grow that important talent pool, regardless of being connected to a professional franchise or not. It has to be connected in.”

Reports have also claimed that the Brumbies could be in peril, but when asked if he could see a future without the ACT club in Super Rugby, Horne said: “No. It is always going to be there. I wouldn’t see an issue with Brums going forward. The Brumbies have been part of a blueprint in Australian rugby for a long, long time.”

NRL threat, Suaalii and Jorgensen

The NRL has recently re-emerged as a competitor for high-profile stars. Mark Nawaqanitawase has been signed by the Roosters, and Jordan Petaia and Max Jorgensen are also being courted. Horne and new Wallabies coach Joe Schmidt are in the process of working out the pecking order of off-contract Wallabies talent, and how much they’re prepared to pay for them.

“Am I surprised that NRL are around and potentially in the market? No. The Australian sporting market is probably one of the most competitive sporting markets in the world,” he said.

Horne said he was surprised by reports this week saying there were doubts about Rugby Australia’s eye-popping $5million deal for Joseph Suaalii going ahead. He said RA remains committed, but, pressed about whether the size of Suaalii’s pay cheque may damage RA’s chances of signing stars like Jorgensen given a reduced pot of money or the increased salary expectations of others, Horne added: “You’ve got what you got, right? We don’t have oodles of dollars to be able to throw around, and I don’t think that’s the right thing either. To create a high-performance program, you should create a system that’s sustainable and creates sustainable success.

”You can get really quickly undone if you want to spend a lot of money on a projected playing group. I am more around we need to invest in the pathway that creates talent. And then secure and hold, and then attract those that are in the game [overseas] home.

“My philosophy is slightly different to maybe potentially others. What we’ve got at the moment, we need to grow and develop. And then we need to work out how we actually retain those that are in the system at the right level and with fair due, and pay on what we think is the right level of the market.”

Rugby has a pulse

At the recent summit in Melbourne, Horne and Schmidt gave a presentation titled “From Green to Gold”, and the theme captures Horne’s optimism about rugby in the country.

“Aside from what happened [with the Wallabies] in 2023, there are a huge amount of green shoots within Australian rugby, from the men’s and the women’s games,” he said.

“The Wallabies, it was the youngest squad at the World Cup, which means we have a talent pool which is in a development phase … and we can project forward. With the women’s, the first Wallaroos win over France since 2010, third in the WXV1, starting to make a move on the central contracting model, first full-time head coach.

“Sevens program is tracking pretty well to Paris and beyond.

“So when I look at the game, aside from what happened last year with the Wallabies perspective, there is a lot of good. There is a lot of good happening through the community and club level, people have their shoulder to the wheel. They want to believe and want to be a part of something.”

Wretched review

Between being announced last year and starting on March 1, Horne worked two jobs, and one of his first tasks with Rugby Australia was responding to the independent review of the Wallabies 2023 season. Reverse-engineering the 23 recommendations, the raw review must have been scathing but, in a characteristically calm tone, Horne says it did not elicit any panic.

“There are some big pieces, some have already been done, some are easy to achieve and some are not so easy, and will take time. Building that trust piece takes time,” Horne said. “I don’t see it as scary. We just need to put the work in and get better.”

I don’t think you will get that again. We will live within our means.

Peter Horne on the $2.6m unapproved overspend in the 2023 Wallabies budget

With his hands now on the purse strings, can Horne assure Australian rugby fans that there won’t be a repeat of the $2.6m of “unapproved spending” that blew an extraordinary hole in the Wallabies budget?

“I don’t think you will get that again. We will live within our means. We just need to be sharper about it,” he said.

“It is all about due diligence and doing your job in managing the budgets that have been applied to each of the projects.”

All aboard

As a careful builder of systems and programs, Horne is a measure-thrice, cut-once operator, but he and Schmidt – who sources say only took the Wallabies job because of Horne’s appointment – are currently running at full tilt.

“Joe and I talk about the sprint. We have a sprint now to July [for the Wales/Georgia Test series], and then we have a sprint then to the British and Irish Lions. But that’s just about the Wallabies,” he said.

“If I look at the pathway coaches, I am talking about the system and how we create sustainable success. It’s like having two trains at the station. One is like the XPT or a bullet train, and it’s off and running. And then your Tangara on the other side, and it’s tracking off to 2027 and beyond, and that requires diligence and people understanding and holding true to the vision. That’s how I look at.”

Can you drive both trains at the same time? “I am standing on the platform.”

You ask Horne if the magnitude of the job ahead keeps him awake at night.

His RA war chest is the size of World Rugby’s petty cash tin, he has a historically dysfunctional code to unite and revive, and that blessed anonymity won’t last for much longer, either.

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“There is a lot to do, no doubt. There’ve been a lot of people working hard and doing good things in Australian rugby, and my job is to bring it all together and put good people into the right roles,” he said.

“It’s a big job. Does it frighten me? No. Do we need good people? Yes.

“Do we need the community’s support? One hudred per cent. We can’t do it without them.”

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