156 Breaking Ex Wallabies Captain Rocky Elsom Speaks Out On His International Arrest Warrant

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I'm Mike Boris and this is Straight Talk.

Rocky Elson, welcome to Straight Talk, mate.

Thanks for having me on.

Oh my God. I mean, I'm looking behind you. I actually look behind myself. What the hell's

going on? First time I've spoken to a fugitive.

Yeah, it's an unusual situation. Certainly not the way I would have planned it.

Definitely not.

I mean, are you in, I mean, I don't, I guess you're not going to tell me where you are,

but which continent are you in? Which part of the world, north or south?

Well, I think the big thing is if I was to

be detained, if I was to go into custody, it's a lot harder, much harder to defend myself

to be able to put together a legal case. You don't want to necessarily publicize the fact

that I am trying to avoid being detained.

But it's because it makes my defense so much harder.

Well, that's interesting. So, I mean, you were convicted ex parte. So in other words,

you weren't at the trial where you, where the judgment was given, which means you've

never really built a defense or never really had an opportunity to at least put your defense

forward. And there is a concept here in Australia, at least of call natural justice, where everyone

has the right to be heard. You haven't had that right.

Absolutely.

Let's just park aside just a little bit for the moment. Anyway, the judgment, if we could

just go back and maybe you could give me some context of, you know, what you were doing

where you were back in that period, what period of, you know, is it 2015, 16, what were you

doing in Narbonne? What was, how did you end up in, in that French club anyway, for a start?

So some Australians including Bob Dwyer and some bankers and guys with a bit of money,

were approached.

club to save it from relegation and financial reasons so every club has to have a positive

balance sheet otherwise it can be kicked out of the competition right so they approached bob and

others and said can you help us because locally there's a lack of motivation but they feel like

they're going to need some you know international help they took it over and they did a great job

of stabilizing the club but it was costly so every year cost them quite a bit less than what

it cost before but more than they wanted so when i was playing it too long i took a bit of a an

interest in what was going on there a bit more of an interest and i said this is what you need to

do so to make this sustainable you need to sign lots of minimum wage contracts and financially

to be able to withstand the

you

ups and downs um you're you're going to need to do that and you need to run it like this

what do you mean by can i ask you what do you mean by minimum wage contracts you mean

is that in order to get the cost down or is that in order to attract players

so you um they spent let's say six and a half million a year a year and i said you need to

spend 3.8 million right and the way you do that is to the only way to do that is to sign players

on minimum wage contracts

so and lots of them not every player is off contract every year and so they were a bit risky

but in my mind it was risky and not doing it because they weren't going to put in

hundreds of thousands of euros every year so they said okay there's a way you do that too

there's more to it and they said okay i said i will put in the money that's required this year

but i need to run it the way i want to run it and it involves this and they said fine so

we um they issued new shares i became the majority shareholder they were incredibly supportive

um but essentially it was um i was running the ship from there

so it's so we're talking about bob do i x ranwick bob do i was probably still involved with ranwick

um bobby do i who i remember from many many many years ago i haven't seen him probably for 30 years

maybe longer um and it's good to know that i didn't even know he's don't excuse me bob i didn't

know he's still alive so good on you bob um but you know i've been running the ship for 30 years

you've you've you've contacted them with a solution to their problem um you know narbonne

had a problem dwyer and others came in and tried to solve it it's not sustainable and from a

financial point of view if you don't have enough funds as a club you'll get relegated and probably

continue to get relegated um you're coming with a solution it probably wouldn't have been all that

popular because it sounds like you would have had to get rid of a few players who would have been on

the not the minimum wage but on a bigger wage everyone

that was off contract that didn't accept minimum wages let go yeah and so i guess it's financially

makes complete sense but then you have the emotional pressure of trying to get that team

to stay in the competition you know on sporting grounds and so in terms of talent yeah if you if

you finish last or second last you're relegated as well so yeah it was there was a lot of pressure

around that time i thought it was

it's a bit of a catch-22 solve the financial problem first and then i'll deal with the talent

problem second well give me a bit of a sense mate of the area so i don't know where this area is in

france um give me a sense of the people the culture you know are they do they like australians

they hate australians are they tribal what's the deal there very very tribal it's the ord or

languedoc region is um kind of dry arid region region

on the coast near the spanish border so on the mediterranean beaches and all the rest

but they're basically a region of villages and they are incredibly tribal so when you say

here's this for example we had one of the tui langi brothers at number eight 135 kilos physical

specimen great player i say i'm going to swap this guy i didn't announce it but the truth was

i was replacing him with a 92 kilo junior

you're very upset with that the guy that came in he was better he was on minimum wage turned out to

be a good player but at the time yeah you can feel their um you feel their emotion and that's part of

why that's a large reason why french rugby is so strong well is the reason i'm sorry i don't and

that i don't understand so you're saying one of the reasons french rugby is so strong is the

cultural um sort of momentum and impact that goes from the the villages and the villages and the

villages and the villages and the villages and the villages and the villages and the villages and

the villages and the villages and the villages and the villages and the villages and the villages and the

towns and the cities that support that particular

team it's so parochial is that what you mean yeah so just imagine you're um in sydney and then you

have um uh gleave right gleave has its own team right and they spend six and a half million euros

then in balmain they have their own team and they spend 10 and then a little further over in

jremoyne they have their own team and they spent 16 million euros on their team and so you've got

these villages essentially that are right next to each other that have enormous resources and the

way they do that is by um the local governments getting right in behind the team and people being

you know the epitome of tribal and rugby terms and so in this region there's eight eight or nine

teams in a close proximity to lose having a 48 million euro budget and you they just don't have

the people they need to be able to do that and so you've got these villages essentially that are

the people that you would think the number of people that you would think supports that

but the intensity of the support is so so great that they're able to and as a result they do

produce a lot of france's talent in that area so like i'm still trying to get a sense of this

is because there's a foreign country and obviously we have our tribalism here in australia too

um in terms of afl rugby league rugby union etc um but it sounds like it's sort of uh

a couple more levels above that how how does a club like no bond how does it fund itself outside

of capital contributions by let's i presume they were shareholders bob and those guys did they own

it as a shareholder or what's the structure look like yeah they owned the shareholders but that

that is the question that most people don't understand so that's the the answer to that

question most people don't understand and that is because most people think well you have these

wealthy benefactors and in paris you're doing a lot of work and you're doing a lot of work and you're

you know the savar family and peter wilde jackie laronzetti very wealthy guys they fund the

deficit outside of that you have this situation where they have an incredible financial advantage

over every rugby club in the world so that is organized around the local government so that

the local governments the mayor they don't it's not waverly council they have much larger government

works under their control every government contractor is running around every local government

required is expected to contribute to the community and a lawful and you know obligatory

almost obligatory contribution is to the rugby club if it's a rugby town right so there's nothing

legal about that but as a result if you go to a french club you will see hundreds of sponsors

hundreds of cash paying sponsors if you go to the uk you might see three the rest is contra

so you have hundreds of sponsors and you know they say the tv rights deal is um you know really

lucrative in france that's not their advantage it will be in 2027 it'll be nearly insurmountable for

other clubs around the world but it has run primarily off a large amount of sponsorship

from the town there are other there are other advantages but that is the that's the number one

thing so they might have you know five million euros in sponsorship spreader

across 100 different sponsors and there's actually there's generally very little activation for that

so it doesn't cost the club anything and that's why you have these villages essentially that can

attract world-class players so someone who comes from a sort of a similar similar sort of world a

club world um i can sort of get a sense of this um the sponsors the people put the dough in are

your local people they're people who are invested in

let's call it the region um they probably live in the area uh they also feel that there probably

is some sort of like a quasi obligation on them to contribute based on the fact that they're

probably getting government contracts and stuff like that then on the flip side you got your

supporters uh i presume there's gate money so you got your fans who come to the game and they've got

to pay or they've got to buy club membership and that sort of stuff so what we have here is um this

uh confluence of uh stakeholders

who actually have a sense of ownership and sort of you want them to have that anyway because you

want them to support so they have this sense of ownership you know like they're they're not

shareholders but they're stakeholders um and i guess if you're not doing what they want to happen

uh do they have a say is there a place where they can come and talk to you yeah that's right so it's

a partnership so when the australians took over the part of the deal was

that the board who are these guys and not all the sponsors are locally based they might be

you know a national company that is just obliged um but the board will uh ensure that the sponsorship

reads a certain amount in our case it was 2.2 million they ensure that um the australians job

was to make sure that the team would be competitive and then cover any of the um

deficits that might go with making a competitive team so their say is um

although they had guaranteed it in the deal their say is if they don't like it they can reduce the

amount of sponsorship or wow if they want to take the club back they want to take ownership of it

the easiest way is just to say at the last minute sponsorship dropped you know so now there's

300 000 euros deficit do you want to keep paying it and across that's standard across france so

that's most sponsorship contracts are yearly right so that um

that you don't have five-year deals or you know most clubs don't anyway most of them are

at done annually and so when you get in the situation like you just said where they

aren't happy they can you know present a sponsorship which is much less than you expected

so in my case in the first year um they at the last minute the sponsorship dropped

800 000 euros from the year before you were the ceo uh yeah

what was your role sign all the players um but no official role though rocky like what was your like

i had a playing contract okay i was a majority shareholder but i was there on a playing contract

as a player but your but your role in a functional sense apart from playing uh was what so um i was

the uh i was the general manager and um head of high performance and handled all the recruitment

and the salary and the

contract negotiations so how did you get on with the locals um it depends you're talking about like

the board right well let's talk about the board first yeah so the board would say you need to do

this right rugby terms in this league this is one of the biggest leagues in the world you need to

sign a scrum first and i would say i it would be nice i definitely would be nice we don't have the

money for that a good scrummager is ten thousand euros a month we can't pay anyone that

so not right now anyway and so we there was a bit of friction right but i think that a large

part of the friction was because they were saying we know this league and i was saying

okay but i i think rugby is best done this way sustainably and we didn't argue right so we

wouldn't argue i wouldn't uh i didn't have to take their opinion on board so i we certainly

didn't have any altercations but there was a

sense particularly over time that i wasn't listening to them and in some respects that

was right you know with the scrum that my first year it was the worst scrum i've ever been involved

with i've never seen a worse scrum i've never seen us so many guys get sent off for scrummaging

and i knew that was going to happen we just couldn't afford to buy good scrummages so

so so but that's pretty uh that's like having the sort of damocles hanging over your head all

the time um it's like if you're sort of damned if you do and damned if you don't uh like if you

take your own strategy forward they might reduce sponsorship in which case it doesn't matter with

the major shareholder not the place is going to get turned upside down it's going to go to admin

for sure because unless you've got really deep pockets you're going to keep funding the short

for it

um and if you do listen to them you might end up in your own sense having the wrong strategy in

terms of who you're recruiting over time because you know they're too expensive so again uh you're

going to run into administration problems no matter what you do it would have sounded like

to me that you're in trouble but as the major shareholder are you in a position to remove the

directors yeah so um like i said it's a partnership whether they're formally um engaged as the board

or not

um you're in a partnership so removing them just makes it less transparent and from my point of

view and this is the same for every rugby club that doesn't have a financial advantage and very

few do you add the most value to the organization by making bets on players that are untested

so by basically putting large giving incentivizing contracts for guys that have not been tested in

the league that's how you get the best value um and so if you do that and it works you're going to

see it works over time you you that pressure does release but certainly in the beginning that's

right um so they um there was a lot of pressure and because of the way i was doing it and that

dissipated over time are you are you this i mean i don't know i've never done something like this

my life but i mean i you're living in this smallish area relatively speaking sorry mate you

said you had never done it i've never done something like this so i i i can't i can't

imagine it so you're living in a sort of a relatively speaking say compared to paris or

something like that you're living in a relatively small place but in a in a big country i don't know

france is 90 million people or something um you're they got it you're living in an environment where

people are probably one of the biggest things is the rugby team in the area one of the greatest

things they do they love it um as their part of their life are you the sort of dude who walks

around every saturday whenever during the weekend during the weekdays at night you know shaking

hands kissing babies i mean it was that sort of expected of you and if it was is that rocky

elsa is that your style um yeah they do they do like that so before me a few presidents before

me was a guy called alan dupuziak who's legend in the advertising

world and he was exactly what they wanted as a president very charismatic well dressed would

walk around town would sit in the stands with the fans and he was absolutely loved you know

he was the head of avas so he wasn't there all the time but when he was he was in there and that is

exactly what they want as a president when i was there um like i said before i had a lot a lot of

roles so no one works harder than the high performance coaches like there's

strength and conditioning coaches on the ground and so i was not as visible you know and it's not

it's not really in my nature to to to be that it's like you the performance for the team on

the weekend that's that's what i'm showing you know and for the rest of it i um you know was

generally at work so do you think part of your crime let's call it um was that you weren't

charismatic enough you didn't play the game and that you had a predecessor who set a benchmark

which is you know it's always difficult to reach the same benchmark that a predecessor said

especially when they've been there for a long time and you're the new dude on the street

do you think that's part of your crime you didn't do what they wanted i think that it's said as that

but it's largely inconsequential because as much as they appreciated that from alan dupuziak and

he was say 10 years earlier than me and the president's in between

were much less charismatic um the what they really feel the most is the team so in that

season that i reduced that amount and they reduced the sponsorship we might say my first season we

broke every record in the club's history had the worst scrum i've ever seen and we broke every

record in the club's history which what type records rocky um the good ones so most tries

highest i think four of the five highest ever scores in the league

were in one season most tries by an individual most bonus points most away wins

um the only ever undefeated home season so no team came to narbonne and won you know leon 20

million euro budget the whole three years i was there they never came to narbonne and won and that

meant an enormous amount to the people they might say it would be good to see you a bit more often

but that is that's far more powerful like perpignan they had a

16 million euro budget were in the league two of the three years they came to narbonne and we beat

them by 40 right and so a record never narbonne had never beaten them by that much and they're

a huge team straight turn from the top 14 and what that gives to the people is far more valuable

because they're in the crowd you know that they feel it when they in that game in particular

it could have been more but the that's what they really want they

really want something to get behind and if i you know just a few babies tell them everything's

going to be great you know i think that they like that but they love how it feels when it goes well

so you would say your strategy was working then in terms of outcomes final outcomes

yeah so um we lost in the semi-final that year but if we had 20 a 20 reduction in all revenue

at the last minute and we still posted a healthy profit

so the following year we didn't do as well but we posted a bigger profit we had a similar reduction

in sponsorship so this was a this was a program that was financially sustainable but also too

through the high performance program we were able to punch above our weight the entire time

and the pressure was intense in the first year but by the third year it had there was

less much less criticism about the way i was running it and it was much more targeted at

trying to get either control back off me or um or to someone else and and the the

qatar investment authority situation was the probably the peak of that is where they were

saying it's going okay but it could be better now and that was certainly a shift from the beginning

when they thought you don't know what you're doing is that is that when you say they are we talking

about a cabal of people like five people or the whole town or you know like is there people walking

down with placards down the town like what are we talking about they so um there's big big difference

you have the supporters right and the support is very emotional riding every wave but they um they

basically respond to how the team goes and then you have the people that you have the partnership

the stakeholders so the city

council the regional ffr and and the board what's the regional ffr um so like rugby australia is

representative representative in the region yeah and so in the case of the qatar investment fund or

authority they were the stakeholders were in in favor like and and the media too right so he he

was very well supported the guy that was being proposed um but that's that's who was in favor

of him the local people

they were they were a little bit more skeptical and so it's like because the qatar what a qatar

they want to take over the qatar investment um authority or fund kind of so the um the head of

roland garros was the um a former president of narbonne he introduced to the board at the his

legion donna that he was receiving he induced introduced them to the chairman and ceo of the

qatar investment fund and uh he met with some of the four former

presidents and they decided that they were going to ask me to sell the club to this guy

turn narbonne into paris saint germain but in the south right um and so the enormous coverage in the

press national coverage international coverage was is rocky going to sell to this guy i met him

and i said to the board i'm not sure he's the guy you think he is

what does that mean what does that mean rocky i mean what was your objection

the qatar investment authority

is half a trillion dollar fund massive richest country in the world per capita yeah so and if

i i met the guy nice guy got on well with him he doesn't control that fund that's obvious to me

and it was when i said that it was as if i walked into their house and spat on the carpet

you know it was like you could you be more arrogant to think that you you're questioning

this guy the mayor the ffr the board had all come out and supported him and i was just saying

you know i'm not sure who the guy is but i'm he's not this right it's not the same guy that bought

um psg and so from from then on it was virtually a war so they had said if you don't sell to this

we're going to make things very difficult for you and i said i believe you

but it's going to be hard to sell to this guy because he's not who you think he is

and so this went on for three months i would call journalists and say listen call nasa the boss of

psg ask him if he knows him if he doesn't know him he's not part of it and that sounds like the

most obvious thing to do but it took months for them to actually do it and in that time

you know the the partnership that we'd spoken about with the other stakeholders had turned

into the um it was more or less a siege you know if you read french newspapers hundreds of articles

about how i was frustrating the deal and there's no motivation for me to do that you know if he's

he's got 400 billion dollars let him buy the club you know and so but there was this constant with

that and finally um yeah and the team kept winning which was a huge help you know and finally after

the perpignan game i was like oh my god i'm going to buy the club i'm going to buy the club i'm going to

play the game and i mentioned a journalist who i'd spoken to a number of times said

yep he's he's not that guy right so when you say not that guy i'm a bit confused

he's he he was pretending to be the person in front of the qatari investment fund or he's he

was the qatari investment fund person but he was portraying a different type of personality what

do you mean he's not that guy so he was um he was the chairman and ceo of the qatari investment fund

which was a shelf company with no funds under management and no staff and so to be fair to the

guy himself he never said you know that he was a part of their thing but it was certainly but it

was a part of the qatar investment authority or an offshoot of it he never said that but they ran

with it right so in my contact with him he never said i'm a part of the qatar investment authority

we own all this he would talk generally about we being qatari he was tunisian anyway but um he would

we is in being qatari so it was to me it was obvious he was trying to put a deal together

but he had no position um he didn't have any position like what they thought and it was a

case of being very mistaken about who he was it wasn't as if he could get 10 million but not 10

billion it was there was no funds that he had access to that would be of any use to the club

and the danger of that was that

if he had of if i had just sold it to him the club would have collapsed very quickly because

the expectation would be that he funded everything from then on so so you must have had more than a

hunch i mean you must have done a bit of research on this so-called company do you think it was it

was very mysterious like do you think there were others sitting behind him who were sort of was

was he like being puppeted were they puppeteers no it was all on he it was it was

his initiative very charismatic guy right spoke a bunch of languages very well dressed and he he

basically um they loved the story that he told so there's a con um yeah i didn't mind the guy

to be honest so i don't want to disparage him but yeah there's nothing like what they thought and

even like i said the media said more than he did they said you know rocky's turning his back on

billions of dollars here and they continued to say that um and so i think it was a very charismatic

um but i think that um the thing that gave it away was i called the qatar investment um fund

i called them every big fund has a um a pr office and i said to the pr do you have um this guy do

you have an eye on is he on your board is he part of your organization and she said to me no he's

with the qatar investment authority we are an organization that invests in qatar right you're

talking about the qatar investment authority and i said so she said that to everyone that's called

but do you know him and she said yeah i know him he's from the qatar investment authority

i said okay so what you're telling me is you specifically know this guy to be a part of the

qatar investment authority and then she said no but he can't be with us so i just assume he's with

the qatar investment authority right so you don't know that but she everyone that called up she was

saying listen not with us it's with them it's with this much bigger fund and so um when she

anyway right but when she said that i was like you know when you i'm sure you've called this girl

call her again she doesn't know this guy right she doesn't she's saying that and and it might

have misled you along with everything else but she doesn't know that guy so it's hard to say

who's who in the middle east you know who has access to whatever for english speakers um so

it wasn't entirely clear but they should have known so you rejected

not rejected well you reject your shareholder i mean you sort of influenced this outcome um and

so what happened then so where did the crowd start what i said to him was

if you want to if you whatever you're going to promise to do for the club no worries you can do

it whoever you are i didn't say that whoever you are a bit to him but whatever you're going to do

to the club whatever you promise right all it has to be is in an account if you're going to

promise to do something just need the money in an account

lawyer and an escrow account will be able to release it over time he wasn't able to do that

show me the money exactly and um the i said to the board after it had come out publicly

because it didn't matter how many times i said it um i said let's not worry about it

let's just move past it and at this time i had numerous legal battles for various things

sponsors you know being co-opted to try and pull out the mayor saying we're not sure

we're going to give you the money that we already agreed to for the season we got in trouble with

the league regulator for that because there were so many legal cases and issues and discrepancies

i said let's not worry about it now we'll just move forward they didn't say it but they were

like we're going to keep going with this we're going to keep going so we won all the court cases

all the sponsors eventually paid the mayor eventually paid because it became obvious that

you know this strategy was going to cause us trouble because the league regulator got involved

and so they eventually paid right they eventually paid but it was clear that my position was

untenable because they were embarrassed let's say but also too that had enough right it's their team

it's their town it had been their team for 25 50 years so they asked the mayor to ask me to open

the capital to basically issue new shares to allow them

to

to increase their ownership to the majority.

They had asked that in the past and I'd always accepted,

but this time they really meant it and so I said, yeah.

So I announced it at the meeting and then gave them the opportunity

to invest in the club, which would mean that I would be 20%

rather than 97% and then subsequently probably have no control over it.

And then what happened?

When did you leave?

So I announced that in June.

June which year?

June 2016.

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How did you end up leaving the club?

So what are the circumstances there?

So I announced that I'm going to allow some subscription

as per the terms asked by the Mary,

which is basically to these guys only.

Exclusively.

And then they, with the board,

we went through a process of cleaning up all the accounts.

So the most transparent thing that I could do is to say,

of all the promises made by the club,

I pay those, show them in the account so there's no accounts payable,

and then say, this is the actual position of the club.

Do you, you know, so there's nothing,

I'm not going to say anything ambiguous about it.

Now you know where it's at.

Do you want to invest in the club?

So I knew they would have a go at me about that.

So I did things as clearly as I could.

And, you know, there's always things in rugby clubs that, you know,

you could potentially, you know, criticize the previous president for.

And so I do it in this way.

It's very transparent.

They have a lot of time to look at the accounts and all the rest.

And decide whether they want to invest.

If they don't invest, I keep going.

They've got the opportunity.

Previously did the same thing.

No one subscribed.

So there's the chance of doing that.

So anything that I promised, I had made sure was completely transparent.

And so they say at the end of the month, we would like to, you know, invest in it.

Then they take over the majority.

I'm still a significant investor.

I'm still a significant shareholder.

I get outvoted as the president.

And they carry on as the club.

You know, carry on with the club.

The money that they invest, they get to use.

So it certainly wasn't used beforehand.

But they get the club with a positive balance sheet and cash reserves.

Let's say something like half a million euros.

And that is as rare as you will ever see in France.

That a club is handed over in those conditions.

With money, with assets.

Yeah.

With assets of any level.

Normally it's with major debts.

So they did the due diligence.

Let's call it due diligence.

And who keeps the accounts at the club?

Do you have like an accountant or a CFO?

Yeah.

In this case, it was much more open than normal.

So we had an independent audit by Deloitte.

We had the club's accountant and auditor who were extremely,

say, familiar with the board.

And then you had the league.

So the league had given us a sanction because of, you know,

all the legal trouble earlier in the year.

So the league had to approve them.

And then you had the board.

So Bob Dwyer was over there.

And Michael Boucher was over there after him to be able to.

And they continued on in the board.

So you had an unusually high level of transparency over the accounts

and all the rest.

And it was a much smaller club by then.

So it was easier to understand.

So you got voted out as president.

Yeah.

And did Boucher and Dwyer, did they stay on?

They stayed on the board, yeah.

And then what happened?

So what did you do?

Did you hang around or?

Yeah, I came back to Australia in November.

Yeah.

So it was July when this happened.

And the year after I left, they had quite a good season.

They did okay.

They didn't challenge for the finals, but they did okay.

Two years after I left, they finished last.

And so we were relegated.

And they had, if you believe the press, they had about a million euros in deficit.

So I would spend 3.8, 4.3 million euros a year.

They spent 7.5 million euros and finished last.

Wow.

So it was a situation.

Yeah.

It was a situation.

But more so than that, right?

Results, right?

You know, sporting results can go against you.

But the biggest thing that happened in the year was the head coach that I employed, Christian

Lebut, very charismatic guy, won various titles across France a number of times, halfway through

the season when they were, you know, down the bottom but not in the relegation zone,

they sacked him.

So they sacked him.

The management did.

That's a management decision.

From there, nab on, I think they barely won a game.

So it's halfway through the year before and they lose nearly every game.

But not only do they lose, they get absolutely hammered, right?

So for large patches, they averaged 50 points against them.

Wow.

And it was an historic run.

So people blamed the management for that, understandably.

Christian went to the team across the way.

So a big rival, Carcassonne, somehow took the role there because they were going so

terribly.

They were last and they hired Christian.

Then Christian, they were the best performing team in the entire league from the moment

he came in.

So they won 70% of games and incredible.

You wouldn't be able to script it.

So he was last, second last, and they go to the first place team or second team away from

home and win.

And that, I'm not certain, but that's probably never happened.

And so the pressure on the new administration on that decision was incredible.

And nab on was relegated with months to go.

So with eight games to play or something, maybe five or six, everybody knew they were

going to be relegated.

And so I know what it's like as the president.

There's a lot of pressure.

When the crowd turn away from the field and back up towards the president and start howling,

they would have felt that.

So they were officially relegated.

And a day or two after, or actually when they were experiencing, they got beaten by 68 points

by their biggest rival at home, which is, like I said before, people feel that.

They're tribal.

They started saying there's a police investigation into Rocky's mismanagement.

So that happens the week they lose by 68 points.

When they get and they keep teasing these things out.

And so in the week that they actually officially get relegated, there's an article which says

basically that it's my fault, that I turned down this Tunisian guy, that I even fell out

with Justin Harrison.

You know, my mismanagement, that there's this police investigation and money went missing.

So using the term missing, I disappeared.

You know, didn't let, you know, no one knew where I was and all this type of stuff.

And it didn't get, I think it didn't go over particularly well in the beginning because

they'd just been relegated, but it dragged out for years and years and years.

And so after five years of saying it all the time, things like that.

And if you look it up.

If you look it up, there certainly was a lot of press around allegations before anything

came to a court.

Then you would, you know, people started to say, well, maybe, you know, particularly

if you're not from Narbonne, you would say, well, maybe you did.

At the time, they wouldn't have been able to do that.

That's always the case.

50% of people will believe it and 50% won't believe it.

But if someone makes an allegation, you're already in trouble.

Yeah.

And so in the court documents, and it has been, they've been released extremely slowly.

They would say these payments have been made without justification, which is the allegation.

I'm obviously not there.

It's an absentia.

It's an inquisitorial system.

So there's no advocate for me there.

They say, looks like there's a lot of justification for these, but if it's to believe that the

club was in financial difficulty, then that's bad.

Then that's potentially a crime.

All right.

So I would say, well, the accounts certified by the auditor and the accountant and by the

league and by an independent auditor, myself and the board all say that it was in very

good financial position.

What are you using to say that it wasn't?

That's if that's my evidence, what's your evidence?

And it's the, we still haven't had the clubs document.

Yeah.

We still haven't had a lot of the documents released from the court, but I think and that's

the only way it becomes a criminal offense if they can link it to the relegation two years

later.

So it's, it's a case of the allegations were doing represent reputational damage for a

long time.

And they were understandably reluctant to release the actual details of it because if

you go through the allegations, like I've said publicly, where is the damage to the

club?

If the player is given a salary advance and that is paid back out of his salary over the

course of his contract, who's the victim?

Is that one of the allegations?

Like you gave.

Five of the allegations.

Yeah.

And, and so in the court documents, they say, we accept that these were paid back.

So why are they in there?

Or if you say in the case of Chris Whitaker, he's paid 79,000 euros.

Yeah.

This is board approved decision that releases the club of its obligations to Chris because

we're changing the coach, right?

Chris was the coach when they broke every record in the club's history, but we're going in

a different direction.

No way around it.

If I don't pay it, the Cubs obligated to pay it or he sues them.

Who is the victim of this?

You know, and.

Are you saying these things were consented to and or approved by either the management

or the board?

I was the management.

So.

It's, I mean, they have to be approved by the bookkeeper, right?

So they have some obligation to have, to be justified.

You can't just pay things willingly.

I didn't, I don't pay the things that she does and she has to see that it's justified.

So you need a rupture conventional for the players.

Those contracts were finished or documentation to say that it's a settlement, but yeah, they're

approved by the board.

So it's not saying they're, I'm not saying these are approved by the board.

So.

Ha.

See, here you go.

They knew that.

You know, there's an out, there was an allegation running for years that I took when I, you

know, disappeared in inverted commas, I stole a vehicle.

They knew very well.

I didn't steal, steal the vehicle.

They knew that the players paid the money back.

You know, you, you would, there's no explanation for, for not knowing that they paid that money

back.

So why, why use them unless it was intentional to try and exaggerate or, or fabricate the

case against them.

So why do you think Rocky that they, and whoever they are, whoever it was, it sort of

was behind the, um, a, the commencement of the investigation by the police.

Um, who, why do you think they're trying to discredit Rocky Elsom in that local area?

What, what's the reason is that is behind the discrediting of you?

What's the advantage that's being sought if at all?

Um, so.

Um, so everybody in their life wants to be judged favorably, right?

You want other people to say, this guy's stunned.

This did this well, is this, you know, received?

Well, you, you cannot escape the 2018.

You cannot escape, escape the anger from that.

Just like Gilbert who was the head of Roland Garros tournament director at the tour de

France.

He was the president when they were relegated in 2018.

Um, so you know,

in that, in this last 10 years,

like exactly what I was saying,

like, you don't have to be very strict about how you're about to get your voice in the

news.

I, I, you know,

you, you still have to have a thing that's going on,

but you still have to be able to get away with it.

You just have to be well-behaved and you don't have to be a victim of the outdated

system that you have.

Then,

then,

like,

then there was a,

there was a year of war,

um,

in the building,

uh,

that was,

that was the same problem.

That was,

that was more,

That distracts from that, not entirely.

People still remember to a degree,

but it certainly does distract from that.

They do not want to be associated with what happened to the club

because they're still in the amateur leagues now,

and it's a way to deflect that.

Like I said, that would not have washed in 2018,

but eight years later or six years later from then,

it's more believable.

Are you saying that therefore you were a scapegoat

for what happened in what seemed to be poor decisions

which resulted in a relegation in 2018

and by the sounds of it, many thrashings by other clubs

which would have been embarrassing for the club, another one.

Are you saying that they made Rocky Elson many years later

from that period but also built up many years later

as a sort of a scapegoat for those outcomes?

Well, they definitely tried to,

but you have to remember the legal case hinges on me being connected

to the relegation in 2018,

even though they were relegated on sporting grounds.

In other words, they were relegated because of decisions,

poor decisions that you made.

Yes, so they say, publicly they say €700,000,

but in the court documents they say €250,000 worth of payments,

Chris Whittaker, Tom Boyden, various others.

You know, small-ish amounts.

They had a direct impact on the club which resulted in that,

which legally that's incredibly difficult to make,

but they have to make that argument.

That has to be made for it to warrant a criminal case.

So did you know the court case was on?

I mean, where were you when all this conviction happened?

This is a really important part of it.

I didn't know the court case was on,

and there was no possibility,

there was no possible way for me to know.

You weren't in hiding at the time?

So I was in the paper, you know, sometime earlier,

like not long before the actual trial,

saying where I was, what I was doing,

and what my upcoming public event schedule was,

doing things with Leinster in Dublin.

So there's no excuse to say they couldn't track me down.

Although they didn't try, and that's an important thing.

I'm not saying I don't think they tried hard enough,

when the court scheduled the trial

and made an arrest warrant for me that was suppressed.

It wasn't made public.

So I had no way of knowing unless they told me,

and they didn't attempt to tell me.

Wow.

It's a huge thing, and it's the basis of an opposition.

So I'm hopeful that they hear that opposition

and say that the ruling should be thrown out

rather than saying, okay, we need a retrial.

Because I'm still wanted, I'm still to be detained,

and I still have the conviction.

Whereas if I can get them,

if the judge accepts that they didn't try,

and they certainly haven't said anything opposite to that

from 2013 onwards when the trial was ordered,

then it should be, in theory, it should just be kicked out on that,

and they can start again if they want,

but then it's going to involve me.

It's going to involve asking questions of me.

It's going to allow for my, you know,

my defence.

But that's a really important part.

It was a decision in absentia,

but not that I didn't show that I had no possible way of knowing,

and anecdotally, that's obvious.

So when you were in Dublin,

just doing your thing, living there,

you weren't sort of in hiding in Dublin,

did they try to arrest you?

So, yeah.

Yep.

So I had some legal advice where they said,

you probably, an extradition order,

this is the one case where French bureaucracy might be to your advantage.

You probably got between two and six weeks,

and I was like, I don't know about that,

and before it comes through.

So I got it, got the news, packed my stuff.

How did you get the news?

I mean, had you got some secret sort of tunnel going into the courts?

Yeah, my phone started blowing up.

That's how I got the news, so everyone else got it first.

Yeah.

And so I would say, people would say,

Matty, is this all right?

And it was the first I heard of it,

a five-year sentence, international arrest warrant.

And I was scheduled to,

Leinster were playing back at a famous stadium for the first time since I played there,

and I was scheduled to appear there at that game.

And they ran and said,

Matty, probably best you don't come.

So it was like everything was happening at the same time.

And so I, if I was detained, right, this conversation,

preparing documents, it gets very difficult.

I could be detained for a long time.

It's unlikely that I'd get bail in France.

I mean, it's possible, but you've got to prepare for not being able to.

Ireland were obliged to extradite me.

So I was like, you cannot get taken in for this.

You cannot get arrested for this.

I can't be detained because expensive, time-consuming,

emotionally, it would be more demanding.

So I, yeah, I left straight away.

And so I, or soon after, and left all my things in Dublin,

just grabbed a backpack and left.

And so, you know, they say we couldn't find Rocky for eight years.

The guarder, inside an hour, came to where I worked.

Came to where I lived and called me on the phone.

And they called last.

And I said, I'm not in Ireland, so it's not in your jurisdiction.

They were like, okay, no worries.

If you come back to Ireland, we're going to have to arrest you.

I was like, okay, good to know.

So you took your, just packed a backpack and just left everything else behind?

Have you got, I don't know this, but have you got a wife and family?

Are you married with kids or what's the deal?

I don't have kids and I'm not married.

Not married, okay.

So you're a little bit more mobile than most.

And, but you literally just put something in a backpack and took off.

I spoke to, I got some advice.

So I spoke to a couple of lawyers.

They all said, you're going to be fine.

They're not going to, this is going to take a while for the guarder,

you know, the Irish police to get this notification.

They're probably not going to do it.

And then I got some advice from another lawyer and she said,

no, they have to extradite you.

There's no way around it.

Even in absentia, there's all these examples of them doing it.

They got no, and you will be, you'll be detained even if you try and fight it.

But most likely you'll be sent back to France.

What sort of passport do you have?

Do you have an Irish, a European passport?

Are you an Irish background?

Australian.

Australian, just Australian.

So you don't have any Irish parentage or any of those sorts of things.

You don't have any, obviously you don't have any Greek parentage.

You can't end up in Greece or Spain.

No.

So when you make that decision, you're not going to tell me where you are, of course,

but, and I'm trying to work out from the screen behind you, that tells me nothing.

How do you work out where to go?

Well, you don't have unlimited options, but it was interesting at the time

because you get a lot of people saying, mate, you're, you know,

like anything I can do to help.

Yeah.

And I definitely appreciated that.

Yeah.

And then you get some people.

People would say, I know a guy's got a boat or something like, how about a higher plane?

You get on it.

We'll go to here in this jurisdiction.

They can't get to, you know, and people just saying that, which is like, I don't know if

you're in a crisis like that, not that I could take them up on it all the time, but it's

like, that's what you want.

You know, a guy saying, mate, there's no extradition.

If you can get here, you can't be extradited and things like that.

So I looked into it myself and then.

I made a decision on what was the easiest, so I only had one choice.

I couldn't go to the airport in, you know, in Ireland.

So I had to just get out of there.

So how important then was it for you to have this, um, support group and how much of, do

you think, you know, playing for Australia, captaining Australia and having a great rugby

career, how much of that do you think actually helped bring, build that sort of brotherhood

type thing?

Um, you know, where we're going to.

Look after Rocky and get him out of there.

Or if you can get to this particular place, help him get away.

Um, almost nothing.

So, so it's like you hear the, you hear the, um, verdict, people get worried, they go,

well, there must, might've been an issue.

And what I had said to everyone, you know, Dan Herbert, all the guys I played with, just

all you need to do for me, all you need to do is say, just make it clear to everyone

that this is, I was not there.

Yeah.

What we've disgusting.

Um,

all of that, we went to some, uh, clubs we've gone to the, I was one of those clubs that

I didn't know anything about.

So, growing up, um, you've seen it all.

And, you know, um, certainly with the interesting points that I'm telling you, um, I, uh, with

relaxing.

And one of the great things is you would never expect who says,

no, I tell you what, I can do this.

Let's try and do this.

It's like, yeah, like not that I needed to use them,

but it's like it comes down to an individual thing.

And I think in terms of the –

Did you get a surprise?

Did anyone surprise you?

Did anyone come out of the woodwork who maybe wasn't a great friend?

All the time.

Really?

Yeah.

So I want to go – because people don't run around saying I'm infallible.

You have conflicts with people over time.

And you would be surprised at people that reached out and said,

mate, if you do this, I'll make sure this happens here

because you're in this jurisdiction and it works like this here where I am.

And, yeah, that was surprising.

And I guess to some extent you would have looked at

it as a little bit of a surprise.

You would have looked at it like a bit of a blessing

because you could end up – if the guard I had have just popped around your house

before you – instead of reaching out to you and had arrested you in Ireland

and then extradited you, you could be sitting right now in a French jail somewhere.

Are you worried about that?

I would have been.

What do you think about that?

Yeah.

So one is sitting in the jail, right?

Uncomfortable, not what you want to be doing.

But the practical effect of not being able to – how that affects preparedness

and preparing your defence, you know, how that affects all sorts of things is dramatic.

The cost and the efficacy of, you know, whoever's being interviewed

and getting statements and things like that.

So it's not just, oh, I didn't feel like going into a prison or being held in custody.

It's that it makes things so much harder.

So you're an ex-high performance coach.

You're an ex-captain of your country.

You're played at the highest level in your sport.

You know how to prepare other people and yourself to be the best possible version of yourself

when you're in your sport and also probably in administration of a club.

How those things equipped you for – and how do you feel those things have equipped you

for preparing for your defence?

So are you going about it in the same detailed way?

And what are you doing?

And actually, by the way, how do you actually raise a defence?

Do you need a new trial or what's the deal?

Make an application?

I can try and oppose it because I wasn't notified.

They haven't – they've said that I wasn't notified or at least not indicated how I was notified.

That can overturn the decision straight off the bat.

So that's the first thing.

I have to deal with every allegation individually.

So I have to look at what they've said.

And then rebutt it, right?

And you do that with statements and all sorts of things.

I don't have all the information right now, all the documents, but I have a lot, right?

So I wouldn't have been able to get those if I was in custody.

But I think that in a situation like this, you're under pressure, right?

And that's what it is when you play.

And I think a lot of guys, when they finish playing, they might not realise it,

but they miss the pressure because the pressure pushes you to do things.

Right?

Right.

I say this.

I talk to you, and it seems like it's a certain way.

But then you hear something that counteracts that, or there's an article that's against

that.

And you just need to make sure that you exonerate yourself, that you do everything you can to

put the balance of probabilities in your favour.

Not just legally, but there's a practical nature to any legal case.

And I've got no choice.

That's what I have to do.

Do you feel any...

let's call it encouragement from the recent Julian Assange situation.

I mean, I know his thing was sort of more on a global scale

and global allegations against him,

and he was fighting the US government.

But to some extent, the concepts are the same.

Do you feel any encouragement that he eventually got free?

Well, I think with Assange, there was an ideological argument.

So you would say, the free press, that's their job.

And then the US at the time was saying, no, that's still a crime

because it goes above, it endangers people's lives

and goes above what the press are allowed to do because it's dangerous.

So you have this ideological argument or debate, if you like.

In this case, I think,

it's really clear, if there's no victim, I shouldn't be convicted.

And the opposition on technical grounds, because they didn't notify me,

that is an avenue that I'll try.

But there's no victim here.

And so the US could say, and I don't think it's valid,

but the US could say, well, it endangered US lives.

And Assange would say, okay, but the freedom of the press

is fundamental to us.

And that's what it was.

And longer term, it would have saved more lives

because of what it revealed.

And so you have this argument where both have strength to a degree.

In this case, there's no victim.

Has Julian Assange reached out to you?

I haven't spoken to him, no.

I haven't spoken to him.

But maybe he should because he's one of the few people,

at least from our country, who's actually experienced this sort of thing.

Because this is pretty, to be honest, it's quite bizarre.

That an Australian is being convicted,

more over a commercial thing than anything else.

It's really around commerce as opposed to, as you say,

a physical victim, a personal victim, in absentia.

In other words, not being there to defend himself.

And is now on the run to avoid being incarcerated,

which would sort of hamper his,

his ability to prepare a defense.

I mean, I can see a movie coming out of this, by the way.

But it's just like, it's a great story.

Like, it really is a great story.

And your ability to defend your position is going to become even a greater story.

There's going to be even a much more emphasis on this down the track

as to how you strategize and what tactics you use.

Which, by the way, is the sort of thing when you play footy,

when you're captaining a side.

Yeah, exactly.

Those things are going to come into it.

They're very, very important.

How are you feeling?

I mean, like, personally, mental, mental health wise, how are you feeling?

Well, I, I got to keep focused on it because I have to win.

You know, it's not as if I'm saying, well, I can accept that I did this wrong.

What I'm saying is that I did nothing wrong and there was no victims.

And so if I, if that's to be upheld, I need to be right and it needs to be thorough.

I need to, there needs to be no question because I already have the conviction.

It's not.

You know, beyond reasonable doubt, like it might be in an Australian court in the beginning.

I've already been convicted, so I need to be 100% right.

And I need to make sure that happens.

And as much as this is not a legal case, that's why I'm on here.

So you say, okay, this does get to them and they say, well, if there's something wrong and what I'm saying,

they're going to try and say it, and then I'm going to have to return on that.

And so there's an element of focus that that gives you, right?

Cause you've got to win.

How do you, how do you.

Sleep.

I mean, do you sleep at night?

All right.

I mean, what's your regime, but what's your regime, Rocky?

Like do you exercise?

Do you sleep?

You, you sort of watching what you eat.

I mean, not drinking.

What, I mean, what is your regime to stay really focused?

Um, I, I do exercise, so I probably train more than I should, right.

So more than what's optimal just to take the blood away from the brain, if you like.

Um, but the, I got to take a call anytime it comes, you know, like, so whatever time of day it is.

Someone calls, you got to be available for that.

But I think, um, you know, the, the, the, the way you eat helps, right?

So I generally only eat meat and then, um, that does help a lot because you're not, you, you're not going up and down with things.

And I think that the only thing I can do is get into a, uh, you know, kind of a strict regime of what I am doing so that I don't overanalyze so that I don't, you know, uh,

emotionally.

Emotionally wear out and, um, you know, that changes all the time, but, um, you, you certainly have to do more than just focus on the case.

That's for sure.

How old are you now, Rocky?

What are you in your forties, mid forties, 40, sorry, what 41 41.

Um, this is a big deal for a 41 year old.

I would've thought like, you know, it's not something you're experienced.

It's not like you've been a criminal lawyer all your life or you've been a criminal.

Um, this is a big deal.

Um, yeah, well, I think, I think, um, because of that, it's like, that's what helps you focus.

So the reputational damage, when you have something like this can be significant.

And so it's not good enough for me just to get them to overturn it.

You need to, you need to overcome all of that.

And that's a lot of work, right?

So you got 200 articles in front saying, how about a guy?

And I need the same amount to outweigh that.

It even just, if somebody searches your name, this will come up.

Unless you do something to replace it.

And, um, you I've got to keep focused on that.

Like the last thing you can do is see yourself as a victim.

You gotta, you gotta make sure you have this overturned and that it is completely

rubbish as it should be, but that's, you know, I'm, I'm the one that has to do that.

Wow.

Well, Rocky, uh, I've been a Saturday morning here and, uh, when we're recording this, I don't know where you are, what time it is, but, um,

as an Australian, as a, an avid fan of Australian, great of Australian sportsmen as I am.

And, uh, I'm sure I'm talking on behalf of a lot of Australian.

We hope that you get the outcome that you need.

Um, I, I don't like to think of an Australian sort of ducking and weaving in dark corridors and places in wherever the hell you are.

Um, uh, and that you get your fair chance to be heard in a fair environment and good luck to you, Rocky.

Awesome.

And I thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Thanks, mate.

Thanks for having me on.

I appreciate it.

You're most welcome.

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