Rebels with a cause?

Kurtley Beale, James O'Connor, Danny Cipriani, sounds a bit like the beginnings of a dream team. Well this is the reality for the first privately owned professional rugby union team in Australia, the RaboDirect Melbourne Rebels.

Having just completed their debut season in Super Rugby, exceeding all expectations, the future looks bright for the Rebels. The club was certainly helped by a number of special dispensations, including waving restrictions on foreign players joining the club. This allowed the club not only to compete in Super Rugby but also sign some of the brightest talents in Australian Rugby.

The signing of O'Connor and Beale represents a slight embarrassment for the Australian Rugby Union whose intention was to preserve Australian talent for its existing teams by allowing the Rebels to sign up additional foreign players instead of young Australian players. However, the clubs relative success this season combined with a willingness to assist players in their interests outside of rugby (as well as having the funds to offer massive contracts) has persuaded such high calibre players to join.

However, the clubs success to date has been fraught with trouble. The region had been vying for a place in Super Rugby for a number of years before the Melbourne Rebels were awarded their license in 2009. One of the biggest issues lay in the number of teams seeking just one license. With seven different teams from Australia along with other candidates from New Zealand and South Africa competition was stern. What made it worse was that 3 of the Australian candidates were from Victoria. This led to a great deal of internal issues as the Victorian Rugby Union looked to combine its 3 candidates into one team to try and cement their place in Super Rugby.

Initially the license was offered to the Vicsuper 15 consortium as the bid from Victoria was considered more financially viable to SANZAR, however an agreement could not be reached and so the license was offered to Melbourne Rebels. At this point restrictions were imposed on the team that limited their ability to sign players from other Australian Super rugby team players. The club then suffered the embarrassment of CEO Brian Waldrom having to resign after claims of salary cap deviance. Despite these issues the club has battled through and managed to establish itself as the first privately owned professional rugby union team in Australia.

The club name was decided in accordance with the local rugby community who decided the name should bare some relation to Victoria's first Wallaby Sir Edward Dunlop who was well known for being different. This led to the inclusion of 'Rebels' in the club name (players such as Danny Cipriani have since helped give the name more relevance to the team).

The club are currently on their pre-season tour of Europe, having just been beaten by newly promoted Worcester Warriors 15 - 3 with Cipriani enduring a particularly difficult evening. However, come October with the arrival of the clubs new Wallaby stars things are sure to look a little brighter. How do you think the Rebels will fair this season?