Australian World Cup winning coach Rod MacQueen has been lured out of retirement to take over as the first coach of the new Super 15 franchise in Melbourne.
MacQueen, who guided Australia to the 1999 World Cup title and retired from coaching after the Wallabies defeated the British and Irish Lions in 2001, was named as the Melbourne Rebels head coach on a three-year contract on Wednesday.
MacQueen, who helped build the ACT Brumbies from the ground up when the Super rugby competition was launched in 1996, had done some consultancy work for the privately-financed Rebels, who are based in the Australian Rules stronghold of Victoria.
“It made me think I’d like to have a bigger involvement, because there’s something special that can happen in this area,” MacQueen told reporters on Wednesday.
“We want to take the team to the community, we want to embrace the community, and we want the team to put back into the community.”
An expanded Super rugby competition, which will be reorganised along a conference system with five teams based in each of New Zealand, South Africa and Australia, will begin in 2011. — Reuters