Furious former Rugby Australia boss slams 'boneheads' after major sponsor pulls multimillion dollar deal following Wallabies' year from hell

Hamish McLennan has continued his tirade against Rugby Australia, with the ousted chairman claiming the sport's recent loss of a multimillion dollar sponsorship deal was due to his dismissal.

Harvey Norman, however, denied that their decision not to renew their three-year deal with the Wallabies was due to McLennan's exit on Sunday.

'Look at what the boneheads have done,' McLennan told the Sydney Morning Herald. 'They are arrogant and dopey.' 

Rugby Australia has endured a year from hell, with McLennan's decision to hire Eddie Jones spectacularly backfiring after the coach oversaw a terrible World Cup campaign before walking out on his home nation amid interest from Japan.

Harvey Norman has been a major backer of the Wallabies and was also the naming-rights sponsor for the Super Rugby season, with the company revealing that it is pursuing other sponsorship opportunities in other sports.

'What we do is, we do whatever sport for a while; we don't necessarily hang on to it forever,' company chairman Gerry Harvey said. 

'So we move around on different sports so we're very heavy into sport advertising that we don't necessarily stay with the one sport forever.

'You know we think, 'Oh we've given that a good go, then we'll go on to the next one'. In all cases, we stop at some stage.'

When asked whether the change of direction was due to the McLennan decision, Harvey said: 'No, no, no, no. It's just the sport itself. So we do that for a while then move on to the next one.

'And you know, at some stage – like we're doing basketball at the moment, we've never done that before. At some stage, we'll drop off that and go back and do something else.'

Rugby Australia said on Thursday that it is already exploring new sponsorship deals.

'Rugby Australia wishes to thank Harvey Norman for its enthusiastic support of Rugby over the last three years,' a spokesperson said. 

'RA is currently in market and actively involved in discussions for a replacement.'