John O'Neill has confirmed speculation he was approached by English Premier League giants Manchester City but is adamant he remains fully committed to the Australian rugby cause.
The ARU boss was approached by City officials during the recent Rugby World Cup in New Zealand and had a series of discussions with club directors followed by an interview with chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak in December.
O'Neill, who is contracted to the ARU until the end of 2013, was eventually beaten to the position by former Barcelona general manager Ferran Soriano.
But while the former FFA chief admitted he had a 'conversation' with arguably the richest sporting club in the world, the veteran administrator was adamant he wasn't going anywhere.
"The answer to that is yes, I am committed to completing my contract at the ARU," O'Neill said at the official Super Rugby season launch in Sydney on Thursday.
"I mean employment contracts have an employer and an employee who both have rights and obligations."
"Look, in life, and you sort of hope it never stops, you do get phone calls and you do get approaches, it's the nature of the industry."
"I've had plenty of approaches and some of which you don't take any further and some of which you have a further discussion to get more information."
"And when you get phoned about an English Premier League club like Manchester City, which I was phoned about, it's not anything other than a normal business reaction to say 'well what's all this about?'"
"It's water under the bridge, it didn't go anywhere, but there's no harm in having a conversation."
Meanwhile, O'Neill defended his comments earlier this week urging the other four Australian Super Rugby franchises to emulate the success of defending champions the Reds in a bid to boost flagging crowd figures.
"My comments have been interpreted in different ways and I categorically was not criticising any franchise or denigrating any franchise, nor was I 'sticking it' to them as someone said," O'Neill fired.
"You watch a successful franchise over a two-year period produce something special and you think 'wouldn't it be good if that was happening across the country?'"
"There's some angst over those comments so I don't really want to go any further than to say I wish them all the best and I do hope they shoot the lights out."
Pressed on what would constitute an acceptable result for the five Australian franchises, O'Neill replied: "Only one team can win the conference so one Australian team will make the semis and then after the three conference winners it's the next best three teams (who make the finals)."
"So having at least another one, ideally two ... you'd be thrilled if you had three in the top six."
"You look at the squads, the Waratahs have got a fantastic squad on paper and the Reds are incumbent premiership winners."
"And the other three, I think Jake White's going to do a wonderful job with the Brumbies, he's just a quality coach and he probably is the right man at the right time in Canberra."
"So I think we're going to see good competitive rugby out of all five, but two to three teams in the semis would be a great result."