New Zealand Rugby are never going to get a better opportunity to reclaim ownership of the game
Rugby doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel. Particularly not here in New Zealand.
It was meddling with a sound model that got the game into its current predicament and it will be going back to what worked before that can fix it.
Pandemic or not, SANZAAR was stuffed. The member unions were going broke and fewer and fewer people wanted to watch Super Rugby and The Rugby Championship.
It’s 2013 since South Africa played a test at Eden Park. That’s right. Like Argentina, New Zealand have afforded the Springboks also-ran status, shipping them off to Wellington and Christchurch and Albany instead.
Our most storied, and allegedly respected, foe didn’t rate a game at the All Blacks’ Eden Park fortress. They were second-tier and shunted off to smaller venues accordingly.
Mickey Mouse games and made up teams won’t make rugby profitable again and they certainly won’t re-engage fans either.
Familiarity bred contempt where All Blacks v Springboks games were concerned. We staged them so often, that people had enough.
We should run a mile from talk of New Zealand meeting the British & Irish Lions in 2021. The greatness of the concept is that you’re forced to wait 12 years for your turn. Let’s never change that.
Let’s not rush to play hybrid union and league games either or North v South, Possibles v Probables or conscript the SANZAAR sides to some locked-down location in Sydney for an abbreviated Rugby Championship. And let’s definitely not run Super Rugby in conjunction with it, as SANZAAR chief executive Andy Marinos has suggested.
New Zealand Rugby (NZR) are never going to get a better opportunity to reclaim ownership of their game and reconnect with people left behind in the rush to resource the All Blacks.
Wage demands were bankrupting NZR. And even on $1 million a year, players still wanted time off or lucrative sabbaticals elsewhere. You’d think the least they could do for a million bucks was actually turn up for work every day.
NZR have a few choices in front of them now, including putting people in harm’s way to make a quick buck, as our friends from the NRL appear hellbent on.
That will satisfy a few existing deals and get money flowing again, but it’s a stop-gap measure.
Another would be to say to the millionaires, or wannabe millionaires, among the playing group: All the best. Go try your luck overseas, where they live cheek-by-jowl and the coronavirus mortality rate dwarfs ours here.
NZR cannot sustain their current costs and if private owners elsewhere want to play our elite players a fortune, let them. And if that means players are picked for All Blacks duty from overseas, then it’s a small price to pay for keeping rugby in this country afloat.
Club rugby was dying here. Beyond premier level club competitions and some secondary school grades, we were all going 10 a-side with uncontested scrums.
NZR’s independent report recommended things like contracting schoolboys straight to Super Rugby and all-but doing away with the provincial and club game.
Why? Well, lack of players for starters. Although what that actually means is an inability to engage with the public.
Not to mention a lack of love and resources, given every spare buck was ploughed into trying to satisfy the wage demands of our best players.
Who knows when people will be able to travel freely between nations, or even want to. Until then test rugby has to be out of the question.
And, besides, we’d grown tired of the foes we were repeatedly matched up against anyway.
NZR could work wonders simply by, at the safe and respectful time, making all of our players available to play rugby. No rests, no sabbaticals, just a game every week.
It needn’t be solely at franchise level, either. How much would our battling clubs benefit from having a few All Blacks and Super players make a handful of appearances? What would that not only do for the coffers, but for towns and suburbs trying to get back on their feet after COVID-19?
So many of us love rugby, but our connection to it is at community level or through the players of the past. Men we watched playing club and provincial footy, men who had jobs outside of rugby and who were – at least to a degree – men we felt we could relate to.
We have an established and meaningful framework for rugby. We have clubs and provinces that not just fans are attached to, but players as well. We don’t need to dream up new teams or new competitions; we just need our best players to actually play.
If that’s a chore for our All Blacks or they insist on making a million a year, then they can go. The game – in every sense of the word – can no longer afford to pay them the money they’ve been on. At least not if we want community and provincial rugby too.
No-one wants to watch the Reds and Bulls and Sunwolves anymore. We want to see the best New Zealand players pitted against each other and, by dint of these unique circumstances, we can go back to that.
And, by happy coincidence, NZR will also be able to pay for it – and fund all the other levels of the game – by bringing wages down. A salary of $200,000 is still an absolute fortune by New Zealand standards and more than fair for playing rugby.
This pandemic has given us a chance to look at what’s essential and what’s not and it’s very hard to argue that giving $800,000-plus to an All Black is money well spent.
So let’s not dream up ways to keep these blokes in the fashion to which they’ve become accustomed. Let’s not keep pretending we can’t get enough of Super Rugby and The Rugby Championship.
Let’s instead return to a model that we once liked very much, that reflected our nation and its values and which, just as importantly, we were able to pay for.
Comments on RugbyPass
What a dagg in more ways than one
5 Go to commentsRegroup come back next year but sack some of the coaching team and don't be like the ABs last minute sacking. If Crusaders don't do well ABs don't do well.
5 Go to commentsProctor Definitely inform again this year had a hell of a season last year and this year is looking even better. Still mixed feelings about Ioane tho.
4 Go to commentsDagg is still trying to get enough headlines to make himself relevant enough to get a job. The Crusaders went back to square one at all levels. Shelve this season and nail the next one.
5 Go to commentsHe was in such great form. Sad for him but only a short term injury and it will be great to see him back for the finals.
1 Go to commentsAfter their 5/0 start, I had the Crusaders to finish Top 4 only…they lost the plot in Perth but will reload and back themselves vs 4th placed Rebels…
5 Go to commentsBoth nations missed a great opportunity to book a game that would have had a lot of interest from around the world. I understand these games can’t be organised in 5 minutes but they should have found a way to make it happen. I don’t think Wales are ducking anyone but it’s a bad look haha.
3 Go to commentsIt will be fascinating to see the effect that Jo Yapp has. If they can compete with Canada and give BFs a run for their money that will be progress
1 Go to commentsFollowing his dream and putting in the work. Go well young fella!
3 Go to commentsPerhaps filling Twickenham is one of Mitchell’s KPIs. I doubt whether both September matches will be at Twickenham on consecutive weekends. I would take the BF one to a large provincial stadium so as not to give them the advantage and experience of playing at Twickenham before a large crowd prior to the RWC.
3 Go to commentsvery unfortunate for Kitshoff, but big opportunity potentially for Nché to prove he is genuinely the best loosehead in the world, rather than just a specialist finisher. Presuming that if Kitshoff is out, it will also give Steenekamp a chance to come into the 23? Or are others likely to be ahead of him?
1 Go to commentsA long held question in popular culture asks if art imitates life or does the latter influence the former? Over this 6 nations I can ask the same question of the media influencing the thoughts of its audience or vice versa. Nobody wants to see cricket scores in rugby, as a spectacle it is not sustainable. With so many articles about England’s procession and lack of competition it feeds the epicaricacy of many looking for an opportunity to pounce. England are not the first team to dominate nor does it happen only in rugby, think Federer, Nadal, Red Bull or Mercedes, Manchester Utd, Australia in tests and World Cups. Instead of celebrating the achievements why find reasons to falsify it pointing towards larger playing pool, professional for a longer period or mitigate with the lack of growth in other nations. Can we not enjoy it while it is here and know that it won’t last for ever, others coveting what England have will soon take the crown, ask the aforementioned?
6 Go to commentsShame he won’t turn out for the Netherlands now they’re improving. U20s are Euro champs and in the U20 Trophy this year. The senior sides gets better every year too.
3 Go to commentsWill rugbypass tv be showing these games?
1 Go to commentsWell where do you start, the fact that England have a professional domestic league and Ireland’s is fully amatuer, that they have fully seperated professional squads at Fifteens and Sevens (7’s thinly disguised as GB), and Ireland have fully pro Sevens squad who loan some players back to the Semi-Professional Fifteens squad (moved from amateur for only a year or so) for a few games at 6N & RWC’s. The Women’s games is a shambles, and is at risk of killing itself by pushing for professionalism when the market isn’t really there to support it outside one or two countnries..
6 Go to commentsWayne Smith's input didn't have as much impact on the last final as Davison's red card for Thompson. England were 14 points up and flying when that happened.
6 Go to commentsBilly's been playing consistently well for 2 - 3 seasons now and deserves a look in at the top level. Ioane and ALB are still first choice but there needs to be injury cover and succession. His partnership with Jordie gives him first dibs you'd think. Go the Hurricanes.
4 Go to commentsIt’s not up to Wales to support Georgian Rugby. That’s up to International Rugby and Georgia. I sympathise with Georgia’s decent attempt to create this fixture. But for Wales the proposed match up is just a potential stick to beat them with and a potential big psychological blow that young Welsh team doesn’t need. (I’m Irish BTW.)
3 Go to commentsCale certainly looks great in space, but as you say, he has struggled in contact. At 23 years old, turning 24 this year, he should be close to full physical maturity and yet there exists a considerable gap in the power and physicality required for international rugby. Weight doesn’t automatically equate to power and physicality either. Can he go from a player who’s being physically dominated in Super rugby to physically dominating in international rugby in 1 or 2 years? That’s a big ask but he may end up being a late bloomer.
38 Go to commentsIf rugby wants to remain interesting in the AI era then it will need to work on changing the rules. AI will reduce the tactical advantage of smart game plans, will neutralize primary attacking weapons, and will move rugby from a being a game of inches to a game of millimetres. It will be about sheer athleticism and technique,about avoiding mistakes, and about referees. Many fans will find that boring. The answer is to add creative degrees of freedom to the game. The 50-22 is an example. But we can have fun inventing others, like the right to add more players for X minutes per game, or the equivalent of the 2-point conversion in American football, the ability to call a 12-player scrum, etc. Not saying these are great ideas, but making the point that the more of these alternatives you allow, the less AI will be able to lock down high-probability strategies. This is not because AI does not have the compute power, but because it has more choices and has less data, or less-specific data. That will take time and debate, but big, positive and immediate impact could be in the area of ref/TMO assistance. The technology is easily good enough today to detect forward passes, not-straight lineouts, offside at breakdown/scrum/lineout, obstruction, early/late tackles, and a lot of other things. WR should be ultra aggressive in doing this, as it will really help in an area in which the game is really struggling. In the long run there needs to be substantial creativity applied to the rules. Without that AI (along with all of the pro innovations) will turn rugby into a bash fest.
24 Go to comments