Report: NZR summit document provides shock option to replace Super Rugby and NPC

“Men’s Elite Competition Possible Options”

My mom always said, “if you’re going to do a job, do it right”

Option B is part way there, sharing the number of Super Rugby teams between the 5 current clubs and three + additional rep teams. I would simply have 3 regional rep teams for all players wanting to represent their NPC teams, and they can sell some more club licenses if they want more teams. I think probably 8 is the best balance talent wise with 4 aussies teams, Moana and Drua.

or a continuation of the two competitions as is, but “with five single rugby entities in the main centres of Auckland, Waikato, Wellington, Canterbury and Otago”.

Lol so essentially exactly like the current setup!

For NZ, the NPC should take over as the elite competition, with all players available from March-July. Encourage our teams to include at least some pacific, or any other global talent for their own ‘sabbaticals’ of experience in NZ (if that desire still exists).

For Australia, they can take over the ‘Super Rugby Pacific’ title to run concurrently - with the Australian teams competing with the Drua and inviting other teams from the region to join (an Australian-based Pacifika team may pull back some wider talent from league?)

Then run the ‘Rugby Championship’ competition to include Japan & Fiji: a 6-team format to mirror the Six Nations (August - September).

And finally, any dedicated tours should be organised from October (replacing each union’s EOY) - so as not to disrupt any established competitions.

Unfortunately we add to all this a money hungry NRL looking to expand and fill three more teams, potentially with a new side in Christchurch.

The elephant in the room is women’s rugby. 2/3 of the losses are here. All these money issues for nzr and the super franchises started when we started injecting more money in to the women’s game. The funding was never there and they knew it. Same for moana pasifika. NZR knew it was never viable, and had been saying so for years but pressed ahead with both and now here we are. Both are luxuries and we are in no place to afford luxuries.

As I understand it, this is all about Rugby politics in NZ and that NZ has got mutiple stakeholders, all of whom want a say and all of whom have different views.

I don’t know what is the best structure moving forward - where the game is healthy in both School/club and province and still suceeds at the top level - Super and above.

I do know that Super rugby is now a shadow of the comp it was, that the structure that used to have a reservoir of high quality players, so that even when one player went down injured, another was ready to step up into their place.

That’s clearly broken now, with the ABs managed like a club side now - top 30/40 players contracted in NZ and if skills missing, pull players back from off-shore - Frizell at 6 and Mo’unga at 10, current examples.

Then we have NZ Schoolboys having 88 points point on them last year by the Oz U18’s - which again highlights issues - NZ Schools playing an Oz U18 sides which is best schoolboys and kids first year out of school - why is that occuring, because NZ Schools and NZRFU could not agree on the structure junior rugby - NZRFU wanted like Oz, to have U18 - to be the rep side for NZ at that level and we now have 3 teams playing next week vs. Oz - NZ Schools, NZ Maori U18 and NZ Barbarians U18.

Then we move to the NZ U20 - have not won the U20 WC since 2017, last two years have been OK, where 2nd and 3rd place but when watching the team, very stark differences in Physical/Technical skill especially in the pack.

So NZ rugby clearly has some issues to address around structure - at the base it is not an income issue - NZ Rugby is generating more money than it ever has, but is has a cost structure - so spending more than they earn, but how do you fix a 20 million shortfall?

And all this, before facing the challenge of the NRL and the potential that within NZ, another NRL team, which would then have 2 NRL vs. 5 Super, with NRL having longer season, more games and thus more eyeballs on the TV screen - which obviously is off interest to advertisers.

Good luck to NZRFU - hopefully they are succesful in discussions, we need them to be, but my guess is they kick the can down the street.

The only viable option is Option D - A joint venture between the NZR & the ARU to completely restructure Super Rugby into a Professional Club competition based on the same model as the NRL and to base majority of the clubs in Australia.

No more “Franchises” from New Zealand or Australia, only Clubs that can draw players from either country or abroad.

Clubs can have Private Ownership but the competition and Clubs without Private Owners are owned by the NZR & ARU JV.

There, I solved their problem but we know what’s going to happen and that soon we will all be sitting back and watching them burn their houses down…

The problem has always been the super rugby franchises, from a branding perspective. You can still have a ie wellington based high performance setup and delete the franchises (option 4). These punch drunk idiots have no clue about fan engagement on any emotional meaningful level. Its about creating micro narratives, tradition and drama in an intelligent modern way. We have teams with the same tradition as Manchester United (150years+) and we resort to this absolute crap. It seems like its all about control from NZR. The reality is they give up everything if they try something new. Op2 - Full NPC alone will never happen. But there is a 4th option with elite unions branded as the traditional unions in main centres and a feeder second division. With Some form of Trans Tasman interplay (this was historically done in 70s & 80’s pre or post season)

Run the Npc as is with five or so Aussie teams

Two pools ten games each with finals

Still have local interest and every game counts

SR i s crap so scrap it

This is a more important issue, a privatization push it will not work. (repost)

NZR needs to think about completely revamping the make up of rugby in New Zealand by focusing on what matters to the people.

Right now it’s really a mess. It works (don’t know what NZR is spending their money on now that’s causing them to go in the Red, but it’s certainly not domestic player funding which has been static for decades now) but it could be so much better. We need one seamless game.

- Run the Clubs (Super Rugby and local competitions) and Provincial game (community representative based teams) in parallel against each other but as slightly separate entities.

- Have both trying to achieve the same goal, the domestic title (say like old AFL v NFL Super Bowl), and continental participation (Super Rugby P), making them on par with Japan teams. This means a new national club competition that Blues, Crusaders etc, take part in, along side ventures like Tasman (the perfect example given the Vikings where killed by NZR) and Moana, Ponnies etc.

- Have a top echelon of teams were say a dozen + teams have 10k+ crowds (achievable by a 150k+ pop areas) and say half a dozen that push 20k. This means reducing the spot light (currently over 20 odd teams) on the top level and fracturing bigger areas like Auckland into multiple teams (Blues and Auckland RFU etc).

- Develop pathways for youth by introducing new competitions like a College league.

That’s that’s your 5 or 6 current Super clubs, plus either a combination of either strong PU’s or more club investment.

This basically forces a split between professional players and amatuer players, but will still keep the tradition for everyone of being able to aspire to be an All Black or Black Fern, with enough investment being put into the amateur game/PU’s that by the peak ages of 28-30 these players are physically capable against professionals.

Personally I would give a huge spotlight to this group for the purposes of sustaining the importance of Rugby in New Zealand. If you leave the balance for pro sport to take over it will eventually kill the game.

- Run cyclical windows through the year when one competition takes over from the other, domestic club, pro club, rep rugby, Super, All Black etc all have their time in the spot light. And at other times use approaches similar to US sports and French rugby where Div 2 teams have their own timeslot/day.

- Run it regionally, and shared to promote growth over the whole country. Think like 3 pools from 12 of the top ranked teams. The balance of club vs union teams amongst these depends of factors like performance on field (earn more places through holding the title) and off field (rewards for crowd sizes and participation levels etc).

- Step it down and involve everyone. So a region might have 4 or 5 teams ranked in the top division but they all still play each other, including club v union inter matches in a joint table. each level down (so including the top level ofc) can also play similar level teams from the other regions.

You end up with more derbies and meaningful matches for you’re community, while also being able to delineate a clear competitive ladder for those teams able to compete at the highest level and external or neutral fans with no real skin in the game.

A top ladder might like like

Taniwha

Blues

Auckland RFU

Moana

Chiefs

The Bay

Hurricanes

Tasman

Crusaders

Canterbury

Highlanders

And a second div who’d want to fight to keep their best players from joining a club, but ones who stay are eligible for a Super Rugby Rep based team (they choose to be rewarded by being picked on performance rather than sign a contract based off their prospect value as a junior)

Harbor

Ponsonby

Some rich persons team

Counties

The other Bay

Taranaki

Manawatu

Petone

Wellington

Nelson

Lynwood

Otago

Maybe some clubs start to push out the unions in time, as they get more and more professional now that they have a higher tier to aspire to, but essentially it’s going to be clubs that have heavy financial backers that make their way up etc.

This will be all very familiar to NZ rugby fans as the local club comps rely heavily on an up and down nature, playing in one competition then another. Teams would easily transition between a domistic league table to then hold a regional or national match, all the while have clear and concise tables.

An ordered summary from Paul Cully's very, very garbled report [quelle suprise]

Three options.

Option A. Existing 10 team SRP and the NPC continues. 5 NZ teams and their host NPC unions to be amalgamated as a cost saving measure. This amounts to the SR organisations taking over their NPC team, as it is in the Currie Cup. At the moment they are run separately. "Open to more private investment for players to be paid over and above what they get from NZR."

Competition to be run by SRP HoldCo. “SRP HoldCo holds cross-border, pooled team commercial rights, funds logistics, marketing. NZR and RA keep broadcast control.”

Option B. Never actually referred to as Option B in the report, but NZ abandons SRP altogether and creates an "8 to 10 team", fully professional NPC, meaning no non-NZ teams. Somehow these teams would be funded sufficiently to give them $8m to $10M salary cap, with “possible scope for private investment.”

The teams would be run by individual provincial unions. This amounts to the NPC teams taking over the SR organisations, which will lead to an internal bloodbath.

The claim that there would only be 8-10 teams is extremely doubtful, given that 20 years ago NZ rugby as a whole was supposed to reduce the NPC, and instead expanded it to 14 teams.

Crucially this proposal comes from the provincial unions themselves, and is not supported by NZR, because it would destroy NZ's relationship with Australia, and possibly lead to the collapse of pro-rugby in Australia.

Option C. Seemingly the same as Option A, though with two more teams, if RA agrees to them. The implication seems to be that those two teams would be in NZ. No direct reference in the report to more private investment, but that might be Cully just getting himself confused. With two more teams in NZ this might be a bridge to the Provincial unions claimed position of 8 to 10 teams.

All in all, a crap fight between the supposedly independent NZR board and the oligarchy that actually runs the sport in NZ, the 26 provincial unions. Let’s see if Kirk is actually equipped with spine and is willing to put his position on the line in a fight with the provincial unions over this fundamental issue. My guess, he'll buckle, though the provincial unions wont win, and NZR will find some window dressing compromise and put the hard choices off for another day. As they have been doing for 20 years.

Well this not what Aratipu promised.