On May 30th a process was started to change the way rugby in NZ is governed, one with significant implications for NZ rugby’s relationship with Australian rugby, particularly in Super Rugby.
What began as a process to have the board of NZ Rugby [NZR] reform from a provincially dominated organisation into a body independent of direct provincial control, in the same way the AFL is independent of direct club control, has not worked out that way.
A majority of the provinces have instead imposed a reform that, through a variety of mechanisms, retains significant provincial control of the NZR board, both in who gets on it and how they get on it.
The proponents of the original reform have insisted that as a consequence the board will not be able to attract higher quality talent than the current board, which has proven to be badly out of its depth in the last five years.
The new board is supposed to be in place by early August, so we will see if that is true soon enough. What is certain is that there are two groups in NZ rugby lined up against each other, the Centralisers vs the Provinces, in what is accurately described as a civil war.
So far, so political, so very, very dull.
NZR CEO Mark Robinson. (Photo by Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)
Any implications for Australian rugby are seemingly far down the road. That is possibly true, but probably not. Where it gets interesting is the nature of who has lined up against each other, their very different attitudes towards competitions and player development, and related to that, their attitude towards NZ’s partnership with Australia in Super Rugby.
The Centralisers, the NZ Rugby Players Association, which initiated the original reform of the board, as well as NZ’s Super Rugby clubs, the Māori Advisory Board, NZ Rugby Commercial and Silver Lake, and a minority of the provinces, all support Super Rugby and NZ’s continued relationship with Australia in SR, and crucially want the Super Rugby clubs to be the only teams playing professional rugby and to also take over the entire professional player development process in NZ.
The majority of the Provinces at the very least want the NPC to remain a significant professional competition, returning it to what it was in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and to retain their control of professional player development. Competitions and professional development is what NZ rugby’s civil war is all about. Australia’s problem is that whoever wins this fight, Australia’s performance in SR is likely to be damaged.
The turning point in the war will be the submission of the NZ Men’s Player Development Pathways report sometime before the NZR board is appointed.
The report will, with absolute certainty, conclude that the performance of NZ professional rugby has been very badly damaged by the split between SR and NPC for player development.
The report will then very probably conclude that the SR clubs should have a monopoly on professional player development, that the provinces should only be concerned with the amateur/community game, and that they should be spending the massive amount of money they get from NZR purely on that instead of the spending it mostly on their provincial rep teams and player development, which is what they are doing at the moment, and that part of that money at last should instead go to the SR clubs.
This second conclusion will be resisted tooth and claw by the majority of the provinces, who will instead look to their reform of the NZR board to deliver them a board that will, at the very least, defend the place of the NPC.
It goes further than that, though. There is immense hostility in the provinces towards Super Rugby, and a significant push in those provinces to have the NPC become NZ’s primary professional competition played in the first four months of the season when the All Blacks would be available.
The danger in that for Australian Super Rugby is obvious. While such a result is unlikely, a victory for the alternative would be almost as bad for Australia. If NZ’s SR clubs take over all professional competitions in NZ that will almost certainly result in NZ SR teams playing around 25 games a year for both product and player development, as NZR looks to fill the gap left by the top tier of the NPC.
This will further develop NZ SR teams’ depth, giving them a massive advantage over Australian SR teams when it comes to SRP, where Australian SR teams are already struggling to compete.
Struggling financially, there is no sign Australian SR rugby can afford a similar expansion, even though the benefits are obvious. Imagine for a moment if Leinster, Northampton, La Rochelle and Toulouse were restricted to only 14 rostered games a year rather than the 22 to 30 they currently play.
Then imagine the consequences if NZ’s SR teams played 25 rostered games a year, with the same coaches, almost the same players and the same structures. NZ rugby as a whole also has a very active incentive to do just that, with the world club championship about to arrive.
As part of a deal to get enough provinces on their side, the number of NZ SR teams could also expand. Hawkes Bay and Bay of Plenty are particularly ambitious, and a second Auckland based SR team is also entirely viable.
Adding one team at a time while pushing the number of games played to 25 per season per team will quickly develop depth, so performance against non NZ SRP teams will only dip slightly, if at all.
The NZRPA also clearly want to expand the number of genuinely professional opportunities for its members, which could be decisive for NZ SR expansion. Because of the NPC, NZ’s Super Rugby footprint has never expanded.
This has unbalanced the competitions those teams have played in, but also, since 2006, with the dilution of the NPC to 14 teams, it has damaged NZ rugby as well.
Twenty years ago, instead of deciding between SR and the NPC, NZ rugby went for mediocrity in the NPC and ever-larger squads in SR.
That has been an expensive and damaging mistake, which seems, one way or another, to about to be rectified. And the first to take the hit of NZ’s more powerful and probably larger presence at the top level of domestic rugby will be Australia’s SR teams. Australia has already lost the Rebels. How many of its other teams will be survive that impact is an open question.
