For those who love the game and see it as being entwined in the social fabric of the country – a defining element to encapsulate how New Zealand’s modern history has been forged on hard work, unity and notions of egalitarianism – a sense of angst has built in the last decade that the sport is being driven towards a crisis that will see it lose its relevancy and social licence.
Piece by piece, the empire has crumbled at the foundations. Teenage boys are gravitating towards almost every other code but rugby.
Rural clubs that were once the hubs of their communities now sit derelict. City clubs that once won titles often now can’t raise 15 players for a game.
The NPC final, which once would have been a career highlight even for All Blacks and guaranteed to sell out a few times over, is an anaemic version of its former self now.
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Some of this, perhaps, reflects wider societal change: the population drift from rural to urban centres; the consolidation of farm ownership into fewer hands; the demographic shifts of migration and the arrival of the digital age to flood phones with new sports and heroes for the youth of today to follow.
But a changing world is only part of the story. Rugby’s no longer sewn into the grassroots as it once was mostly because New Zealand Rugby (NZR) has effectively gone into the metaphoric sporting casino and literally bet everything on black.
And at every conceivable juncture where there has been an option to back away from this strategy – NZR has doubled down on its teams-in-black-must-come-first philosophy.
It’s not an entirely mad gamble but it hasn’t worked and it’s the single biggest point of division within the wider rugby fraternity.
It started in 2012 when AIG came on board as a major sponsor and wanted the All Blacks to be playing more tests in foreign markets such as Japan and the USA.
Any pretence that the country’s best players were ever going to play for their provinces died about then.
Then senior All Blacks started to be allowed to skip playing in Super Rugby so they could take sabbaticals overseas – all in return for keeping them available for the national team.
In 2021, the decision was made to sell an equity stake in NZR to US fund manager Silver Lake.
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Except we all know it was a stake in the All Blacks – a ticket for the equity group to clip, at a cost of $20 million per year to NZR.
We know this because since Silver Lake arrived, provincial funding has been cut and yet a new, second “All Blacks” team has been created and throughout November there will be around 100 players, coaches and management in Japan and Europe representing the All Blacks and the All Blacks XV.
Maybe the most telling clue that only one level of the game seems to matter is the fact that the All Blacks are playing in Japan on the same day as the NPC final, and that New Zealand Rugby chief executive Mark Robinson will be in Tokyo and not Wellington.
It’s entirely valid to ask why he has chosen to not be visible in New Zealand on the day provincial rugby has its moment in the sun.
But of course, we have already established the answer – because every decision that gets made at HQ is about supporting the teams in black and looking to maximise commercial returns that can be squeezed out of the power of the brand.
Balancing act: The cost of prioritising the All Blacks
In essence, what gets thrown up this weekend is a highly specific question: which is whether the NPC final or a test match against Japan will have a greater impact on determining the future health of rugby in New Zealand.
The answer should be both and the question shouldn’t have to be posed in a binary format.
A test match inspires players with aspiration. It puts New Zealand on the world map, potentially wins new fans in foreign markets and generates income which is vital to the overall health of the ecosystem.
The NPC showcases rugby’s best qualities – its links to the community, tribalism and the celebration of cult heroes.
It’s a level of the game where the traditional values of togetherness, body-shape diversity and a sense of fun are much closer to the surface.
And, ultimately, it’s the place where it feels rugby’s soul still resides, and if rugby is going to engage the next generation, retain its audience and uphold the winning All Blacks legacy, it needs for provincial rugby to be nurtured and well-funded.
But having spent much of the last week travelling the country and talking to various New Zealanders coaching in Japan – Todd Blackadder, Robbie Deans, Sir Steve Hansen and Ian Foster – it’s apparent that they, like many others, fear that the administration has genuinely lost sight of the importance of building a strong and vibrant game at all the levels beneath the All Blacks.
The international game is not self-sustaining and never can be. The All Blacks have only ever been a by-product of the development system and their strength throughout history has reflected the rugby intelligence within the club, provincial and Super Rugby teams.
The idea that the All Blacks can be used as a cash cow to fund all other parts of the game only works up to a point.
Teams in black can be prioritised to a certain extent, but NZR has found itself sucking more money out of the provinces to meet the continuously rising costs of the portfolio of national teams.
That puts the system in danger of a full and irreversible meltdown.
The decision to sell equity to Silver Lake has compounded not resolved the issue of diminishing returns and that’s because the Americans were brought in to solve a revenue problem the game didn’t have.
NZR’s inability to make ends meet in recent years is because of an inability to get a handle on its costs, and the economics of the All Blacks being in Japan make staggering reading.
There are 43 players here – 36 in the squad and seven more to bolster the training group – all of whom will be paid $7500 each for the week for a total of $322,500 in wages.
The cost of bringing the seven additional players is about $100,000 all up – the same amount of funding that each provincial union has lost this year.
There are 24 coaches and management, four New Zealand Rugby Commercial (NZRC) staff, three content creators and Robinson arrives on Friday.
A total of 75 people have been flown to Tokyo business class (although the All Blacks would be heading to the UK anyway to play scheduled tests, going via Japan is significantly more expensive), where they are staying at the $900-a-night Conrad Hotel.
The Japanese Rugby Union is meeting the inbound costs of 46 players and staff, so 29 people are being paid for by the NZR to be in Tokyo, which, best guess, will all-up be pushing close to $700,000.
This is all fair enough if the returns outweigh the costs, and Japan is a legitimate land of commercial opportunity for NZR.
The game is growing in popularity and the All Blacks have a high level of cut-through with fans which has won them two key Japanese sponsors and possibly more to come.
But in the last two years, NZR has burned through almost $50m of cash because no one it seems has had adequate oversight on what is being spent to capitalise on these offshore opportunities.
In theory, the board should be asking questions about where the money is going – ensuring the cost of winning new business is well-managed – but it seems that this might be the very place where the culture of excess is gripping the hardest.
NZR paid for Dame Patsy Reddy to attend the Paris Olympics earlier this year in the midst of a turbulent governance review that was dividing the game.
And NZRC is going to hold a board meeting in Dublin on November 8. Chair Ian Narev is paying his own way, while the likes of Richie McCaw and Rob Fyfe will be in Europe on other business.
The issue, however, is that NZR will be paying for its representatives, Reddy and Bailey Mackey, to attend.
The rationale for hosting the meeting in Dublin is that key international stakeholders and media companies in the market for sports rights – Mackey is on Sanzaar’s broadcasting sub-committee – like to meet directors.
And given that NZR is in the process of renegotiating its current deal, the importance of being on the ground, pressing the flesh and forging trust to help procure a critical contract is entirely justifiable.
But Reddy is standing down as chair in December and Mackey may not be reappointed as he, along with the existing board, has to reapply for his position.
It’s surely better practice to send a (Sanzaar) proxy for Mackey – another NZRC board member who is certain to still be in their role next year and for him and Reddy to log into the November 8 board meeting via Zoom.
The optics of spending what will likely end up being between $50,000-$80,000 – a serious amount of money in a provincial union budget – on a board member who is definitely standing down and another who may not be retained, are not good.
New Zealand’s brain drain to Japan
New Zealand has an odd dichotomy in that the media generally obsess about coaches, pitch them as heroes and villains and all-important in delivering team success or failure, and yet frame the players as the only rugby properties that the country needs to worry about keeping.
What’s apparent from talking to Japanese clubs’ officials, though, is that they feel that the key reason the Top League has become such an attractive destination for the world’s best players is the incredible amount of coaching IP they have been able to secure – with much of it coming from New Zealand.
Everyone thinks the best players in the world are coming to Japan purely for the money – but for most of them, it’s the desire to become better players, learn something new and expose themselves to the smartest rugby brains the game has.
The money helps, of course it does, but the Top League’s true selling point is its array of coaching superstars.
Toyota Verblitz have Hansen and Foster operating as a coaching duo – a combination that won the All Blacks a World Cup in 2015.
Deans, a former All Blacks assistant and Wallabies head coach who has won four Super Rugby titles, is at Panasonic.
Dave Rennie, who won Super Rugby titles at the Chiefs before coaching the Wallabies, is at Kobe and Todd Blackadder showed his class when he led Toshiba Brave Lupus to victory this year.
The danger for the game in New Zealand is that there is arguably considerably more coaching horsepower in the Top League than there is in Super Rugby Pacific.
It may not take long before the tables are turned and the argument becomes irrefutable that New Zealand’s best players would be better prepared for test rugby playing club rugby in Japan than they would New Zealand.
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