So we play Super Rugby to gain access to Australia and South Africa’s money. We need the money to retain our players and recent articles suggest that our income is about to go up significantly from the next deal (in the realms of $200M to be split between Aus and NZ).

Apparently it’s about a 20% increase on the last 5 year deal offer. But then it is hardly a gain at all when you consider there is a new team entering the competition and that the number of local derbies has gone up significantly (from 4 to 8). There is also now an extended finals format and the competition will run for over 20 weeks.

So just whether there is much profit to be made will be interesting.

The AB’s will continue to remain the major bread earner for the NZRU. The Super 14 teams used to be big earners, particularly the Hurricanes. Yet now you have the Highlanders losing a lot of money each season and even the Crusaders struggled to a financial loss this season, despite performing quite well on the table.

The competition also remains heavily dependent on long haul travel, which isn’t exactly going to get cheaper in the future either. But you can guarantee, whatever the costs, that if the NH weren’t so keen on signing SH stars then Super Rugby would only be a bit part on our calander. But it’d take the FFR and Premier Rugby to fall on their swords to fiz that. The FFR has set about creating a progressive 3 year plan towards a 40% cap on overseas players, to go with the new official Salary Cap of 8M euros, significantly more than the GP still and a lot more than the Super 14 sides (which are around the $4M mark I believe).

The only hope NZ domestic rugby has is if the Super15 model continues to evolve. If it expands again NZ might hope that it becomes 6 teams per national conference. Then we’d see the Southern Kings and a West Sydney team enter the comp and NZ might be able to include a Central Vikings equivalent out of Hawkes Bay or Taranaki. But after that NZ rugby will struggle to find the finances to pay for a 7th team.

But here’s hoping.

My wish is that the NZRFU give priority to the NPC (in reality, a majority of NZRFU’s income comes from the SANZAR TV deal). Is it feasible for the NZRFU to negotiate a separate deal for the NPC (like SA)?

I agree with alternative 14-team NPC format proposed by Scott Preston of stuff.co.nz (http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/rugby/opinion/3176573/The-NPC-format-you-won-t-see). The knowledgeable readers of theroar.com.au may have already read the article.

In summary he proposes:
- “all 14 teams involved in 1 tier, split into 2 permanent conferences of 7″
- Conference 1: Otago, Canterbury, Hawke’s Bay, Manawatu, Bay of Plenty, Auckland and Counties
- Conference 2: Southland, Tasman, Wellington, Taranaki, Waikato, Harbour and Northland
- regular season consists of 10 regular season games (6 intra-conference & 4 inter-conference)
- 4 inter-conference games:
* 1 of the inter-conference games would be locked-in every year against a close traditional/geographical rival (preferably
all played in the same weekend – Rivalry Week) and
* the other 3 inter-conference games would be on rotation. (each team would play the remaining 3 inter-conference teams
in the following year. (In a 2-year cycle, teams would be guaranteed to play every team at least once).
- Because all teams are on the same tier, all points would count.
- Semifinals:
* involving the 2 conferences winners and the 2 next best teams on points (this ensures a strong conference in a certain
year won’t be disadvantaged by only having two semifinals spots).

1. “The NZRU did present a fait accompli to the smaller unions.”

It’s true that the NZRU was happy with the decision, but the fact is that it was decided by a vote of the unions. Equally true is that the vote was not unanimous (8-6 and 9-5 were counts I heard). The correct statement would be that the large (i.e., S14-franchise bases) drove the decision.

2. “Your figures regarding financies are way off. Zhenry quotes a couple of examples of provincial bosses stating that is not the real problem. Most of the teams come no where near the 2 million salary cap.”

This is strictly true but in essence it is false. The figures I heard are that Counties have the lowest salary bill of NZ$800k pa (in other words, their no-name players earn on average about $30-40k per season), and that most others are spending $1.5m pa or more. Places like Southland can afford it because they are bankrolled by their liquor licensing trust (which is bit like NRL teams used to be bankrolled by poker-machine money), but they are one of the few success stories, with the vast majority of ANZC teams running at losses.

3. “You will notice how Riach down plays the economic issues.”

The one issue that all 14 provinces agreed on unanimously at their (infamous) meeting is that the competition in its current format is economically unsustainable. So actually, it is almost entirely about economic issues.

4. “I can understand your zealousness to impose your Australian point of view”

I was actually writing as someone who lives in NZ, who pays Sky subs, who follows Canterbury, who enjoys ANZC rugby as the most entertaining played in the world, and who for all these reasons has as much ownership of this competition as any Kiwi. My comments had nothing at all to do with being Australian! My support for a 10-team competition has nothing to do with wanting to promote Australian rugby at NZ’s expense. I am on record as saying that Australian rugby deserves all the problems it has for being too bigoted to get its own national competition going.

One thing you two guys are right on though is the window for the competition: it is now known that plenty of teams were happy to play Wednesday night games in order to fit a larger competition in a smaller timeframe (Andrew Golightly spoke about this on RadioSport on Saturday morning), but the NZRU didn’t want to know about it.

It’s interesting that one of you wrote of peak oil and that “Air travel will become hugely expensive and international sport competitions will be severely hit.” David Moffett wrote in Saturday’s Press that Air NZ is extremely unimpressed with the decision to retain 14 teams, and that they are considering withdrawing their sponsorship. If that happens, then a 14-team will immediately collapse.

Someone else in the Saturday Press wrote that this decision is a case of “the tail wagging the dog”. Indeed. This is not to say that it isn’t a nice-looking tail on a nice-looking dog. But the reality is that a 14-team competition is economically unsustainable, so the dog is going to die at some stage unless there is radical reduction of expenditure.

Another thing that NZ rugby supporters need to accept is that NZ rugby relies on significant input of money from Australia and South Africa to exist in its current state. NZ has the players but Australia and South Africa have the money. This may seem unfair, but it’s just a reality of having a small economy. NZ Cricket relies on Indian money, and NZ league relies on Australian money. Without NZ opening itself up to international competitions, the money will dry up, and players will have no choice but to flock offshore en masse. I fully understand why NZ people would say to forget Super rugby, but the reality is that NZ rugby cannot financially do without it.

“Whatever they agreed, which was a legal agreement between the provinces of the NZRU, they spent a lot of time on that and everybody said `yeah, that’s what we want’, I think that’s what they should stick by, otherwise they’re going to continue to have this hassle,” he said.

“I just think if you’re going to go forward, you’ve just got to have an integrity in those things and go by what you say.

“Otherwise you’re always going to have these problems, you’re going to have people arguing about it, people coming from left field making big suggestions when they don’t know what’s going on. I just think they should adhere to what they agreed upon.”

Henry didn’t think any changes to the Air NZ Cup would impact on the depth in New Zealand rugby.

“I think you’ll see the players who’ve got the quality will make sure they play football.”

There is no doubt in my mind what Henry thinks. The fact that he has not enlarged on his comments is significant. The questions are given short thrift. The response is generalised, inaccurate and shows disregard for how the NPC is to be run.
A 14 team NPC provides a wider range of players with more top class competition than any 10 team format can give. This years NPC saw even the lowest ranked team stretch a top team. Exposing as many players to top class competition is the cornerstone of player development and improving any sporting group. NPC optimum health is absolutely critical for the continuing and improving success of the All Blacks.
I don’t know Henry’s agenda: It may be just an attempt to support his ‘kind of’ mate Tew re the approaching 14 to 10 NPC decision. Henry’s comments link in with the crucial NPC debate and the direction of NZ rugby.

The NPC is the lynch pin to All Black rugby and Tew is not the man to safe guard it.
He is simplistic, an ideologue and not intelligent enough with the big picture of NZ rugby. As ‘a crowd’ comment indicated,
PR, Sky and money ditto ditto. Tew press comment yesterday, …“there was a long “consultative and democratic” process.” in reference to the NPC issue. Exactly the opposite he is out of touch with the grassroots and set up the smaller unions for a fait accompli. He seems to have got carried away with big money (useful if administered well) and the trappings of his office rather than the central issues of NZ rugby. Rather than a Super15, revamping Super and combining the NPC with the SA and Aust counterparts, should have been his initiative.

It also has to be said that the Australian media almost completely own the NZ media. No other country that I know of has completely sold off their own media. The Australian board members of those companies mix with the board members of Australian business and no doubt with O’Neill. The Wallabies is the sporting mascot of corporate NSW and QLD. Of course if there are disputes between the two countries the media will favour its country of origin. Media corporations are very much top down controlled. This media bent towards Australia happens with NZ rugby union and, in fact, right across the board. NZ journalists have to eat, they are nailed into the sandwich.

The truth is that the Super franchises are soon to be contracting their players directly anyway, so the NPC money will be a top up wage in comparison for most players. The AB’s won’t set foot in the NPC either and their income will come solely from Super rugby and AB’s test matches.

The salary cap is set to be slashed, with most suggesting a new level somewhere around $800K per team. On top of that is the fact that many Unions are now doing well financially and that all the heartache caused by player demand, upon the initial expansion of 4 extra pro teams, has now subsided. Most of the $2.5M loss this season came from Canterbury of all places, the winners of the competition. They posted a loss of over $800K, brought about by the demise of their major sponsor and commercial partner Lane Walker Rudkin (an instant $400K+ loss). Last years major financial underperformer was Otago, another of the ‘Big 5′ unions. They lost over $1M (it was even more in 2007) thanks to their ownership of the heavily depreciating Carisbrook ground. They have since gone about slashing their playing roster from 35 players down to the minimum 26. So the fact remains that many of the Unions that are suggested to be relegated are actually financially solvent, while many big Unions are the ones struggling financially.

So what do the Big 5 ask for, they want the smaller provinces culled so the talent can be stockpiled under their playing rosters and so they can get a bigger piece of the financial pie. If anything this process has been the model example of self serving interests. Australia want an expanded Super14 to cover the lack of a domestic comp. The Super14 based NPC provinces want the small guys dropped so they can hoard the assets to prop up their Super teams. Steve Tew is trying to cover himself because for once he hasn’t sat on the fence (normally done to save himself from being held accountable) and it’s backfired on him.

Henry’s comment seems like a fairly small snippet to be basing articles on (I’m talking about the general print media, not ZHenry’s inspiration for a good debate) and the amount of content encapsulated in speech marks suggested to me that he didn’t really give a well thought out or detailed opinion of his feelings.

The truth is that teams like Northland, Counties, Manawatu and Tasman have been competitive on the field. They’ve envigorated support for Rugby in their non unsubstantial provinces and have PROVEN to be a pathway for talent that wasn’t there before. In Manawatu alone, on top of Super14 players like Aaron Cruden, Nick Crosswell, Andre Taylor, Hayden Triggs and Johnny Leota you also have guys playing for the NZ sevens team (soon to be competing at the Commonwealth Games and the Olympics) like Kurt Baker, Lote Raikabula and Tomasi Cama. Northland has Bronson Harrison and Rene Ranger, Counties has Lelia Masaga and Tim Nainai-Williams and , plus DJ Forbes and Sherwen Stowers in the Sevens team. Tasman has Jonathan Poff, Kahn Fotuali’i, Chris Jack, Kade Poki and Ben Franks, plus Sevens player Afileke Pelenise.

So all 4 unions have helped New Zealand’s cause in terms of building player depth and offering genuine opportunities for players to be seen by higher level coaches and to further their careers.

Why is it that the competition that get’s such great fan support and has some much great rugby is to be reduced at the expense of expanding a competition that no one in NZ really cares that much about and which is shedding fans at games and on tv depite NZ teams dominating?

The two 8 team divisions you mentioned is also wrong, it was two 7 team divisions – and that idea fitted within the 12 week window that now seems to be the most important thing. The real issue here is that the 6 team second division they are talking about will probably not be viable – if it was there probably wouldn’t be any debate.

The NZRU did present a fait accompli to the smaller unions. They had no choice under the circumstances. The NZRU was not a facilitator, they did drive (I would call it coerce) the smaller unions into agreeing with a 10 team NPC. They did it by offering an immutable frame of reference: The small unions had to fit the NPC into the truncated time frame caused by the extended Super Comp agreement. This fact has been well documented in NZ. And no, the necessity is not money:
Today Mr Riach (Canterbury RU Chief Executive) states,….that need not be so. (He is referring to a 10 team NPC). “Our view has always been that the competition needs to fit in a window between the end of Super rugby and club rugby and the end of October, before the All Blacks go on their end of year tour. It seems to us that a 10-team competition best fits that window, so we’re driven by the competition window as opposed to the number of teams,” he further states, “it’s about wanting to complete the domestic competition with the best players involved before the All Blacks leave (You’ve heard that somewhere before)….the real issue is the window.”

We don’t have an NRL type salary cap. I think it is a misleading to throw around dollar amounts based on an assumed structure, as justification for policy. Let’s look at the overall structure first in which that money system is to operate.
By HAMISH BIDWELL – The Press Last updated 05:00 10/12/2009:
Riach did not deny that finances, playing record, stadiums and participation numbers were not problems for some unions, but insisted that the NZRU board’s decision had to be about the competition’s time frame and not just the strong wanting to get rid of the weak.
NZRU chief executive Steve Tew has recommended a four-team cull to his board, prompting some to speculate that his position would become untenable should that be rejected. Riach would not offer a view on what a retention of 14 teams could mean for Tew.

You will notice how Riach down plays the economic issues. I have written many times on Roar about how the present Super Comp (not to mention the expanded one) exhausts our players and crowds.
There is not doubt that a truncated or completely revamped Super Comp would see our NPC crowds significantly increase. We could successfully combine both comps in my opinion.
NZRU does need TV rights but more than Australia we must balance throwing money at the top with player and crowd burn out and the nurturing of our nursery the NPC.
We are in a completely different situation to Australia.

I don’t think it is helpful to be making self righteous statements such as ‘only responsible decision,’ ‘not doing the right thing for NZ rugby.’ It is very clear that our NPC will define our differences for the future and I can understand your zealousness to impose your Australian point of view. Tew’s support of O’Neill was crucial to his quick fix, but that is what, in my opinion, it is.

Quick fix or TV rights; throwing money at the top. He is of course right to a certain extent but no players, no AB’s and no TV rights. Our NPC is intricately bound up with that. I think his policy is out of balance for NZ. His public comments strike me as not having the intellectual grip required for what is best for NZ.

Our players will always go overseas (see later in this article) but some of our AB’s have returned. UK/Europe also has economic problems, the enticements are not so enticing and the standard of play and unrelenting physical demand is a problem.
Tim Bateman may well consider NZ the best place for his family. NZ has a good prognosis for ‘climate change’ and is better placed than most for ‘peak oil’. Not because of our own actions but because of the fertility and placement of NZ itself.

When I wrote the article I did not expect much interest, being NZ issues etc. I think your intensity is great but l think emotion is ruling some of your comments. You sense a threat and I think that is real. Many prominent people have gone public over scraping a 14 NPC. There is no doubt the 14 teams give more players the opportunity, a two tier format does not give. I don’t know what Henry’s agenda is but his comments are clearly nonsense. Your comments re NZ Player Assoc are difficult to follow and you seem in places to argue against yourself.

Recently the AB’s drew an 80,000 crowd in Milan. Every cent of the crowd takings went to the Italian RU. NZ with a small population is at a severe disadvantage with IRB policy which does not have equal sharing of international test gates. NZRU needs to focus on this issue, be persistent, informed and have a well organised campaign to change IRB policy. I am sure O’Neill would help us out! This would solve many of our financial problems.

Thanks for the empathy by the way. Writing about cloud-cuckoo land though, we come to the last but not least: For commercial reasons the world is largely ignoring the peak oil issue. But it is real, and expensive fossil fuels are a huge issue. Most likely in the next 5 years or less there will be an oil spike and the world economy will be seriously affected. Air travel will become hugely expensive and international sport competitions will be severely hit.

Our NPC will be in place and we should be adjusting to economies of scale right now. The Murdoch’s of this world will most likely be severely hit. Might be wrong but very unlikely, it would be a huge gamble to bank on future TV rights.
Good on you, again appreciate your response.

But seriously the NPC needs to adjust to the future, which appears to be Super Rugby, for better or worse. Which in that case means it should stay a 14 team competition, but move to be fully semi-professional and work underneath Super Rugby. It would run simultaneously and be home and away. In effect a second division… Same with the Currie Cup while they’re at it. Two professional competitions is a little ridiculous.

Promotion/relegation should occur automatically and not determined by the winner of such match. After an emotional high of preparing and winning the division 2 and 3 grand final it’s a terrible way to end the season to backup for another game which is equally important.

This decision has been three years in the making as the NZRU reneged the past two years on culling the first division. It is a tough decision particularly for those unions that will miss out but look at it this way, competition is a great driver to achieve excellence. Players get cut from teams and still have the opportunity to force their way back in, those four unions will have the same opportunity.

One is that the reduction to 14 teams was agreed to by the provinces themselves, with the NZRU just acting as a “facilitator” at the meeting that formulated the new plan – the decisions made were not driven by the NZRU. Now that 4 provinces are within days of facing the chop, naturally they want to reverse the earlier decisions. But why did they agree to it in the first place? Because deep down they knew it was necessary.

Why is it necessary? Because of money. Currently the salary cap is $2 million per team per season. This is the bare minimum needed for the major unions not to haemorrhage players – yes, even more than currently leave – to the better paying competitions of the northern hemisphere. So do the maths: 14 x $2m is $28m, which is significantly more than the current competition generates. So there are three choices: (1) continue as currently and watch most of the provinces experience financial ruin (even Canterbury made a major financial loss this year), (2) retain 14 teams but reduce the salary cap, in which case watch players leave in their droves, or (3) retain the current salary cap but reduce the number of teams, so number of teams times salary cap does correspond more closely to the total revenue generated. A fourth choice would be to grow the overall size of the financial pie, but in 4 years of trying that hasn’t happened (if anything the pie has got smaller), so there is no sound reason to think that will change (e.g., NZ is close to saturation in terms of Sky subscriptions).

Really (3) is the only responsible decision, as both (1) and (2) ultimately are not doing the right thing for NZ rugby in the long term. It’s a bitter pill to swallow that NZ provinces have to be relegated because of the salaries of northern hemisphere competitions, but that is economic reality. A guy like Tim Bateman might stay in NZ rugby on $100k pa and the lure of an All Black jersey. However he’s not going to do it for $50k pa when he can earn $200k pa overseas, because he has a family to look after, and he owes it to them to take financial security rather than a dream and the smell of an oily rag.

If one looks beyond the emotion, Henry actually made an interesting point: that the standard of the All Blacks will not be affected by culling 4 teams. He’s correct: not a single player from Tasman, Northland, Counties and Manawatu played for the All Blacks this year (and I’d estimate that about 50 players were in AB squads during 2010). It’s true that Tasman contributed Ben Franks last year, and that Aaron Cruden from Manawatu seems destined to be an All Black, to give two examples. But we all know that both of these will immediately find homes elsewhere as soon as the cull is made (in fact Franks is really just a Canterbury player on loan to Tasman).

So yes, there is romanticism to the bottom 4 teams, and they do play bravely. But the reality is that top-end player depth will not be affected by their culling.

Finally, apparently the NZ Player’s Association is now in favour of 14 teams having originally been for 10. I heard that part of their proposal is that next year there will also be a 14-team competition, and then in the year after that there will be a top division of 8 and a bottom division of 8. How exactly is that different, in anything but semantics, to the current plan? There will be little interest in televising matches from the bottom division of 8, and from what I can gather this is actually the main problem that the doomed 4 unions have at the moment: that Sky has indicated it won’t televise the first division (or whatever that division of 6 is to be called).

What I like about the proposal is that teams from the second-tier level can be promoted. So if they are good enough, they will be able to do a Hawke’s Bay, i.e., get promoted and then prosper. And if they aren’t good enough … well that just shows that they probably shouldn’t be there in the first place.

Anyway, I want to stress that I have plenty of empathy for Tasman, Manawatu, Counties and Northland. But this is not about sentiment. A reality of professional sport is that you have to accept that a lot of things get driven by economics, as is the case here. People in NZ may want to romanticize, but anyone who says that going back to amateur days will be good for NZ rugby is living in cloud-cuckoo land.