Rugby as a business has pushed it into crisis mode
Roar Rookie By Chris Laidlaw, 16 Jul 2010 Chris Laidlaw is a Roar Rookie
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A generation ago the rugby establishment worldwide had lapsed into a kind of evolutionary coma; frozen solid while the world washed over it, leaving it behind as a fossilised relic of a gentlemanly age that had gone. Yet, within a relatively short time much of what was wrong with rugby had been transformed.
The game took a great jump-shift forward. It extricated itself from under the rotting carcass of apartheid in South Africa. A more business-like approach was taken to the game’s finances and its often appalling public relations. In New Zealand the administration was radically restructured.
The large, unwieldy NZRU council – an unruly parliament of all the country’s provincial unions – gave way to a new executive board as the primary decision-making body.
Rugby took its first few steps toward becoming a business but few of us realized just how far that would go, or how quickly and destructively. We do now.
Rugby is in crisis mode once again because the market has got its hands firmly round the game’s throat. Markets, being markets, bring a confusing mixture of wealth and suffering.
In rugby those two conditions can be neatly equated with the two dimensions of the game, the professional and the amateur. One is consuming like there’s no tomorrow, while the other is sitting outside with a begging bowl.
Trickle down isn’t working.
The market certainly needs to have a place in rugby but must it always be the only determinant? As the eminently pragmatic Chicago economist, Charles Kindelburger, so pithily put it, “Where the market doesn’t work, don’t use it”.
That lesson is being painfully learned by governments and businesses all over the world as they come to terms with the devastation wreaked by free market greed yet it seems to be passing rugby by. As in the 1970s, rugby needs a revolution.
Many of those in the corporate sector who now effectively call the tune are equally convinced they are doing the right thing by the game and their sincerity is, mostly, very real.
But the interests of their own organisations and those of rugby don’t always coincide. They see it purely as a business and they want it run as a business.
They just don’t have any other frame of reference and all too often they push the game further out toward potential disaster without the slightest awareness of the risks.
It is the clash of those corporate interests with rugby’s community spirit that has caused the crisis that the game now faces and the most worrying thing about it all is that there seems to be no particular wish to come to terms with what all-out professionalism really means for rugby.
Rugby is now like the organ grinder’s monkey. It dances to the tune of a new owner: the market. In many ways the new owner has been remarkably beneficent.
It has enabled rugby to gain a foothold in a variety of new countries, something that wouldn’t have happened if the old amateur Commonwealth regime had continued to hold sway.
In some countries, like the United States, soccer mums have been joined by rugger mums.
The new owner has showered gifts upon those who play it best but that beneficence doesn’t filter all the way down to those who still play it for pleasure.
In many ways, it is now a case of trickle up. The game is divided into the haves and the have nots and the two dimensions are drifting inexorably apart.
This is an exclusive excerpt from Chris Laidlaw’s new book, Somebody Stole My Game, out now. Buy a copy through Mighty Ape.
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July 16th 2010 @ 3:48pm
Matt said | July 16th 2010 @ 3:48pm | Report comment
To be fair, I bought the book on early pre-order and found the whole thing to be particularly negative. I’d love for Mr Laidlaw to write a follow up book detailing the positives of the current game.
Realistically things can only go down for us in NZ rugby. Or stay similar. We had the worlds best domestic competition and the best national team back in 1996 when the game went pro. Where were expecting it to go for us?
These days NZ needs to privatize Provincial rugby into an 8 team competiton with crossover games against RSA, AUS and JAP. This will provide a relevant link for the pro game to the amateur game and will also reduce the financial burden on the NZRU.
We also need some kind of signed accord where the tier 1 nations agree not to sign more than 2 foreign tier 1 players to their clubs. Instead they are allowed to sign 5 tier 2 and 3 players. This will strengthen the game in smaller nations and make international rugby more competitive whole also reducing the exodus of talent from the south to the north.
July 16th 2010 @ 4:55pm
Working Class Rugger said | July 16th 2010 @ 4:55pm | Report comment
Matt
I’d still like to see some sort of scenario between both NZ and Australia similar to nearly every other professional sporting code ( AFL). You know what I mean. Would quickly become one of the best comps in the World.
July 18th 2010 @ 8:03pm
zhenry said | July 18th 2010 @ 8:03pm | Report comment
….’These days NZ needs to privatize Provincial rugby’…………. On what authority do you make that statement? Why? How much?
It really irritates me when people throw the term privatisation around as if it is some kind of magic bullet for solving perceived problems. Privatisation? Allowing Corporations to take over and put profit first regardless is not the answer. John O’Neill thinks so too he has seen both sides of the coin. Tew has not got the intelligence of O’Neill and he just might do what you mindlessly say; NZ will go downhill if he does. The AB kudos was built from the grassroots and mostly during the amateur era. That does not mean you eschew private money but a body administers it that has the development of rugby as the main value, not profit only. That is the point O’Neill makes. Privatisation is actually a dirty word in many sections of the community just look at the energy industry in Australia. That’s what Laidlaw is on about.
July 16th 2010 @ 4:15pm
Gatesy said | July 16th 2010 @ 4:15pm | Report comment
As a book “teaser”, I’m sure it’s fine. As a stand-alone article, it achieves nothing.
It seems to me that if you state a problem, you should at least have a stab at stating the solution
July 16th 2010 @ 4:47pm
titus said | July 16th 2010 @ 4:47pm | Report comment
They say the worst thing about getting old is remembering what it was like when you were young.
So Chris, what’s the solution? Oh that’s right, I’ll have to buy the book.
July 16th 2010 @ 4:58pm
Coxinator said | July 16th 2010 @ 4:58pm | Report comment
With all the business acumen a lot of former players have, it still amazes me how short-sighted some of the decisions made by rugby boards are. When we look at how quickly the A league establishes itself and how afl works new areas from the ground up through Auskick, what ate our decision makers doing? Great stuff Chris.
July 16th 2010 @ 9:48pm
Mr Denmore said | July 16th 2010 @ 9:48pm | Report comment
The critics here of Laidlaw are completely missing the point. He is saying that market-driven sport tends to hollow out the very spirit that built the sport in the first place. It creates exogenous effects that harm the game as a whole.
This is exactly what has happened in the financial markets and banking system these past three years. The regulatory framework was set up to protect the individual parts, not the banking system as a whole and the effect a blow-up would have on the wider economy.
Witness what is happening to the second tier of rugby talent in New Zealand. Vacummed up by the high-playing clubs of France and the UK and depriving NZ rugby of players who might otherwise have matured into solid internationals.
Look at England, where the power of the money-making clubs is such that the national team is often deprived of its best English players and must resort to former Kiwi league internationals.
Consider the meaningless cross-hemisphere “tours” in which northern teams, crammed full of second and third choice players, come to the south on a “development” basis or in which southern teams trundle up to the north every November to play one country a week in one-off tests that look ahead to the four-yearly World Cup.
“The market” is now so dominant that the capitalist tail wags the community dog. Laidlaw is right. Just as we are learning from the global financial crisis, placing our faith blindly in the power of markets creates wider costs to society and to the community ties that make our lives and our sport rich.
July 17th 2010 @ 6:22am
kovana said | July 17th 2010 @ 6:22am | Report comment
There always Positives and negatives with Growth of the Game.
At this time, the positives outweigh the negatives.
Anyways, What should be the solution? Have national teams reject sponsership from the market? Have the players pay their own way?
July 17th 2010 @ 9:34am
Billo Boy said | July 17th 2010 @ 9:34am | Report comment
What if 7s are the stellar success everyone predicts? Laidlaw says it could easily be rugby’s version of 20/Twenty, with money pouring into that form of the game. What then for the game of XV? Amateur clubs getting by on raffles and players having to pay their own way? It’s cheaper for amateur clubs to run with teams of 7 and not 15. Young players will aspire to the bigger money, globe trotting lifestyle and career longevity of 7s. There is a very real risk that the global rugby game by the end of this decade will be 7s not XVs.
July 17th 2010 @ 6:41pm
Warren said | July 17th 2010 @ 6:41pm | Report comment
7′s will never as with 20/20 cricket will never be able to compete with the full test competition. Firstly the players as in cricket will tell you what they would rather play & I am sure it will be XV a side. What needs to happen is a complete relook at the rules that make rugby unattractive to move it forward. Unless you have played the game there is a real struggle to understand the complexities of the sport. Some may say that why should this happen but I can tell you RU will never get past RL in Australia with the current rubbish that is being dealt up on a week to week basis in either the Super 14 or tests. The constant stoppages and kicking is taking away from the core of the game which is running with the ball and the skills that are displayed by doing so. Another issue I see that since professionalism the smaller nations can no longer compete. The gap is becoming greater with the level of money put into the development of the major national sides. This must be very discouraging for the Fijian & Somoan people of whom rugby has been a major part of their national upbringing. Not sure this can be changed but it is disappointing.
July 18th 2010 @ 9:15am
Jock M said | July 18th 2010 @ 9:15am | Report comment
The Title of Chris Laidlaw’s book is tragically apt.
However Rugby has not only been stolen,it has been killed and cremated.
The game they play now is not Rugby as we knew it but rather a Rugby League on dope.
See Graham Henry’s comments on the All Blacks latest test win- he said; we awere able to get a continuous run of possession”.
No mention of a full and open contest.
I will not watch another game of Test Rugby until a full contest at the breakdown is reinstated.
I would be interested in Mr Laidlaw’s comments.
July 18th 2010 @ 1:59pm
Lorry said | July 18th 2010 @ 1:59pm | Report comment
Warren
you seem to be a Leaguie – you’re not Paul Kent in disguise, are you?!
The gap has closed in some ways, look at Scotland beating Australia and the excellent competitive play of Tonga and Fiji at the last world cup…
What was ‘dished up’ in this year’s Super 14 is certainly not rubbish; and changing the rules to suit your tastes would probably mean 13 players, no scrums or lineouts and a bomb every 5th tackle…
July 21st 2010 @ 7:12pm
sheek said | July 21st 2010 @ 7:12pm | Report comment
Chris,
I don’t mean to be rude, but I reckon Sid Going was better than you, & although you were technically better, he was individually brilliant.
But the best ABs no.9 I’ve seen would have to be Dave Trapper Loveridge.