New Zealand National Press Club crowds have been revived in 2009 after a disappointing Rugby World Cup year. In general, the New Zealand Super 14 crowds remain flagging and disinterested.
Super 14/15 starts ridiculously early for any audience interest; it’s a gross over exposure of the code and helps kill off its core interest; it stretches audience finances; it eats up almost half a year; it exhausts the players and is responsible for the huge increase in injuries.
The All Black injury toll in 2009 has been horrendous.
The fact that the Super 14 competition involves international teams right through its season has not been attractive enough.
The Super 15 proposal will change that, and in New Zealand, the Super 15 will be a bit like two NPC’s, with a bit of an international flourish during the finals.
Combine the two competitions, you might say.
But the essential grassroots crowd and player base for the NPC can’t be duplicated unless the format of the Super competition is completely changed.
And so we have a revived NPC and an ailing Super competition.
What does Mr Tew do? Increase the Super at the expense of the NPC so that, supposedly, we can use TV financial rights to enable even a truncated NPC?
That policy obviously suits ARU chief Mr O’Neill.
I have never read an acceptable detailed financial account that New Zealand could not financially continue with their 14 team national competition.
Sure, there is an economic downturn which, because of peak oil, is probably fairly permanent, which is an added reason why we should firstly look to our own economies of scale. So, like everyone else, the players and teams will have to economise, whether that be 14 or 10 teams, and 14 teams will achieve a higher standard for our national game.
Apparently the more Super teams you have, the more an already disinterested public will embrace that competition. Bizarre!
John O’Neill is about the ‘top down’ super quick fix. The vulnerable ARU has a private school nursery with no prolonged national competition or TV exposure.
O’Neill will change this, with the help of Tew, by further exposing an already over exposed and flagging Super competition. New Zealand Rugby Union’s (NZRU) Tew is no match for the sweet talking lawyer O’Neill.
We have to keep in mind that when the supply and demand for oil is at a critical point – which will probably be in the next 5 years (and sooner rather than later) – the world economy will, quite quickly, drastically change, and unlike Australia, we have an NPC to sustain us.
I don’t think Mr Tew – and O’Neill for that matter – appreciates the fact that a prolonged international Super competition will become financially unmanageable, even for the Murdoch’s of this world.
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