Has New Zealand been playing silly buggers with the ARU?

The best journalist I worked with on the Sydney Morning Herald was Evan Whitton, a master of investigative reporting and the creator of a rugby column full of wit, great writing, keen observation and a healthy disregard for the authorities which I was fortunate enough to inherit.

Whitton’s journalism was informed with this insight: get the chronology of a story right and you will get the story right, no matter how convoluted it may be.

So let us look at the chronology of the hotel bugging event involving the All Blacks during the week before the Sydney Bledisloe Cup Test.

The All Blacks management decided to arrive in Sydney on the Sunday before the Test, rather than the traditional Thursday arrival. This was done to try and stop the rot of a drawn Test and losing Test at Sydney in 2014 and 2015. As it happens, the change worked.

On Sunday evening, in their special meeting room in the hotel, the All Blacks players and management had a review of what needed to be done on and off the field leading up to the Test on the Saturday night.

The next day, Monday, the team’s management asked the security unit at the hotel to sweep the meeting room for bugs.

A bug was found sewn into the seat bottom of a chair. One of the players at the Sunday meeting apparently sat on this chair.

The security unit said that the device was “a highly skilled and meticulous act” and that a “significant amount of time” would have been needed to have pulled off such an “accomplished job.”

These quotes come from a report in the New Zealand Herald by Gregor Paul which was published around 12.30 pm (Sydney time) on the Saturday morning of the Test. It was headed ‘World exclusive: All Blacks bugged in hotel ahead of Wallabies Bledisloe Cup Test in Sydney‘.

The intricate nature of the planting of the device suggests that it was set up well before the All Blacks arrived at the hotel. The use of a chair suggests, too, that the device could have been planted out of sight of any onlookers, say in a hotel room, and the planted chair would have been carried easily into the meeting room.

It could also suggest that the device was planted for another set of meetings, some time earlier, that had nothing to do with the All Blacks.

The InterContinental Hotel is one of the best in Sydney and hosts a variety of important guests, businesses and conferences. Any number of these conferences would have included discussions of intense interest to a number of other parties.

According to Steve Tew, the chief executive of the New Zealand Rugby Union, the bugging device was found during a “routine security check” requested by the All Blacks. This statement was made on Saturday, after the publication of Gregor Paul’s World Exclusive story.

“The hotel immediately launched an investigation, we have informed the Australian rugby union, and jointly we have decided to hand over the investigation to the Australian police. We are taking this issue very seriously, and given it will be a police matter, it would not be prudent to go into further details,” Tew stated.

This is important to note. The official confirmation of the discovery of the bugging device was issued, not on Monday after the device was found, but on the following Saturday afternoon, after Gregor Paul’s World Exclusive was published.

Is this a dog that didn’t bark in the night clue?

Readers of the Conan Doyle detective stories will remember that when Dr Watson noted that a dog, the hound of the Baskervilles, did not bark on a certain night, Sherlock Holmes said that this was an important clue because “dogs are supposed to bark during the night.”

Why did the New Zealand Rugby Union not bark out the news about the bugging device on the Monday? Why was the New Zealand Rugby Union’s media release kept back until after Gregor Paul’s story.

Why did New Zealand Rugby Union wait until the following Saturday and at the same time of Gregor Paul’s story to inform the ARU about the device?

Why were the NSW Police not informed about the bugging device on the Monday it was found, rather than after Gregor Paul’s story?

Why was World Rugby (the former IRB) not informed until last Saturday?

World Rugby has its own anti-corruption website which informs the relevant rugby unions that all suspicious activity or behaviour must be reported to it “immediately,” and in serious matters to the police as well?

“In most countries, as well as contacting World Rugby, you may also be obliged to report match-fixing or potential corruption in sport to your local police service,” the World Rugby anti-corruption website suggests.

Why wasn’t SANZAAR informed? As soon as the story broke SANZAAR issued a “please explain” note to the New Zealand Rugby Union.

We come now to the most important document in this saga, the Gregor Paul exclusive, and its timing.

The article flashed up on the New Zealand Herald online service around 12.30 (AES time) on Saturday, five days after the discovery of the bugging device.

It was headed a ‘World Exclusive’ and obviously the result of a planned leak by the New Zealand Rugby Union.

The article begins with this sentence: “A sophisticated listening device was discovered in the All Blacks’ team room in their hotel ahead of tonight’s Test against the Wallabies.”

“Australian police have been alerted and the hotel has launched its own investigation,” it continued.

Notice that Paul does not say when the Australian police were alerted. The implication is that it was early on. It becomes clear in the story, though, that the police alert was on the Saturday and not on the Monday of the discovery of the bugging device.

The article then runs a statement from Steve Tew stating that “We have informed the Australian rugby union, and jointly we have now decided to hand over the investigation to the Australian Police.”

Gregor Paul then quotes some comments made to him by Bill Pulver, the chief executive of the ARU, clearing his organisation of any involvement or knowledge of the event: “Look, I have literally just seen a note from Steve Tew telling me about this and a brief statement they (the New Zealand Rugby Union) are about to put out which confirms that they found a listening device and the two unions have agreed to hand the matter over to the police.”

Pulver was quoted as going to the heart of the matter: “Mate, of course (the ARU is not involved). It is completely ludicrous concept … I don’t know how that happened.”

Pulver then got to the heart of the matter, in my opinion. He questioned the motives of the New Zealand Rugby Union by stating his concern that the media was revealing the scandal on “match day … and that’s all I’ve got to say.”

This revealing and fair comment by Pulver is followed by Gregor Paul making this sort of editorialising comment in response to Pulver: “However, the revelation will send shock waves around the world game and is likely to force an investigation by governing body World Rugby into whether the integrity of the game has been compromised.”

I find this statement by Gregor Paul quite disturbing. It clearly suggests that the ARU was somehow involved in the bugging device scandal. Why would the issue of the integrity of the game being “compromised” be raised immediately after Pulver denying that the ARU was involved?

Gregor Paul’s article was clearly written with plenty of advance notice from the New Zealand Rugby Union. He had time to establish the details of the bugging and then set up interviews with Tew and Pulver.

In the past, too, Gregor Paul has been used by New Zealand rugby bodies to put the boot into Australian rugby people. It was Paul, for instance, who leaked a SANZAAR cover-up of a second incident by the then Waratahs coach Michael Cheika during a game against the Blues.

If the SANZAAR investigation had gone through the proper protocols Cheika would/should have been found guilty of breaching an prohibition order and would have been out of rugby for six months, compromising his position as the new Wallabies coach.

This should not be read as an attack on Gregor Paul. It is a compliment to him. Every journalist covering a round, in Paul’s case big time rugby, would give one of his typing fingers to be trusted by the officials with inside stories on big news matters.

And if this means giving the story the slant that the leakers want to give, then so be it. That is the pact that the leaker makes to the leaked to reporter.

New Zealand rugby (the All Blacks and the New Zealand Rugby Union, in particular) knew that the bugging device had nothing to do with the Bledisloe Cup Test. But they used the incident to try and embarrass the ARU.

To begin with, security sweeps by the All Blacks have been a “routine matter” for over a decade, according to Sir Graham Henry.

This raises the question of why the team’s meeting room was used on the Sunday before the routine security sweep.

The police make the point, too, that if the All Blacks were so concerned about the suspicious electronic bug, why were they not informed until the morning of the Test, some five days after it was found. This delay was “not ideal” to find out what the device was planted for, the Rose Bay Local Area Commander Superintendant Brad Hodder told reporters.

The police also made the point that whoever was responsible for the device would have to know where the All Blacks were having their security meeting, information that was not public knowledge.

Steve Hansen is a former police detective. He knows how these things work. He was comfortable, it seems, about the delay in informing the police.

He told reporters after the All Blacks shattering Test victory over the Wallabies: “The reason that we didn’t go there (to the relevant authorities) straight away is we went through a process with the hotel and our CEO (Steve Tew) was away at the Olympics, and he arrived, and he needed to be spoken to and fully briefed on it. Once he was fully briefed, he said ‘righto’ we need to take this to the police.”

In this day of instant contact by laptop, mobile phones and Skype, it seems strange to me that Tew wasn’t informed electronically about the device. This would have resulted in the police being informed on the Monday, and the rest of the rugby world at the same time.

Hansen also told the reporters that “I wasn’t too bothered about the device … no one knows who has done it.”

On Sunday, the New Zealand Herald reported that Grant Fox, a selector of the All Blacks, was adamant that the Bug-Gate scandal (as it had escalated to) was not used as motivation to spur the All Blacks on to their massive victory over the Wallabies.

The players were told about the bugging device, Fox said, about four hours before the Test. It had no impact on them, he suggested.

He was at pains to point out that the All Blacks were not accusing anybody of planting the device.

On Monday, in The Australian, Bret Harris reported that the listening device was “powered by batteries, which had a limited life-span, indicating the All Blacks were indeed the target.”

But how limited is the life-span of the batteries? It could indicate just as easily that some other group, meeting in the room at an earlier date, had planted the device.

Again on Monday, in the SMH, Tom Decent had this: “One of the theories being floated, while speculative, is that someone may have been trying to obtain information for betting purposes.”

I think, though, that the Suzie Solution is a better way to organise a plunge against the All Blacks than to listen in to some team meetings.

In all this fog of conjecture, some facts from the time line stand out.

First, a listening device was found in the All Blacks meeting room in their hotel.

Second, New Zealand Rugby waited five days, until the best possible moment to put pressure on the ARU (and the Wallabies), to announce the details of what they had found. It was not a matter of concern for them.

Three, these details were first revealed by a reporter, rather than the New Zealand Rugby authorities.

Four, the failure to alert the proper authorities about the bugging device has compromised any investigation to the extent that it is likely that nothing will emerge about who did what, when and why.

All this suggests to me that for reasons known only to them, the All Blacks decided to use the discovery of a bugging device that they believed had nothing to do with them, as a ploy to put some further pressure on an already embattled Wallabies side.

This was an exercise in much ado about nothing, I would suggest. The poor selection of the Wallabies playing 23, their inadequate preparation and their lack of match play had already set up the likelihood of the rout that occurred at the ANZ Stadium.