Patrick Gower: National guilty of hands in the ruck

Taxpayers are losing out as the bidding war over rights to screen the Rugby World Cup escalates. Photo / Richard Robinson

Remember the utter shambles as the All Blacks bombed out of the last Rugby World Cup because they could not organise a simple drop-goal in Cardiff?

If the failure to do the strikingly obvious that day left you horrified, then best to cover your eyes before watching the Government's bungling of the free-to-air television rights for the next Rugby World Cup.

Many rugby cliches have been used to describe the television rights shemozzle, but the most simple explanation is this: TVNZ and TV3 give up. National's players are mostly asleep. Pita Sharples and Te Puni Kokiri play some clever rugby, seeing a gap and selling a dummy to get through it. They put Maori TV away. National's defence wakes up and immediately starts disrupting play by putting their hands into the ruck.

Maori TV is chopped down with a particularly vicious high tackle just inches from the tryline. The game seems over. But Maori TV threatens to bring on its impact players, the cash-rich iwi. Game on again.

The most worrying factor to New Zealanders should be what is happening behind the scenes with the rest of the World Cup if this is anything to go by. TVNZ is now winning a ridiculous auction with Maori TV where they are racheting up the cost by bidding against each other with taxpayers' money.

The IRB must be laughing at the silly Kiwis - its coffers are the only winner and the New Zealand taxpayer is the only loser.

And why the current cobbled-together arrangement lets private broadcaster TV3 piggy-back on a bid underwritten by the Government is yet to be explained. Maori TV, meanwhile, says it is left with the crumbs and shut out in the cold.

TVNZ's involvement is necessary because it has the reach and numbers to hype up the tournament over the next two years and get people through the gates, with ticketing the only way the Government and Rugby Union can make money and stem losses.

Maori TV can offer unique cultural and language elements as well as the flexibility of scheduling to be able to show wall-to-wall coverage without having to break for regular programming like the nightly news.

Surely getting the two together as co-broadcasters months ago and bargaining with the IRB was the obvious solution?

So was kicking a drop-goal to beat France, but we didn't do that either.