Gregor Paul: If NZ Rugby doesn’t change its governance structure, it will die

NZ Rugby chair Dame Patsy Reddy, Scott Robertson and NZ Rugby CEO Mark Robinson. Photo / Mark Mitchell

OPINION:

Since its inception in the early 1820s, rugby has required its participants to be selfless, to operate for the greater good and to recognise that no one is bigger than the game.

Here we are now in 2023 and if New Zealand is going to hold its place as a top-tier rugby nation - if the game is to remain a window into the nation’s soul or even relevant to a generation hooked on Tik-Tok and Love Island – then everyone and anyone who holds some kind of influence in their provincial boardroom must embrace the values system by which they have long asked their players to live.

Now that the findings of the independent review into New Zealand Rugby’s governance have been published, the sport in this country has a road map to a sustainable future.

It has the means to inject the best and brightest minds into the sport’s decision-making and to stop its outdated governance structure from being the anchor it currently is to high-performance success.

How rugby can reinvent itself as a sport that knows and serves its stakeholders, that is capable of meeting the needs of its increasingly diverse playing base, and running world-class, financially viable professional competitions is mapped out in a 134-page document that is so thorough and professional as to give it a credibility and authority that can’t be denied.

But for the findings to be implemented, a two-thirds majority of provincial unions must vote in favour – a decision that will usurp them from power and reduce them to a bit-player - and hence the need for selflessness, an acceptance of the greater good and a recognition that no one is bigger than the game.

If self-preservation infiltrates provincial boardrooms when they consider the findings of the review, rugby in this country will be in desperate trouble – left at the mercy of inconsistent decision-making, erratic leadership and ill-qualified directors rewarded more for their political cunning and long service rather than being in possession of relevant experience and skill-sets.

If rugby doesn’t change its governance structure and recognise it has new stakeholders and needs new people with different skill-sets to run it, it will die.

NZ Rugby CEO Mark Robinson. Photo / Elias Rodriguez, www.photosport.nz

That may seem a little heavy on the drama, but it’s the underlying message that pervades every page of the review and correlates entirely with what everyone has been able to see for themselves in the past few years given the number of icebergs in plain sight that NZR has managed to smash into.

Since 2020, it has often felt like NZR is the pub drunk, angry and confused, spilling other people’s pints and then looking to pick a fight with them.

It unilaterally blew up Super Rugby when Covid hit with a poorly conceived masterplan to launch a new competition which it would own and manage – a plan that ultimately wanted to reposition Australia as a subservient junior associate rather than trusted senior partner.

It backfired, and the relationship with the most important ally New Zealand has remains fraught and volatile with no long-term agreement how Super Rugby can reclaim its place as the world’s premier club competition.

NZR also picked a fight with its most important stakeholder, the professional players, trying to force them into accepting a new, lower, pay deal without consultation as part of what would have been a catastrophic private equity deal with Silver Lake.

If NZR’s executive and board had succeeded in getting their initial deal over the line, it would, based on the figures posted these past two years, have inflicted severe and lasting financial damage.

And then there was the unfathomably messy handling of the All Blacks coaching appointment process.

In August 2022 NZR said it was backing incumbent Ian Foster through to the World Cup, but in March 2023, it effectively walked that back, opting to appoint Scott Robertson as the next coach to take over in 2024.

The communication around the plan was non-existent, the logic of why Foster was deemed the right man to take the All Blacks to this World Cup but not continue beyond then was never explained, and the rationale for making the next appointment before the World Cup was flawed.

It was a decision that illustrated the lack of rugby knowledge within the board and the inability of the executive to set a clearly defined strategy and stick to it.

Rugby, be it professional or community, is not being well-served by either the current governance structure or many of the people within it.

Not only have key relationships been damaged and key appointments botched, so too have bad commercial decisions been made, specifically the decisions to stick with Altrad as a front-of-jersey All Blacks sponsor given the owner of the company has been found guilty of fraud and bribery, while the association with Ineos, a petrochemical company, at a time when New Zealand is experiencing severe and damaging weather events that are linked to climate change, is ill-advised.

As the review also makes clear, provincial rugby is a mess as there is no clear plan on how to position it in the wider landscape, and given the lack of revenue growth private equity investment has delivered to rugby in the Northern Hemisphere, there should be growing scepticism, about whether new investment partner Silver Lake will prove to be as transformational as NZR has suggested.

The sport of rugby in New Zealand has not been well-led or wisely guided for the past four years.

That’s the undeniable truth of the review and the system needs a total overhaul and an injection of diverse and entrepreneurial thinkers who can lead rugby to the brighter future everyone wants.

Those with the power to make change have to be brave enough to wield it and sacrifice themselves in the process.