Gregor Paul: New Zealand Rugby's latest blunder in search for ways to revive the game

The All Blacks line up for the national anthems ahead of their Rugby World Cup semifinal against England in October. Photo / Getty Images

COMMENT:

So it's not a great joke, but it gets the point across. How many New Zealand Rugby employees does it take to change a light bulb?

None. Because they would call in a consultancy firm to conduct a major review of the organisation's lighting, before making key recommendations as part of a five-year illumination plan. And in the meantime, they will chug along best they can in the dark.

Perhaps that's unduly cruel but according to NZR's annual report they have 149 employees and yet last week they announced they are engaging an unnamed consultancy group to conduct a major review of the game.

NZR wants the review to find answers to why playing numbers are stagnating, why fan engagement is dropping, talent is disappearing and revenue sources are drying up.

It has decided that despite having almost 150 full-time staff who work across every aspect of the game they are about to review, that they need outside help.

Outside help that won't be cheap because most consultancies suffer from a delusional sense of what they are worth and peddle common sense, sometimes not even that, for exorbitant sums.

That NZR feels it needs outside help should be the starting point of their review. Every dollar invested in a consultancy group is a dollar not invested in the grass-roots and so that is something NZR needs to challenge itself on.

The statistics on this tell a story. In 2015 NZR had 111 employees and 150,727 registered players. In 2018 the number of employees had grown by 25 per cent, but the playing numbers had only enjoyed a 4 per cent rise to slightly more than 157,000.

If we look at revenue-growth over the same period, it jumped from $133 million to $189 million but costs have risen at an equal, if not slightly higher rate, and therefore a $453,000 loss in 2015 became a $1.9 million loss in 2018.

Recently appointed New Zealand Rugby CEO Mark Robinson. Photo / Photosport

The story these statistics tell is of the national body becoming bloated and inefficient and what the latest review may be injecting into the narrative is an executive team's underlying lack of faith in their own staff.

No one is saying that in a world of digital mayhem that getting youngsters off the couch is easy, but if NZR feels that it needs to ask a consultancy group to come up with strategies to do just that, then it does beg the question of what the legions of staff employed to grow participation are actually doing.

Presumably the consultancy firm that has been engaged will know next to nothing about the specific issues it has been asked to review and will attempt to learn about them by asking NZR employees what they know.

This tragic, yet almost comic cycle of time wasting and recycling information, will be a little hard for mum and dad volunteers around the country to stomach, knowing that they beg, borrow and stiff-arm friends and family to find the kit, resources and help they need to get the kids out on the park every week.

Those who willingly give up their time to help rugby survive may like for whoever has commissioned this latest review to recall that when former NZR chief executive Steve Tew retired late last year, he said the most persistent concern he had was the balance sheet.

The need to grow or maintain revenue is relentless as the game here is locked into a global player market where everyone else always has more money.

It would seem, then, infinitely more sensible to engage the consultancy firm not in NZR's core business of running the game, but to find out what so many staff are actually doing each and every day.

Super Rugby has changed format too many times over the past seven years. Photo / Photosport

There is another potential angle to this which is that the decision to employ consultants in such challenged economic times is not about a lack of confidence in staff, but a symptom of NZR's aspirations to cast itself as a corporate beast.

The days of the NZR being run by a group of enthusiastic but ambitious provincial administrators from smoke-filled rooms are long gone. Everyone accepts that a professional sport requires professional attention and management but at some point in the last 10 years, NZR morphed into a shiny corporate organisation, full of buzzwords, business-class flights, fancy hotels, rebranded logos, glitzy competition launches and a near-addiction to maintaining a gloriously up to date, excessive social media presence.

Again, the numbers are there to confirm this is what has happened. The revenue growth of the last five years has come mainly from finding more sponsors and striking better deals.

The glitzy, corporate world in which NZR now mostly moves has helped them land glitzy, corporate sponsors and negotiate a better deal with their broadcaster. But at what price?

Revenue growth has struggled to keep pace with increased costs. The number of people playing rugby has barely kept apace with population inflation and if fan engagement means people putting their hands in their pockets and buying match tickets rather than registering to be bombarded by a social media account, then it, too, has dropped at an alarming rate.

The All Blacks line up for the national anthems ahead of their Rugby World Cup semifinal against England in October. Photo / Getty Images

If the motivation and mechanics of this review are questionable, then so too is the timing.

NZR only recently completed a major review of schools rugby, canvassing everyone and anyone about why teenagers were no longer in love with the game and dropping out faster than baby boomers quit mainstream living in the 70s.

Surely the schools review provided answers to the question they are about to ask again about low participation rates and it can't possibly be difficult to work out why Super Rugby crowds are down.

The competition has changed format too many times in the last seven years; there have been too many poorly coached and under resourced teams, too many South Africans and Australians heading offshore because they earn better there and too many of New Zealand's best players are allowed to come and go as it suits their All Blacks aspirations.

Combine that with a media culture that sees teams begrudgingly give the fourth estate barely 15 minutes of their time each week while doing their level best to persuade their players that revealing their personality will be a career killer.

New Zealand rugby is full of engaging personalities with rich personal stories but they rarely get told because a squadron of officious press officers weirdly think they are there to protect rather than promote the players.

And that's all before we even touch on the lack of public transport to stadiums, the excessive prices for low quality food and kick-off times that simply don't work for families with younger children.

So perhaps then it is not time for an elongated, expensive review. But a shorter one, focused on the national body's cost base and the question asked whether it could be lowered.