KEY POINTS:
For a brief moment, it was easy to be swept along by the smiles and talk of a brighter future.
The great and the good of New Zealand rugby emerged from last week's two-day forum quite abuzz with their efforts.
There was optimism pouring from all quarters, having agreed that the current provincial set-up is financially doomed and in need of a revamp.
Open minds had been tasked with researching the feasibility of private ownership in Super Rugby and everyone was thinking of ways to ward off European predators.
New Zealand Rugby Union chief executive Steve Tew summed it up for everyone when he said: "We have had a good look at the environment we are operating in and I think there is an acknowledgement that the world is changing, and changing quickly, and that rugby may not - certainly in this country - have changed as quickly as some of the things around us.
"And therefore there is a need to change and that change will be a constant part of our environment."
It was inspiring - until reality kicked in. There has been no shortage of brave oratory out of the New Zealand Rugby Union these past few years.
From the pulpit have come grand visions for the game. Thursday was no different, but for radical change to be implemented the NZRU board has to make tough decisions.
And that's when all the excitement generated by the forum evaporates. The current board, in conjunction with the existing NZRU executive team, haven't made a bold decision for years.
When it comes to showing a bit of spine, these guys are right up there with jellyfish.
So vast is their litany of woolly thinking that it's hard to know where to begin chronicling.
It is probably best to go back to 2005 and recall the board's last-minute turnaround on the number of teams to be admitted to the Premier Division of the Air New Zealand Cup.
The intention was for 12 teams, on the recommendation of the extensively researched Competitions Review. That would have meant two from among Hawke's Bay, Counties Manukau, Manawatu or Tasman missing out.
But when the time came to decide, the board bottled it and extended the new league to 14 teams.
The NZRU has spent most of the past three years trying to convince the world of their genius when so much of the current mess is a direct result of that gutless call.
The extension to 14 has left too many teams chasing too few corporate dollars. It has put intolerable pressure on labour supply, causing damaging wage inflation and it has saddled the competition with horrid mismatches, impossible to sell to paying punters.
New Zealand rugby needed strong leadership in 2005. It needed a decision that would have had two short-term casualties and 12 long-term winners. But no one was brave enough and, having ignored their own detailed and expensive research in 2005, the NZRU is now giving itself a massive pat on the back for realising that a 14-team competition is not sustainable.
Whether the board has the courage to hand down what will effectively be a death sentence to two unions who have poured their soul into the past three years remains debateable.
The board drew its own deeply flawed conclusion about playing numbers before, and then there was the inconsistency around coaching appointments last season.
No one expects the NZRU to get every appointment right. Hiring is a fraught, inexact science. But everyone should expect the NZRU to implement a fair and consistent process, with every candidate subject to the same rigours. It didn't happen like that.
Out of the blue in March last year came the release confirming Chiefs coach Ian Foster and Hurricanes coach Colin Cooper had been granted contract extensions. At the same time the board had agreed they wouldn't even discuss the future of the All Black coaches until after the World Cup even though just like Cooper and Foster, Graham Henry, Steve Hansen and Wayne Smith were coming off contract at the end of the year.
The thinking behind that decision remains unexplained, despite heavy questioning, as does the board's direct appointment of Tew in June last year.
Former chief executive Chris Moller had signalled well in advance he would stand down in December 2007. The board saw no need to open the post to the wider market. They already had their man.
Again that was inconsistent with their stance on the All Black coaches.
The board wanted to know the World Cup outcome before determining Henry's future yet at the same time didn't feel Tew's position should be linked to the tournament.
Given the risks taken in pulling players out of Super Rugby, and given that Tew was implicit in that decision, it was hard to understand why the board didn't wait until late October to determine their strategy on appointing a successor to Moller.
All this muddled thinking just got plain daft when, after telling the All Black coaches they had to wait until after the World Cup to be told their fate, it was announced that a specific review into the World Cup wouldn't be completed until April 2008.
It begs the question: What will happen if the review finds Henry and his team killed any chance of victory by over-rotating players and leaving them undercooked as a consequence of the conditioning break?
That could get awkward, which is maybe why Don Tricker, former New Zealand softball coach, is one of the two men involved in the review.
Tricker spent a fair bit of time with the team, even strolling around the Millennium Stadium with Henry before the 2005 clash against Wales.
If this board ever had a plot, they obviously lost it years ago. Confidence in the executive team is in equally short supply.
In 2006 there was the infamous stoush with News Limited after the NZRU failed to notify the media giant about the plans to remove 22 All Blacks from Super 14.
News provide the NZRU with almost half their annual income and they were being treated with contempt. Such hubris should have ended there, but appears to have resurfaced again this year over the naming of the All Black squad.
A letter was sent to players and franchises stating May 26 as the date for the squad announcement - a date that would have taken all the shine off the May 31 Super 14 final.
There has been some back-tracking since the letter was sent but key Super 14 sponsor, Rebel Sport, is understandably miffed that such a plan was hatched without their consultation.
"If we had been consulted I think everybody could guess what our response would be," said Briscoes Group managing director Rod Duke. "In my opinion everybody got embarrassed about the cock-up around Super 14 last year and you have to believe that the people who have to be obeyed do not intend to make a similar mistake."
Sadly Duke's faith seems somewhat misplaced. This is, after all, an organisation that has no discernable culture of accountability.
The NZRU's attitude appears to be they can do what they want when they want. Except, that is, make the really tough calls that will save the game in this country.
