KEY POINTS:
About the time New Zealand rugby was to become fully professional, at the end of the 1995 season, I remember interviewing Northland coach Sid Going after they had been beaten by Taranaki in a critical national championship match.
Super Sid was despondent, not just because his team had been doomed to spend another year in the old NPC second division, but also because of the impacts that were going to be felt from the move to professionalism.
"It's all very scary," said Going. "No one seems to know what's going to happen."
Well, for a time, the fear of the unknown, which Going among others was expressing, did seem to be without foundation. For two or three years New Zealand rugby appeared to have coped with the switch to professionalism remarkably well.
The All Blacks, under the coaching of John Hart and captaincy of Sean Fitzpatrick, in 1996 and 1997, had two outstanding seasons, suffering only one loss in 21 tests and in 1996 becoming the first All Black side to win a test series in South Africa.
The Super 12 competition, involving franchise sides from this country as well as South Africa and Australia, also made an auspicious start. Big crowds attended matches, many more watched on television and some dazzling, spectacular rugby was played.
Money, too, did not appear to be too much of a concern. The television deal with the Murdoch empire was profitable because it was paid in US dollars and at the time the rate of exchange was favourable for the Kiwi currency. Then in 1997, the New Zealand union achieved an apparel deal with the European sportswear giant, adidas, which it was said at the time would leave the entire game, even the grass-roots, awash with money.
But in 1998 came signs of a decline. That year the All Blacks lost five tests in a row and confidence began to ebb as some of the players who had been the mainstays, Fitzpatrick, Zinzan Brooke, Michael Jones, Olo Brown and Frank Bunce, either through age or injury, were lost.
In the intervening decade there have been seasons when there have been hints of recovery, only to be punctuated by failures to win the World Cup in each of the 1999, 2003 and 2007 tournaments. Each has compounded on the other and last year's quarter-final exit to France may have been the most catastrophic of all.
For it was preceded by a drastic rearrangement of everything else in New Zealand rugby to suit Graham Henry's grand plan. Twenty two players were withdrawn from the Super 14 at a cost to the public and television interest in the competition.
Clashing as it did with the World Cup, the Air New Zealand Cup provincial competition also suffered a drastic dip in public interest. This, plus ever increasing confusion with the playing laws, and boredom with some of the competitions and their robotic style of play, has placed New Zealand rugby close to crisis.
There have been other major controversies in New Zealand rugby. Whether to allow live telecasts of major matches was a dominant argument in the 1960s and into the 1980s. That's rather ironical now in view of the wholesale capitulation to commercial television which has accompanied the advent of professionalism. Top games, even when played in the cold of the South Island, are all now played at night, something which illustrates the almost pathetic state of the game. It's accepted meekly even though everyone, apart from television bosses and apologists, see it as being totally without sense or logic.
Then dating back to the late 1950s and into the mid 80s, there was the agonising, tortuous debate over contacts with South Africa when that country was enforcing apartheid. A high incidence of spinal injuries, especially in the 80s, also caused deep concern.
But not even these traumatic events can be compared to the game's present plight. For rugby now finds itself having to deal with and accommodate the market forces of capitalism. As we have seen from history, with ongoing conflicts between haves and have-nots, wars, depressions and recessions, that can consume entire countries, let alone the ravages it will bring to a mere sporting code.
Factors outside the control of the game, too, have had their impact. Changed employment patterns and the virtual abolition of weekends because of extended shopping hours have affected all recreational sporting activity in New Zealand. Playing numbers in rugby and just about every code at the lower, adult levels have been steadily dwindling.
Even traditionalists agree that changes in rugby's landscape are now inevitable and, regardless of whether they will be good or bad, even undesirable, may all be in place within a few years.
Here are some of those things:
A severe reduction in clubs and provincial unions.
Waiving the strict policy of selecting the All Blacks from players only based in this country.
The sale of New Zealand's five Super 14 franchises, or at least a substantial part of them, to private business interests.
You might even conclude that some of these have already come to pass. Even if they want to retain their identities many insolvent clubs and unions, because of lack of numbers and money, may disappear. And if this attrition doesn't happen as a natural process the New Zealand union or a provincial union could force it through changes to their own constitutions and rules.
The Auckland union is already applying criteria on its clubs for premier status. What if the NZRU extended its own criteria on affiliated unions to have first class status by insisting on a minimal number of grades and teams and a set standard of facilities? Many unions now have suffered such a decline in playing numbers they are able to field only one competitive adults grade each Saturday.
It could be possible to restrict the number of "first class" unions in the country to no more than 11 or 12, eight or nine in the North Island and three in the South. By redrawing boundaries and a downgrading of status all unions presently in the Heartlands second division competition could be reduced to sub-unions. Some even could come from those presently in the Air New Zealand Cup, like North Harbour and Counties-Manukau. Many now are stridently calling for All Blacks to be chosen from overseas, even if it seems to be a case of wanting one's cake and eating it and it is a difficult argument to follow. It would surely mean a total downgrading of the local game and selection and judgement of players' form could be a nightmare.
There are plenty examples of the difficulties this would impose. You only need look at the Kiwi league team or the All Whites soccer team. Ryan Nelsen is New Zealand's best soccer player but because of commitments to his British club he has not played for his country for four years.
As for the sale of Super 14 franchises that is already close to reality. Australia's John O'Neill has advocated it for Australian franchises and the NZRU may have little choice but to follow suit. But you have to wonder whether assumptions that this, too, will be a cure-all are simplistic. What sort of businessmen would be involved? Americans, the Russian Mafia? The sort of people who own British soccer clubs? The New Zealanders in failed finance companies who have lost the savings of many innocent investors? Those with little or no ethics, other than a profit motive, and with no regard for a game's soul?
Again the sense of this might be argued. It has even been suggested that provincial unions could be sold, with those suggesting it apparently unaware that ownership of these rests with affiliated clubs, that they are incorporated societies.
O'Neill has also stipulated that somehow provision would have to be made for the traditional values and ethos of rugby being maintained. A cynic might argue that these have long since gone and O'Neill is a good example of frayed loyalties. Administrators like him and David Moffett appear to have no qualms about flitting from one sport to the other.
Truly, the world, because of satellite television and the internet, has become a global village. In a year or two we may be more preoccupied with a rugby game between London Irish and Wasps than a Ranfurly Shield match, say, between Canterbury and Auckland.
That may sound far-fetched. But already most Kiwi soccer fans are more interested in games between Manchester United and Arsenal than those between Waitakere and North Shore. And earlier this week there was a back page report in this very paper of a league match between two Australian clubs which was larger and more comprehensive than what would be given now to a local Fox Memorial match.
