Wynne Gray: Cheapening rugby's biggest 'brand'

Administrators should rethink their international strategies to protect the brand. Photo / Mark Mitchell

So after tonight's match we've got only one more All Black test against the Wallabies this season.

As much as we understand the transtasman links and the old Anzac bonds, it is a test too far.

That verdict is certainly being delivered in Hong Kong where ticket sales for Bledisloe IV have scarcely creased the local market.

Some want to blame poor local marketing for the slow uptake, others the cost of tickets, while maybe there is also a lack of sustained interest for rugby in the Orient.

Remember, the test in Japan last year battled for spectators as well.

It is an indictment of the New Zealand and Australian unions' scheduling and greed if a ho-hum factor is circling the Bledisloe Cup matches.

Mind you, there is a similar whiff about the end-of-year tours as well, the repeat Grand Slam challenge and what should be another march through the UK.

There is at least a monetary merit in that trip, while the stopover in Hong Kong looks like leaking dollars.

Next year is all change because of the World Cup. There are no inbound or outbound visits other than four Tri-Nations internationals on the end of the reworked Super 15.

Administrators should see that lull as a chance to rethink their international strategies.

Unfortunately the extended Super 15 allows very little leeway and there must be doubts about the advantages of splitting up that tournament in future to play test matches.

What that does for the momentum and interest in the competition is hard to anticipate. The rugby calendar is already too bloated. Running games from February to the end of November is overkill.

Dovetail competitions, compress tournaments, reduce the games, less is more.

The All Black brand, as the marketing gurus shamelessly call it, is being cheapened by the expanding test calendar.

The team are still revered because of their extraordinary record, but their "pull" is being diluted because of their expanded fixture list against repeat opponents.

Perhaps some thoughts about solutions will circulate among the players at next year's World Cup, just as they did in the 1995 tournament in South Africa to spawn Super rugby. There is no question the sport, the All Blacks and the NZRU need games to generate funds to keep themselves solvent.

That leads us to the old chestnut of tours, but where can they be accommodated in congested calendars in New Zealand and overseas?

Perhaps they have to take the game to the States - playing Ireland in New York, a composite Pacific Islands side in Hawaii or the Boks in Los Angeles - for guaranteed purses.

The task is difficult, but if New Zealand is not going to host tours, they have to find new markets, ways of reducing the All Blacks' workload and ways boosting the coffers.

Anyone for a job?