Black Caps bowler Neil Wagner announces retirement from international cricket.
Video / New Zealand Cricket
There are some big decisions to be made for rugby and not much time to make them.
In July this year, maybe earlier, the process of renegotiating a broadcast deal will begin and there will need to be certainty about what exactly is being offered to interested bidders.
Currently, thereis anything but certainty about what New Zealand may be selling in terms of competitions and content.
The picture currently lacks clarity, not just because there are a few unknowns swilling about – how many Super Rugby teams will be financially viable in two years - but because there may be too many disjointed concepts being considered amid confusion as to whether the next rights deal should be designed with broadcasters or fans front of mind.
And to be clear, fans and broadcasters are not always aligned with what they want, and New Zealand Rugby would be the first to admit that it has in the past built its content offering with the needs of TV executives prioritised.
Broadcasters wanted more Super Rugby content in the mid-2000s, so they got it. They wanted a longer Rugby Championship in 2012, so they got it with the introduction of Argentina, and they want night-time kick-offs, which they continue to mostly have.
But it’s apparent NZR wants to swing the pendulum back towards being more fan-centric with how the rugby calendar looks from 2026, which is why it is trying to reintroduce an old-fashioned tour concept with South Africa.
Sending an enlarged All Blacks squad to South Africa for three tests and a few mid-week games will make fans of a certain age weep with happiness.
This is the sort of nostalgic trip that many felt they would never be allowed to take and it will, if it can be agreed, be a win for fans, a win for players who want the high-performance challenge that comes with an old-fashioned tour in the Republic, and it will be a win for broadcasters as the potential audience for a test series between the All Blacks and Springboks will be enormous.
Touring South Africa would invoke memories of some of the All Blacks' most famous moments. Photo / Paul Estcourt
But the issue with turning back the clock to pull this off, is that it will compromise the format of the Rugby Championship every fourth year – a tournament that is already truncated in World Cup years as it is.
Neither fans nor broadcasters love the idea of the Rugby Championship changing format so regularly and so the question arises whether the cost of reintroducing a reciprocal touring agreement with South Africa is worth the cost?
If both nations are willing to cause so much disruption to the Rugby Championship to get what they want, then it has to also be asked what value they see in keeping that competition alive.
The Six Nations, after all, never compromises its format or integrity even in World Cup years and that has been an integral reason why it has remained such a fan favourite for the last 100 years.
If the Rugby Championship can’t be kept in one format for the entirety of the next broadcast deal, it seems unlikely it’s ever going to build the same sort of recognition, history and prestige as the Six Nations.
The best competitions need stability and certainty and without being able to offer that, why not wind back the clock entirely, ditch the Rugby Championship and go back to organising longer tours – in bound and out bound every year?
Imagine a three-test Bledisloe series in Australia, or the All Blacks playing in Fiji, Samoa and Tonga on consecutive weekends.
All this with the added attraction of the mid-week All Blacks being asked to return to smaller, hostile venues to play club and composite sides that are out for a pound of flesh.
Seriously, why limit the tours to just South Africa if the intention is to put the fans at the centre of the next broadcast deal?
But the reason it won’t is because there is growing hope that broadcasters are going to pay a premium to buy the rights to the proposed World League.
Under that plan, Japan and Fiji will join the Six Nations and Rugby Championship sides in a 12-team competition.
The tours to South Africa would be about keeping fans happy, and the World League is about making money from broadcasters and so New Zealand is ready to compromise the integrity of the Rugby Championship to try to give both stakeholders what they want.
Maybe the compromise will be worth it, both in terms of the monetary value the overall content offering would bring from broadcasters and the specific audience growth a test series against the Springboks would deliver.
But it does feel like if New Zealand was brave enough to go back to the future entirely and build its own touring schedule every year, that the Venn diagram containing both happy broadcasters and happy fans would be that bit bigger.
