Blues backline star Caleb Clarke on the charge against the Waratahs. Photo / Photosport
Super Rugby Pacific is back as a viewing spectacle but self-interest among the country’s provincial unions and New Zealand Rugby directors could still kill it; Eddie Jones fires back at Rugby Australia; the NRL’s moves to “protect” the Warriors; and why The Dynasty is gripping television sports drama.
When New Zealand’s 26 provincial unions meet today to decide the fate of the much-publicised independent review into our national game, they would be wise to cast an eye at the bastard child many of them dislike.
Super Rugby is back as a decent competition worth watching.
I haven’t tuned into the franchise competition with any conviction in years. Between sabbaticals, player rotation and All Blacks and Wallabies coaches treating it a personal plaything for their own needs, it had become an under-performing yawn.
After years of running into the ground what was once undeniably the best club competition in rugby, New Zealand Rugby and Rugby Australia begrudgingly accepted things had to change.
The result was the creation of a new Super Rugby Commission, which is dragging the competition into the 21st century and is slowly but surely making inroads.
From what Sports Insider has viewed so far this season, Super Rugby Pacific is even outperforming Australia’s National Rugby League (NRL) for spectacle and entertainment.
That’s a big statement from an NRL fan. The Chiefs-Fijian Drua clash last weekend dripped drama and exciting rugby and was a cracking watch.
It hasn’t happened by accident – and that’s what the provincial unions and the Māori Rugby Board need to realise when they sit down this week.
The provincial unions will be asked to make arguably the biggest decision in New Zealand Rugby’s (NZR) history by endorsing or otherwise the key recommendations made by an expert independent panel nine months ago on the governance of the game in this country.
All the signs up till now indicate they will lack the courage to make the necessary changes.
Even if they agree to the most important recommendation of all – creating a new NZR board comprising nine independent directors – they will attempt to control the appointment process (which means nothing will really change).
Nor are they likely to take onboard why Super Rugby is in a renaissance, which is largely due to taking the plunge on changing how it is governed and appointing directors who actually know what they are doing.
If NZR and Rugby Australia (RA) have been ambivalent at best about Super Rugby’s place in the sport’s eco-system, many of the provincial unions have been downright obstinate about the competition that has replaced their beloved National Provincial Championship (NPC) in status.
Self-interest reigns. The provincial unions still have a misguided belief they are the owners of the game in New Zealand, they still resent Super Rugby and they still believe the NPC should be elevated in status.
It would be different if NZR’s board had the courage to stare them down – but the recommendations also include the current directors to step aside.
Fat chance that was ever going to happen.
Instead of backing the recommendations and themselves to be reappointed through an independent process, several directors are more concerned about ensuring they see out their current terms.
Horse-trading is now officially the new tactic as they and the provincial unions barter for survival. The result will be a watered-down compromise that will have wasted everybody’s time and ignores the fans, who are the true owners of the game.
It’s depressing to watch – especially in light of Super Rugby’s approach.
Super Rugby Pacific’s new eight-person board is not made up entirely of independent directors but it has taken an important step towards autonomy and away from jaundiced governance with its new make-up.
The New Zealand and Australian national unions appoint one director each, with current CEOs Mark Robinson and Phil Waugh filling those roles. And each country’s Rugby Players’ Association also gets to appoint a director – necessary in today’s environment in which players’ rights are often trampled over.
They are former Wallabies lock Justin Harrison while the New Zealand Rugby Players’ Association has opted for Stephanie Bond.
But the remaining five directors, including the chair, are all independently appointed.
Sports Insider can confirm the full board is now in place and the independent directors are Auckland-based marketing expert Kevin Malloy, former Chiefs CEO Mike Collins (now living on the Gold Coast), Tourism Western Australia boss Carolyn Turnbull and Kiwi Susan Sawbridge.
But it is the skill mix that is showing the way to NZR.
Bond has a legal background, Turnbull’s expertise lies in events and marketing and Sawbridge is the co-founder and co-chair of Women in Sport Aotearoa, as well as a former leading events manager for the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.
Molloy’s marketing credentials are without peer in this country and can already be seen in the revamped fan-focused campaigns we’re currently seeing. Collins has practical experience in hands-on management of professional rugby.
It is exactly the diverse mix of skills needed across a board in modern professional sport.
The missing piece for Super Rugby Pacific is still the appointment of an independent commissioner who will become the face of the competition.
The role is modelling on American sport where the commissioner in leagues like the NFL and NBA are all-powerful and drive the direction of the competition.
Super Rugby Pacific was keen to have the Sydney-based role in place last year but former Rugby Australia chair Hamish McLennan stymied it and extensive interviews (Molloy said there were 239 applicants) have just been completed.
In an update with Sports Insider, Molloy confirmed it may take another six months for the successful applicant to start, given the restraints of trade that often exist around top performers quitting their current jobs.
“That’s a very real prospect we may face,” he said. “But it’s important we get the right person.
“We have great momentum currently and we’re determined to keep that going.”
Last week’s Sports Insider column revealed details of an apparently unauthorised A$2.6 million-plus ($2.8m) budget overspend by the Wallabies at last year’s Rugby World Cup.
How you achieve such a massive unplanned blowout when the side doesn’t even manage to make it out of their pool for the first time in history is beyond me but former Wallabies coach Eddie Jones was having none of it.
The angry gremlin of international rugby coaching, now gone from Aussie rugby along with his enabler McLennan, told The Australian newspaper the story was BS and “everything was approved”.
In a review, RA chief executive Phil Waugh attributed the blowout was to an increase in team costs, player benefits and staff travel, shipping home most of the blame to Jones and former Wallabies manager Chris Webb.
“I think it was a cultural deficiency that we need to rectify,” said Waugh.
But Jones has predictably fired back.
“Any organisation sets a limit of what to approve and I can tell you everything we did was approved,” Jones told the Weekend Australian.
“If someone is actually suggesting we are going and spending $2 million without approval – I mean it just doesn’t happen without approval, I can tell you everything was approved.
“I wasn’t actually involved in who approves it – but ultimately everything is approved by the CEO.
“I just laughed... it’s just a bit of comedy relief isn’t it? You know Matty Johns does it for rugby league and then we do this in public in rugby...”
Massive feedback and follow-up to Sports Insider’s exclusive last week that there are now two rival consortiums vying to secure a South Island expansion license in the NRL.
Former NZR and NRL chief executive David Moffett is hoping to meet with the league’s major powerbroker Peter V’Landys within the next fortnight over his new South Island Kea bid while his rival, a syndicate headed by former Canterbury RL chair Tony Kidd, revealed more details of its campaign this week.
The attitude of the Warriors to another NRL franchise based in New Zealand will be influential in any decision.
There is a valid argument that Auckland can support a second franchise and that it would be commercially more successful and appealing than a South Island team, especially if it shared a home base with the Warriors at a new downtown stadium.
But there was a strong hint from V’Landys this week that the NRL has promised the Warriors that any future expansion to the Shakey Isles will avoid a second North Island-based franchise.
“New Zealand is an important area for us and the Warriors have been a marketing machine over there,” V’Landys told Australian outlet The Roar.
“We certainly wouldn’t be looking at anything in the North Island but if opportunities arose on the South Island, we would look at them.”
Moffett’s rival South Island bid announced this week that it has received a $1m investment from an anonymous benefactor to build a youth academy in Christchurch to support its bid.
But writing on LinkedIn, Andrew Condon, an Aussie-based senior executive at international sports and entertainment consultancy group Gemba, raises some genuine commercial concerns about a South Island bid.
“There are probably around 280,000 rugby league fans in the South Island, on current NRL conversion rates that would equate to membership of ~9k, an average attendance of ~10k and an avg TV audience of ~150k, placing this team at the bottom of the NRL across these metrics.
“Operational costs will be $25m- $30m a year, in line with similar smaller sized NRL clubs,” he writes.
“Revenue is likely to be around $20m, best case $25m, meaning the Kea will need between $5m and $10m a year in ongoing investment just to break even.”
Even with the Warriors around, the chances of hitting these targets are higher in Auckland (I offer Brisbane as supporting evidence where the Broncos average 50,000-plus crowds and the city’s newcomers, the Dolphins, are drawing nearly 30,000).
A fleet of leading Kiwi sports administrators are in Melbourne this week for Sport NXT, which has become the biggest conference in the southern hemisphere and a must-attend for key movers and shakers within New Zealand.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has been a previous keynote speaker and this year’s line-up is also impressive.
It includes ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro, the co-founder and president of innovative Los Angeles-based women’s football club Angel City FC, Julie Uhrman, Los Angeles 2028 Olympics boss Casey Wasserman and the president of the Brisbane 2032 Olympics organising committee, Andrew Liveris.
The conference tends to attract diverse attendees including broadcasters such as Sky, player management representatives like Halo Sport, NSOs (national sporting organisations) including NZR and New Zealand Rugby League (NZRL).
Among those in attendance are NZRL chief executive Greg Peters, Sport NZ boss Raelene Castle and Golf New Zealand head Jeff Latch.
Sports Insider has now finished Apple TV’s docudrama The Dynasty on the New England Patriots NFL team, who won six Super Bowls under star quarterback Tom Brady and hard-as-nails coach Bill Belichick.
The verdict?
It’s damn good and right up there with Michael Jordan’s The Last Dance in terms of capturing the drama behind the scenes at a major professional franchise.
The “DeflateGate” and “SpyGate” scandals, the Aaron Hernandez murder conviction and Belichick’s unusually harsh treatment of Brady – the game’s best-ever quarterback – for the duration of his career surprised me and made for compelling viewing.
Belichick was moved on by the Patriots at the end of last year and while the series sometimes veers into trying to deify club owner Robert Kraft, it becomes overwhelmingly obvious that Belichick’s hard-bitten intimidating style of coaching no longer works in the modern world.
Well worth your viewing time.
The world’s greatest surfer Kelly Slater at the prestigious Tara Iti course, north of Auckland, this week. Slater is almost as good a golfer as he is a surfer, a sport in which he’s won the world crown a record 11 times. The American was rubbing shoulders with the likes of our own Israel Adesanya and Sean Fitzpatrick as part of Tara Iti owner Rick Kayne’s private event.
Slater was on the Gold Coast the day before flying to New Zealand. He’s 52 and has a dodgy hip... not that you would know it judging by this epic wave he caught at Kirra Point.
Veteran Sam Cane is given his farewell test appearance.