Gregor Paul is one of New Zealand’s most respected rugby writers and columnists. He has won multiple awards for journalism and written several books about sport.

OPINION

New Zealand Rugby, but just as importantly, New Zealand rugby, are on the hunt for a charismatic, dynamic, digital-savvy, commercially capable, sports-mad, grass-roots-connected leader to save the game from financial self-destruction, irrelevancy and the increasing power of the NRL.

Finally, after a year of almost impossible to imagine self-aggrandisement, warped thinking and self-interest, New Zealand rugby’s various stakeholders have agreed on a governance structure that will have a new board of directors take control of the game in December.

The importance of getting the right people in play can’t be underestimated, because the game is in trouble and to be saved, or at least redirected towards a better future, it desperately needs improved governance, stronger directors and above all else, it needs a board chair with the mana, skill set, experience and respect of the entire rugby community.

NZR is a near-$300-million-a-year business, hoping to become a $500m-a-year business, making it impossible to deny that rugby has been corporatised and commercialised in the past two decades to the point where it is more business than sport.

This has increased the importance of effective governance to apply the right level of scrutiny on the executive, set and keep the business on the right strategic path, manage risk, ensure that all levels of the game are serviced and that rugby doesn’t disconnect from its core values and volunteer base in its quest for cash.

This in turn has increased the importance of having the right chair to effectively manage and guide the board to set the right tone and to influence the culture of the organisation.

But it’s not just a role to facilitate good governance. The chair of NZR has to be a figurehead, a diplomat, an influencer and the sort of character who can hold their own in a hinterland clubroom, understand and relate to their chief executive, build a rapport with the All Blacks coach and captain, know how and when to speak to the media, maintain strong relationships with other national bodies and give confidence to the whole rugby community that the game is in good hands and New Zealand is respected around the world.

Maybe, most importantly, whoever is appointed chair in December will need to be able to unite a rugby community that has been factionalised in the process of agreeing on governance change.

And it’s because the journey to get to this point was so tense and divisive that it’s difficult to see how incumbent chair Dame Patsy Reddy can remain in her role past December.

She delivered governance change, but not necessarily as much as she hoped as her proposal was rejected by the unions. The agreement that has been reached is a compromise – a hybrid version of the unions’ proposal and the alternative put forward by NZR and all the other stakeholders.

But she got turkeys some way down the road towards voting for Christmas, and history is clear that agents of change are rarely able to stay in their post to manage the new world that they create.

Change creates tension and tests relationships, and Reddy would be unlikely to gain the requisite support of the provincial unions should she want to re-apply to retain her seat on the board.

Her job is done, her legacy safe and rugby is grateful – but NZR needs a new energy, a new direction and a chair with no baggage.

It also needs to make a generational change with its next chair. The last three – Brent Impey, Stewart Mitchell and Reddy – were all in their 70s while in office and there is an appetite, a need, for a younger leader to be appointed, one closer in age to the generations with which rugby is so desperate to connect.

The importance of getting this appointment right is so high that it is probable, that when the process to find the right directors the game needs begins in the next few weeks, the soon-to-be-assembled six-strong Appointments and Remuneration Panel [ARP] put in place to vet and recommend NZR director candidates, will consciously and actively recruit their preferred chair first.

Some would say best practice would be to recruit nine directors first and let them pick a chair – but there is a lack of trust and confidence among all stakeholders that doing it that way will deliver the best result.

So this process may follow the one that was used when populating the board of New Zealand Rugby Commercial – the company set up to house all the revenue-generating assets – in which Ian Narev was appointed chair first and then the rest of the governance team was built around him.

Priority plays for new chair

Greater scrutiny on NZR executive

Earlier this year the provincial unions wrote to NZR, laying out their views on the proposed governance changes that were made by an independent report [Pilkington Review].

An earlier draft of the letter – which was amended before it was sent to the national body – was obtained by the Herald, and it was made clear that whatever governance structure was agreed, the new board that emerged had to prioritise making change in NZR’s executive.

“Before we provide specific feedback on the recommendations in the Pilkington Report, we want to stress that while the report and its recommendations are specific to the governance of NZR, the report strongly indicates the need for a significant change in direction in leadership and management across the organisation,” the letter said.

“While we agree that proposed changes to governance will create the right environment for a more productive and sustainable future, nothing will change unless there is a targeted focus on shifting the leadership and management practice within NZR.”

What the Pilkington Report highlighted was that the board had poor and limited oversight over the executive, that there were too many and mostly irrelevant KPIs on the chief executive’s dashboard, and that board members were regularly guilty of involving themselves in minor matters that were not in their purview.

Pilkington, who was given unfettered access to all board meeting papers and confidential documents, told the Herald in April:

“The board was not operating anything like I would expect in best practice nor were they holding the management to account to deliver against a predetermined strategy.

“The KPIs of the management were all over the place. Whereas I have sat around a number of high-performing boards in good companies and the most important thing a board has to do is sign off on strategy and ensure management are then delivering against that.

“I saw a lot of that simply not happening in NZR because they were too busy trying to deal with these parochial issues of individual unions – generally the larger ones.

“The key thing we felt is that there was no clear leadership voice for rugby, and this is rugby across the whole game.”

The Pilkington Review concluded that NZR was adrift, hindered by a lack of strategic direction and an inability to determine whether it was being implemented.

And there are a significant number of real-world examples of where this is playing out. NZR burned through $24m of cash in 2023, a figure that was largely similar in 2022 and speaks to what appears to be a lack of oversight on expenditure.

In 2020 New Zealand effectively kicked South Africa out of Super Rugby and then later that year entered into a joint venture agreement with Australia.

But this week, NZR chief executive Mark Robinson was in South Africa, reportedly signing off on a deal for the All Blacks to tour the Republic in 2026 and for the Springboks to come to New Zealand in 2030.

This deal will all but kill the Rugby Championship and has incensed Rugby Australia, who feel they have been excluded by their Super Rugby partner.

Has there been a consistent and considered long-term plan followed to build logical high-performance pathways and world-class competitions, given that NZR is aligning itself internationally with South Africa, but has linked its club future with Australia?

Kicking South Africa out of Super Rugby has locked New Zealand’s best players into a relatively weak competition where there is an almost generic style of rugby and type of athlete, and then pushing the Wallabies out of the international picture will hinder Australia’s ability to upskill their players.

These big decisions appear to have been made ad hoc almost opportunistically – Super Rugby blown up by a belief that NZR could take ownership of a new competition and increase its value to private equity suitors, and the touring schedule agreed upon in the hope it will generate significant broadcast and sponsorship interest to justify any relationship damage that may result with Australia.

None of this feels like it is building certainty and security, or driving confidence that New Zealand is playing a lead role in unifying the Southern Hemisphere and building club and international programmes that will deliver sustainable, long-term commercial value.

The new chair needs to be at the helm of a board that is putting greater scrutiny on NZR’s high-performance strategy, financial management and relationship building.

Broadcast renegotiation

The game’s financial future hinges on the size of the next broadcast contract that is signed for the period 2026-2030.

The current deal is worth about $100m a year and NZR is targeting an uplift on that – knowing that just to retain what it currently has, it needs to get $108.5m to cover the 7.5 per cent share that will be taken by equity partner Silver Lake.

But with the collapse of Spark Sport, there is no competition in the domestic market and Sky’s chief executive Sophie Moloney has said to Media Insider many times in the past six months that the climate has changed since that last deal was struck, hinting that there will be a reduction in the price paid to buy the media rights for rugby.

The concern in rugby circles is that Sky is in the box seat as there is no one within NZRC or NZR – either executive or board – who has previous experience in negotiating the sale of media rights.

The last deal saw NZR use a four-strong team that included former chair Brent Impey, who had extensive broadcast rights experience, chief executive Steve Tew who had been involved in multiple negotiations, broadcast manager Ged Mahony, and board director Richard Dellabarca who knew how to pick apart corporate balance sheets to determine what bidders could viably afford to spend.

But all four have moved on and this next deal is being led by NZRC chief executive Craig Fenton who, like NZR chief executive Mark Robinson, has no experience in negotiating broadcast rights deals.

And nor does anyone on the current board have that skill-set, and the feeling within the rugby community is that the next chair of NZR has to be an integral part of the negotiation team to ensure there is unity and full disclosure between Robinson, who is remoulding the international landscape, and Fenton who is selling the content package.

Understanding NZR and NZRC

The question of unity between Robinson and Fenton is a major one to be asking as the decision to set up NZRC, has left many wondering whether there is a need for two highly paid executive and governance teams and whether there is a clear understanding about the respective roles of the two chief executives.

Earlier this year Robinson was talking publicly about licensing opportunities for the All Blacks around the proposed new stadium at Quay Park – an area that would clearly no longer be in his purview and the responsibility of Fenton.

A new chair at NZR should be asking whether some of the cash burn is partly the result of excessive executive roles that overlap, create confusion and don’t reflect that the national body no longer directly manages its own revenue-generating assets.

Restoring unity

The last four years have been turbulent and unsettling for all levels of the game, but the grass-roots and community games in particular have felt disenfranchised and unloved due to various events.

The provincial unions were locked into an 18-month battle with NZR about whose responsibility it was to repay Covid payments to the Ministry of Social Development. That battle turned nasty, and the resolution left a sour taste as while NZR stumped up the $3m, it is also reducing distributions to unions this year and next by $1.8m.

NZR is in the midst of a competitions review that the unions fear will marginalise them further by handing all player development responsibility to the Super Rugby clubs and shift the NPC to start in March.

And, there has been significant tension between the provinces and all stakeholders for the past 12 months trying to agree on a new governance structure.

The community game has lost trust in NZR and feels unloved as if the national body cares only about teams in black and the commercial returns they bring.

The new chair has to find a way to win back that trust, to be visible and present in provincial communities and reunite the whole rugby community around the game’s traditional values.

Possible candidates

Don Mackinnon

The current Blues chair is universally respected as one of the country’s most experienced and capable directors, having served on the boards of New Zealand Cricket – where he was the chair of the high-performance sub-committee – New Zealand Netball and High Performance Sport.

He led the Aratipu Review for NZR in 2020 and has been the co-ordinator for the Super Rugby clubs during the governance change negotiations.

A long-serving lawyer, and former partner at Simpson Grierson, Mackinnon has the necessary business, high-performance and governance background to do the role justice.

Dame Therese Walsh

The current chair of Air New Zealand and ASB Bank is a former chair of TVNZ and has extensive governance experience at some of the country’s largest corporations.

She has held government advisory roles and also has extensive sports experience having been instrumental in delivering the 2011 Rugby World Cup and 2015 Cricket World Cup.

Walsh would bring in-depth institutional knowledge of NZR as she was formerly its financial officer – a job she was widely recognised to have excelled at given her accountancy background.

Having only recently turned 50, Walsh would be the younger, dynamic leader NZR needs to better connect with Gen Z and Millennials.

Bill Osborne

Bill Osborne is one of the most respected and admired figures in NZ rugby. He played at the provincial level before going on to enjoy a corporate career that saw him become group manager of NZ Post, the inaugural chair of 2Degrees and hold other directorships with, among others, Transpower and Ports of Auckland.

He is a former president of NZR and the current chair of the Chiefs and has the mana to be a figure of unity and bring the provinces back in from the cold.

Scott Pickering

The former CEO of ACC came within a whisker of being appointed chief executive of NZR in 2019.

Pickering found himself in a head-to-head with Mark Robinson and while it is understood he scored higher on the skills matrix that was used to evaluate candidates, the board is believed to have seen the latter’s rugby experience as a trump card.

Since stepping down from ACC in 2021, he’s pursued a career as a professional director, serving on the boards of Chubb, Kiwibank, IAG, Bowls NZ and is the current chair of Evolution Healthcare.

His strength and weakness would be having no history in the game.

Richard Dellabarca

Richard Dellabarca is a highly experienced financier having spent much of his earlier career in London working for ABN Amro and then as chief financial officer for various firms.

He is also a highly experienced director, having held positions with Wynyard Group, NZ Post, Harmoney and Kea, and has recently led the consortium bidding to build a stadium at Wynyard Point.

He is a former chair of the Blues and served on the NZR board between 2016 and 2021, and was kept on past his tenure after the provincial unions unanimously asked if he could be retained to steer the Silver Lake deal to a conclusion.

And it’s his in-depth knowledge of the Silver Lake deal, his previous experience negotiating the broadcast contract and his long-term connection with rugby that strengthen his claim.

Gregor Paul is one of New Zealand’s most respected rugby writers and columnists. He has won multiple awards for journalism and written several books about sport.