New Zealand Rugby review suggests merging Super Rugby clubs with provinces – Gregor Paul

Crusaders lock Antonio Shalfoon (right) competes with Blues No 8 Hoskins Sotutu in a lineout. Photo / Photosport

After almost a year of research, an independent review that set out to find solutions to New Zealand’s confused rugby talent development pathways and determine the best competition structure for the national game, has come back with a shock recommendation to merge the five founding Super Rugby clubs with the respective provincial unions in which they are based.

The specifics of the proposed move are not overly clear, but essentially one of the three key recommendations made in the so-called MPAC report (Men’s Pathways and Competitions) is that Auckland and the Blues, Waikato and the Chiefs, Wellington and the Hurricanes, Canterbury and the Crusaders and Otago and the Highlanders should be respectively merged into single, operational entities that field a professional team in Super Rugby Pacific and a semi-professional team in the National Provincial Championship (NPC).

The move wouldn’t necessarily have any fan impact as all five clubs would continue to play in Super Rugby in their current guises and all five provinces would continue in the NPC as they currently do, but the decision-making, resource allocation and player development plans would all come under one roof, determined by one executive and one board sitting across both teams.

The rationale for these mergers is primarily to reduce duplication and lower costs. Having a major centre’s Super Rugby club and provincial union operating as one entity would lead to services, venues and facilities being shared.

But the wording of the recommendation suggests the bigger driver is to reduce competitive tensions – which is a nod to the report’s belief that the likes of Auckland and the Blues, Canterbury and the Crusaders battle each other for sponsors and players.

The recommendation says: “Amalgamate each of New Zealand’s five Super Rugby clubs with the provincial unions in which they are based, thereby removing duplication, creating simplicity and clarity of responsibility and accountability, and resolving destructive tensions that exist currently.”

What has surprised the Super Rugby clubs is not the recommendation itself, although none have said they agree with it, but the perceived lack of attention devoted to this issue as part of the review.

The clubs say the recommendation has come out of left field. They say the research to make the other two key recommendations in the report – to build a clear and consistent talent development pathway and to continue with a 14-team provincial competition – were extensively researched and analysed, but the third key recommendation was never discussed and seems to have been aired more as an opinion rather than a finding.

Most Super Rugby clubs say they already share a significant amount of services with their relevant provincial union, and that if the first recommendation made in the report is to create a clearer and unified pathway for elite players to follow once they leave school, that would surely fix any concerns about infighting in the major centres for talent.

Clubs also say that there is little to no cannibalisation of sponsors, as typical Super Rugby teams are looking for brands that want national and international exposure, while provincial unions tend to be chasing local institutions such as car dealerships and real estate offices.

What the clubs are really saying is that the report is advocating for a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist, and it’s the appearance of this almost random idea to merge Super Rugby clubs with provincial unions that has sparked concern about whether New Zealand Rugby (NZR) has an excessive culture of commissioning needless reports, the findings of which are rarely acted upon.

In the last eight years, NZR has commissioned at least 12 reviews that have been made public and spent, by most estimates, somewhere between $4 million and $5m, with limited evidence the work was necessary or led to any beneficial change.

This list of review topics includes, but is not restricted to, respect and responsibility; secondary schools; the McKinsey Report (known to have cost $1m) into possible cost efficiencies in 2019-2020; the Aratipu Review into Super Rugby’s future in 2020; a Black Ferns cultural review; a governance review; two analyses of the two different private equity deals proposed with Silver Lake; a review into IT systems and community level; and now this review into competitions and pathways.

At the end of last year NZR also announced it was commissioning a review into rugby’s financial sustainability, and with so many streams of work on the go at any one time, it has to be asked how the board of directors are able to keep up to speed with what is going on and how they can assess whether the organisation is delivering on its strategic aims.

Above all else, though, the question needs to be asked why so much money has been spent (and is being spent) on engaging external consultants when some of these projects, certainly the just completed MPAC review, seem like they would be better handled in-house.

Everyone agrees with the first two findings of the MPAC review – but no one understands why NZR’s high-performance unit couldn’t have simply got on with finding solutions at a fraction of the cost and a quarter of the time.

A year on since the MPAC review was commissioned, it still hasn’t been put in front of the NZR board and by the time it is, few imagine it will serve any purpose at all in guiding or influencing the next steps.