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Provincial rugby chiefs are warning the Air New Zealand Cup could collapse within two seasons under the current format.
The dire warning comes with many provinces facing huge losses from this year, in the face of escalating player salaries and dwindling crowds.
At the core of the discontent is the massive disparity between the five Super 14 franchise bases and the "G9" unions, and a seemingly unworkable salary cap.
"If it was a normal business, you'd shoot professional rugby at this level dead in the water," Bay of Plenty chief executive Paul Abbot said.
"You don't need to be a rocket scientist to realise the competition is unsustainable. Professional rugby at a union level is in danger of disappearing."
Unions throughout the country are taking a hacksaw to player payments for next season and it's believed as many as 10 provincial unions will post losses, including heavyweights Auckland and Canterbury.
Bay of Plenty is no different, while Southland recently launched an independent review to gauge how viable remaining in the top echelon is.
"Whether you want a team in this grade and whether you want to be competitive in this grade are all questions your community have got to answer," Southland boss Roger Clark explained. "At the end of the day, a good deal of the money needed to stay in this competition has to come out of the local community and we're doing that assessment with our community leaders and funders now."
Though Clark is adamant his union can survive in the new competition, others aren't so sure.
This week, Northland lost one of its star players, second-five Daniel Bowden, to Otago and a handful of other big names are off contract, as the union plans massive spending cuts to try to stave off a predicted six- figure deficit.
Counties-Manukau chief executive Nick Sheppard, clutching the competition's wooden spoon and facing the challenge of finding a new coach after Kevin Putt quit, admits it's a massive struggle.
"From our perspective it's very tough," Sheppard said. "We live hand-to- mouth and our salary cap figures are considerably lower than the other 13 unions, because firstly we're taking a fiscally responsible attitude to this competition and we're in it for the long- haul, and secondly we simply don't have any more money to spend.
"Only time, and the balance sheets of the 14 unions over the next 24 months, will tell whether it's sustainable or not."
When the NZRU called for applications for the new competition in early 2005, among the criteria was a desire for unions to have at least $750,000 in equity, as well as fulfil population and infrastructure requirements.
What's now clear is that only four of the Super 14 franchise bases - Wellington, Auckland, Canterbury and Waikato - would comfortably meet all that initial criteria, and even then because their Air New Zealand Cup campaigns are being propped up.
By hosting Super 14 games and some All Black tests, those unions can make sponsorship proposals far more attractive by spreading commercial exposure. Auckland and Canterbury are also rumoured to employ fulltime accountants to ensure their salary cap compliance, something smaller unions can only dream about.
Former Taranaki chief executive Paul Easton, now a business relationship manager for the National Bank, oversaw that union's application, and he believes one of the biggest issues was the controversial $2 million salary cap. "The cap was far too high for smaller provincial unions to get to, which means those who can afford it will continue to retain the higher quality players," Easton said. "Competitions throughout the world have shown that to work, teams have to be operating pretty near to the cap, because that's what gives you the even spread of talent."
Figures released recently showed Counties-Manukau were a staggering $1.21m below the cap last year and they're understood to have trimmed player costs even further this season.
"We've really been just trying to keep our head above the water and fill gaps with players until our young talent comes through and we believe they'll start coming through in 2008," Sheppard said.
"Whether we'll then be able to hold onto them from a performance side or financial side is our biggest challenge."
Abbot fears Hawke's Bay's giant-killing deeds this year may be yet another aberration, just like North Harbour last year and Bay of Plenty in 2004.
"You have to have the ability to sustain injecting $1.5-$1.7m into your team just to be competitive and for nine teams in the competition, that's just not feasible," Abbot said.
"Teams can poke their heads up and challenge for one year but that sucks your resource out of your union for the next three years."
Southlander Clark, after nearly a decade in charge of the proud union, is street-wise enough to know that the NZRU won't want a major upheaval in their domestic competition until 2010, when their current broadcasting rights deal is renegotiated.
He believes it's up to each individual union to decide if it can foot it in the Air New Zealand Cup, having fought so hard to get there in the first place.
But his Bay of Plenty counterpart admits the temptation of being debt- free in the Heartland division could eventually win over perennial Air New Zealand Cup strugglers.
"Bay of Plenty would be pretty comfortable if we got out of the professional game. Based on the funding we receive from the NZRU for player growth and player registration on the club and amateur side, we're tracking up and doing everything right.
"We get a lot of community support for club and school development as well and we could continue to grow the game at that level quite comfortably.
"All we'd do is form strategic alliances with a couple of unions we decided we wanted to be supportive of and become a feeder union. It's very tempting and it might be a reality for some unions."
- BAY OF PLENTY TIMES
