Paul Lewis: Selfish side stands out

Would that we could all make a point like Sir Dave Richards - the irascible 69-year-old Premier League chairman who attacked FIFA and UEFA for "stealing" football from England at a sports and security conference and then promptly fell in a hotel fountain on his way to a dinner reception; he had to be rescued by the Bolton Wanderers chairman. Way to make a splash, Dave ...

No one owns a sport. Players, fans, media, sponsors and administrators have the privilege of being involved and maybe even shaping it (as did the late, great Jock Hobbs) but people in a sport are generally only caretakers.

Which makes it even more surprising that, hard on the heels of the Otago Rugby Union rescue job, South Africa should be pushing for expansion of Super Rugby to 16 teams.

On the face of it, these are two different issues - Otago's woes relate to provincial rugby and its much-discussed financial weakness in a professional context. Super Rugby is a different ball game, just as the Highlanders are a separate set-up to Otago.

But it all comes under the heading of a game living beyond its means.

Otago's $2.35 million debt plus a forecasted loss of $750,000 for this year marked the truly horrifying end of the provincial rugby spectrum.

The individual components of this financial failure have not yet been dissected publicly but it seems clear that Otago and some other unions have been Keeping Up With The Joneses. The New Zealand Rugby Union, which did so well in winning and hosting the World Cup and combating the evils assailing the game - too much rugby, meaningless test matches with weakened sides, complicated rules that wearied and puzzled spectators, cold stadiums in night rugby shunned in preference to a warm seat in front of the TV - is also to blame.

They are an essential part of the Otago rescue package (after they said no more money was forthcoming) and their continued dithering with the national provincial competition meant they did not take hard financial decisions needed at the time. Remember a few years back when the NZRU was agitating for fewer teams but were stymied by a provincial union backlash?

The continued reshaping of a competition which is scarcely more than the new club rugby; a feeder competition identifying talent for levels above; not only made a mess - it also gave the unions tacit permission to try and build their own dynasties above their station.

Player salaries are to be slashed by more than $300,000 a year and it's clear that was a key component of the Otago blowout.

Yet the South African Rugby Union is now agitating to bring in a 16th Super Rugby team - the Southern Kings.

By any measure, Super Rugby is over-subscribed at the moment. Things got so bad in terms of travel and fatigue that ruling body Sanzar instituted the current conference system - where the early emphasis is on local derbies but which also ensures that no team will meet all other teams.

This season, for example, the Blues do not play the Waratahs and the Cheetahs; the Brumbies do not meet the Crusaders and the Stormers; the Bulls do not encounter the Hurricanes or the Force.

Super Rugby seems to have spread the talent too thin. Some of that can be put down to 2012 being a post-World Cup year, with the attendant retirement and journey overseas of many players.

But look at the Australian teams who appear to be suffering from the advent of the Rebels last year.

The argument was that Australia did not have the player depth to sustain five Super teams. That seems to have been borne out, as none has exactly been a joy to watch so far this season.

Not even the table-topping Reds have been able to stitch together a genuinely exciting exhibition.

Rugby's emphasis on defence and its horrible breakdown laws are partly to blame - the 15-man code is suffering in comparison to rugby league in terms of line breaks, thrilling tries and ball-in-play action at present - but the Australian teams look particularly risk-averse.

So do a few South African teams, while the Chiefs' and Highlanders' upsetting of the status quo has helped to keep interest up here.

The 16th team issue is not so much financial as political.

The Kings come from the Port Elizabeth area - a region where few non-whites played rugby and which has been promised Super Rugby inclusion by SARU in 2013.

SARU are prodded by their political masters in a government which has shown great interest in spreading rugby to other races; the inventors of South Africa's so-called "transformation" players (translation: those who may not yet have the ability but who need the exposure to gain it and spread the gospel).

Worthy though that is, SARU's promise to the Kings is being resisted by all five South African franchises - one of whom must drop out of Super Rugby if SARU don't succeed with their push for 16 teams.

There have been rumbles of a boycott and the South Africans have threatened before to pick up their toys and take them to Europe.

But, even if 16 teams does happen, is it right? We witnessed through the World Cup just how great a focused and intense rugby tournament can be.

Diluting the talent pool as they try to broaden the same, increasing the costs as they go, and forgetting that sport is bound by financial and audience-appeal realities seems once more like a game living beyond its means - pretending it's all about expansion when it is really selfish motivation.

Dave Richards' rant against FIFA and UEFA was the unhappy expression of a man from a country which once thought it owned football.

The truth, of course, is that it belongs to the world, as does rugby.

But taking it to the world has to be done carefully and without damaging the present for the future, as Otago did and as the Kings threaten to (albeit in different ways).

Do we all have to fall in a fountain before we learn?