KEY POINTS:
The Auckland Rugby Union will continue its practice of generous grants to its clubs in 2008, despite increasing concerns throughout New Zealand over the critical financial state of the game.
That depression has not missed even a union like Auckland which had one of its best representative seasons in many years, with an unbeaten record and a Ranfurly Shield-Air New Zealand Cup double.
Despite disappointing attendances at Eden Park for the ANZC semifinal and final, which has cut heavily into any profit the union might make on 2007 activities, chairman Ken Baguley confirms overall club funding which has been as high as $800,000 will be maintained next year.
"We will announce a final result at the annual general meeting on December 10," he says. "We will show a small surplus after giving out grants of about $750,000.
"Budgeting for next year is a major worry but the board have previously given an undertaking that we will give 12 months' notice of any intent to change the present support that we give to clubs in Auckland.
"Even if it means dipping into our cash reserves we will continue the present level into 2008."
But Baguley warns that future funding may depend on what sort of format is used for provincial rugby. Auckland shares with other bigger unions a reservation over the financial viability of the 14-team premiership which has been used in the past two seasons.
"Whether it [club grants] is sustainable after that depends on a number of factors including a provincial competition that contributes to our financial situation," he says.
Other unions, of course, have not the financial muscle of Auckland, so their clubs are not as fortunate. In neighbouring North Harbour, for instance, clubs have not received anything for many years, understandably perhaps from a union whose cash problems have been well documented.
Canterbury obviously has been one of the unions able to help clubs, but it, too, because of poor crowds for the ANZC playoff matches, is understood to be in a position where on 2007 activities it will be lucky to break even.
Rugby's cash crisis is expected to loom prominently as the New Zealand union in the next few weeks launches its post-mortem into the failed World Cup campaign and deliberates whether there should be change in the leadership of the All Blacks, and whether Robbie Deans should replace Graham Henry as coach.
It has been estimated $50m was spent on the World Cup campaign, which, if true, will be seen by those in the tiers below the All Blacks, such as provinces and clubs, as a wasted investment.
It is difficult to assess how much Super 14, and even ANZC, attendances were hit by the reconditioning stand-down of players and then the World Cup preoccupation, and each of the franchises was given some compensation. But provincial unions and the franchises have no doubt their revenues were affected.
And among provincial administrators there is now a fear that there will be an inevitable knock-on effect from what appears a certain drastic cut in the New Zealand unions two main revenue sources: its apparel arrangement with adidas and the television contract with News Ltd.
Those two contracts are up for renewal in 2010.
It is hard to see how the NZRU can take a bullish bargaining position, given the failure of this year and the known anger of the television interests at having the Super 14 and Tri Nations box-office appeal diminished. But as one provincial official points out, the NZRU has no alternatives to either of these contracts and has nowhere else to go.
Among experienced New Zealand rugby men queries continue to emerge over the flawed thinking in the World Cup preparation, and presume these to be on the agenda of any NZRU review panel, the members of which are expected to be chairman Jock Hobbs and board members, Paul Quinn, Ivan Haines, Mike Eagle and Graham Mourie.
With two former All Black captains in Hobbs and Mourie and a New Zealand Maori captain in Quinn, that's a panel with rugby nous. Yet among leading rugby thinkers there is a suspicion that at NZRU level too many decisions are being made by people without a sufficient rugby background.
The NZRU's solutions to growing financial challenges seem to be imposing more and more televised rugby on a plainly jaded public. Noting that the 2008 season will start on February 15, one former old All Black spoken to said: "There is just too much rugby."
As was Alex Wyllie in the Herald on Sunday last week, he was aghast at the new alternative All Black jersey when a long tradition of a white jersey with suitable black trimming had its own mystique.
"A rugby person would not have made that decision," he said.
