Paul Lewis: Change needed or golden goose will die

Back in 1995, in a past life, I was involved in the process of helping with the establishment and marketing of the Super 14 franchises (or the Super 10, as they were then).

In those days, the CEO of the New Zealand Rugby Union was a fella by the name of David Moffett - the same David Moffett recently quoted in the Australian media as saying the Super 14 and the Tri-Nations should be "retired" and that New Zealand and Australia should concentrate on playing each other and forget about South Africa.

Moffett was never an easy man to work with. He didn't always take advice easily which made you wonder, if you were an adviser, what he wanted you for.

But he is a smart man and, once he decided on a course of action, was not easily swayed. This made him unpopular with some - the dogmatic win few friends - and he was a highly controversial CEO of the Wales Rugby Union at a time when Welsh rugby was bleeding, financially and in sporting terms.

He will be remembered for introducing regional rugby to Wales - perhaps the rugby country most fiercely protective of all the clubs, big and small, and their rugby traditions - by merging famous old clubs and for helping to free Wales from the cold hand of debt (the Millennium stadium; Wales were in hock by more than $150m).

So you'd have to say, charting Moffett's career in the New South Wales Rugby Union, the NZRU, CEO of Australia's NRL and CEO of Sport England, that he is a man who sticks to his knitting. In those rugby and league jobs, he has nearly always pursued a policy of financial surety, regionalised rugby and building new traditions based on the game's changing needs.

As an aside, back in 1995, the end game of the Super 10 franchises was that one day in the misty future the NZRU would sell off the franchise rights to private bidders and New Zealand would begin to grow the rugby equivalent of Manchester United, Liverpool, Barcelona and so on - international/global clubs full of players not necessarily from the club's catchment areas.

That's all gone noisily down the gurgler. One of the incontrovertible truths of the current professional game is that it depends on the control of the players.

The NZRU centrally contracts its players - which means it has control of the players for All Black duties. Most other countries do not, which means they have to battle the clubs who pay the players' salaries to get them to play internationally. All thoughts of rugby versions of Manchester United were hastily shelved.

So, to me, it is highly interesting that the man at the helm of the NZRU when it went through this great period of change, now figures that the Super 14 and the Tri Nations are "boring".

I tend to agree. Or half-agree. The Tri-Nations is, no question, an ugly beast of a thing. As the replacement for rugby tours, where the visiting country would spend weeks and weeks playing different provincial sides as well as a test series, the Tri-Nations is insipid by comparison.

Because of the unchanging identity of the opponents, the tests tend to merge into a great, grey blancmange. The most often heard criticism of the Tri-Nations is that it produces mostly instantly forgettable test matches.

When you add, as Graham Henry has done, rotation and re-hab to win the World Cup, professional rugby has tended to become a sport compelling only every four years.

No international sport can expect to flourish if it is producing mostly forgettable fare, even if rugby's coffers are obligingly full after the various deals have been struck, notably with Rupert Murdoch's broadcasting empire.

"I know it has to do with money," Moffett said, "but you have to be careful you don't kill the golden goose. After 10 years of professional rugby, people really have to take a step back and say: 'Where to next?"'

Absolutely. Change is the only constant.

There is no question that the game needed to change from its old amateur ways. There is equally no question that the professional game needs to change.

Moffett has a point - South Africa are a problem. A shadow of their old selves, the quest to get through transformation while keeping up quality has been too much for them so far.

In Super 14, there is a predictable equation: An away game = South African loss.

The answer is not to abandon our old adversary. It's to help them by broadening the Super 14 to include more nations and by leaving the Tri-Nations behind to return, through the management of a global rugby season, to the days of meaningful tours and series; the kind that stick in the memory.

If not, rugby appears to be heading down the road described by ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu who said: "If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading."