Rugby: Deep South struggling with not-so-Super side

Many are hoping the opening of the roofed Forsyth Barr Stadium next year will give Otago rugby a leg-up. Photo / Otago Daily Times

Otago and the Highlanders have experienced a decade of losing cash, campaigns - and local support. Dylan Cleaver explores some theories on Dunedin's ugly divorce from rugby

Dunedin pharmacist Adrian Graamans has a theory about everything, but this one is closer to the heart than most: the decline and fall of Otago and Highlanders rugby started when the students stopped supporting their adopted province.

"Every year a fresh batch of blue and gold troops would come into the city," said Graamans, who came to the city as a scarfie 20 years ago.

"Then something changed. The Hurricanes would come to town and there'd be more black and gold jerseys on the terraces than blue."

Professional rugby had severed a connection.

Previously, Otago would play on a Saturday afternoon and that night the likes of Arran Pene and Marc Ellis would be sharing a few beers in student pubs.

"You'd be in class with Josh Kronfeld the next week - they were one of us," Graamans said. But professionalism rendered the student Super rugby player virtually extinct.

It's plausible, yet falls short of explaining why Otago and Highlander rugby remains mired in a fug of depression. While the students are a large and vibrant slice of Dunedin life, there's a much larger permanent population that has become disengaged from their two flagship teams.

Club rugby is still passionately followed and this year's All Black test against Wales will be a 28,000 sell-out, so rugby itself is not the problem.

Otago stalwart and University coach John Leslie recently experienced the apathy.

"I was in hospital last week and three of the nurses I had all said to me that they used to be great fans of Otago, but none of them were particularly interested now. All of them said that."

Leslie left Otago after they won the NPC in 1998 to play for Scotland and do some travelling. He returned in 2004.

"The 90s had been kind to Otago rugby," Leslie said, "but it was like coming back to a shipwreck."

One man who witnessed the wreck was Hayden Meikle. Now the sports editor at the Otago Daily Times, he was the Otago and Highlanders beat man when their fortunes started heading south. The students had lost interest, he said, and that was a significant part of the problem, but looming larger was a year - 2003.

"That year under Laurie Mains left a sour taste that has not been flushed out," he said. "It's impossible to overstate how damaging that year was."

In four of the five years before that campaign, which saw Mains fall out spectacularly with assistant Greg Cooper and All Black hooker Anton Oliver, the Highlanders made the semifinals.

They have not come close since.

"The best Highlanders teams were Otago in disguise," Meikle said.

"We used to joke that every year there would be a token Southlander.

"There was an arrogance to it, but it was largely true."

Even midway through the past decade, Otago was holding its own in the NPC, but no longer.

"There are people here who still see Otago as a rugby power, but the reality is we're no different to a Taranaki."

For the past three years Otago have finished seventh, 10th and 10th and it "has had a trickle-up effect" on the Highlanders.

In the past three Super 14s they have finished 11th, 11th and 12th.

The last place to go looking for answers to the plight is rugby administrators, who all come from an angle of self-interest.

Still, it is worth noting the New Zealand Rugby Union's stance on the Highlanders. In a nutshell:

* The NZRU still sees it as pivotal to have a professional franchise based in the south of the South Island

* That the impending move to a franchise contracting model could help the Highlanders

* And that although assistance has been given, the Highlanders do have to stand on their own eventually.

The national body cannot be excused of sitting idly by while the Highlanders founder.

They agreed to underwrite the franchise financially for two years, installed Mike Eagle on the board, gave the Dunedin City Council a representative on the board and seconded Southland rugby's highly regarded chief executive Roger Clark to try to clean up the mess.

Still, there is cause for optimism.

The roofed Forsyth Barr Stadium is set to open next year.

"Those who think the'Brook is a good place to watch rugby probably haven't watched rugby anywhere else," said Leslie.

"It is cold, it's hard to get to the toilet and hard to get decent food."

The goodwill created by a shiny new venue would definitely have an effect, said Meikle, but it would be ephemeral unless allied to improved on-field performance.

"Over the next few years I'd expect we will double our crowds, but admittedly we're only getting between 5000-10,000 at the moment," he said.

"But the stadium alone won't sustain that. It needs a winning rugby team."

The Otago Rugby Union has been handed a get-out-of-jail-free card with the DCC taking over Carisbrook, so another millstone to the finances - money was being poured into the upkeep of the near-derelict ground - has been removed.

Franchise contracting could help the Highlanders, though it remains moot.

Then there is Phil Mooney, the Queenslander signed to take over the coaching of the NPC team.

His appointment provoked fury among locals who wanted hometown hero David Latta to get the gig.

But Mooney, according to Leslie and Meikle, has made all the right moves, employing Latta as assistant, getting alongside the influence shapers and being a highly visible presence at club rugby.

Leslie, who one day has aspirations to coach Otago himself in the distant future, has been impressed, even if he says the task of upgrading Otago's non-existent recruitment and talent identification programmes is a daunting one.

The Highlanders, though, might be tougher to fix.

"It seems," Leslie concluded, "that all you hear about is 'Yeah, we're losing, but the team spirit's great'. You know you're in trouble when team spirit keeps getting mentioned."