KEY POINTS:
The New Zealand Rugby Union (NZRU) will not back any push for a replacement of the Super 14 rugby competition that excludes South Africa.
The union's general manager of professional rugby, Neil Sorenson, said today that such a restructure would be at odds with the union's preferred position
at the moment.
Leading New Zealand provincial teams North Harbour, Wellington, Canterbury, Auckland, Waikato, Otago, Hawke's Bay, Taranaki and Southland rugby representatives were reported to have been meeting in recent weeks over a restructure and realignment of Southern Hemisphere and domestic rugby.
The unions wanted a new direction because they felt that the Super 14 competition had reached its use-by date, The Dominion Post said.
The group wanted to replace Super 14 with a transtasman trophy home-and-away competition involving nine New Zealand teams and five from Australia.
This would mean doing away with New Zealand's premier domestic competition, the Air NZ Cup, as well.
They also want a European-style tournament to run alongside the transtasman trophy which would then include teams from South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, the Pacific Islands and America.
This tournament would contain 24 teams in four pools of six playing matches every four weeks.
Sanzar's Super 14 and Tri-Nations contract with News Limited does not end until 2011.
Renegotiation of the current deal would have to be brought forward so as to have the new competitions up and running in 2010, the report said.
"Sanzar's current position is that it is a very much a three-country expansion of Super rugby with South Africa involved," Sorenson said.
" The transtasman idea does not include South Africa and that is absolutely not the NZRU's preferred position at the moment.
"At this stage Sanzar are unified in New Zealand, Australia and South African teams being involved in Super rugby and Tri-Nations going forward.
"There can be no breakup of Sanzar, absolutely not.
"Sanzar needs to remain very, very strong, particularly in today's rugby environment which is very trying."
Sanzar had been re-committing over the last few months, had been meeting on a monthly basis and was probably closer and more unified as a group than it had ever been and needed to be in the next 24 months.
Sorenson said the NZRU had had a lot of options "thrown at us" from its provincial unions, the Super 14 franchises and former All Blacks such as Mike Brewer and John Drake.
"This one has been mooted before . .. we have been over some of these ideas over the last few weeks."
There was a meeting due on Friday to which the NZRU had been invited to attend but Sorenson was unsure if it was about this reported issue with the nine unions.
"There is nothing dead in the water at the moment because reviews are taking place over the next 12 months and we are happy for all options to be included, happy for any suggestions to come forward from any people whether it is players, sponsors, provincial unions or franchises," he said.
Meanwhile, the NZRU's "final draft decision" on the future of the Air NZ Cup championship was due out tomorrow and would be made public shortly afterwards.
Unions have until September 5 to give their feedback and the NZRU board will ratify and produce a final decision on September 25, Sorenson said.
Sorenson said the discussion document on the revamp of the Air NZ Cup was released three to four weeks ago and the inclusion of Australian teams was not part of the review.
"And we have had no feedback from partners and stake holders to suggest we should revisit that position."
- NZPA
