Rassie Erasmus, Liam Lawson and Richard Agar. Photos / Red Bull, Photosport
Rugby has never been more fragile and vulnerable to a takeover by Saudi Arabian blood money. In his last Sports Insider column, veteran sportswriter Trevor McKewen makes a poignant plea for sanity. Plus: D-Day looms for Eden Park.
Some within New Zealand Rugby might not believe it but I do have a soft spot for the sport we like to call our national game.
But rugby has never had a more tenuous grip on that claim (the Warriors and Auckland FC home games last week drew bigger crowds than any Kiwi-based Super Rugby Pacific match).
I’d like to see rugby flourish globally, or at least the type of game we are seeing in Super Rugby Pacific this season anyhow. But I don’t believe it’s going to happen.
Sport tends to move in 30-year cycles.
The last seismic blow-up in international rugby fell in 1995 when Rupert Murdoch and Kerry Packer duked it out and forced union to go professional.
That fight between two Aussie media barons was small fry compared to today’s modern sports disruptors – the twin enemies of Private Equity Vultures (PEV) and the Saudi Sportswashers (SS).
Both are scourges.
Let’s quickly deal with the former first.
We’ve now had more than five years to assess the impact of private equity on rugby.
It has been underwhelming (Silver Lake and New Zealand Rugby at best, and destructive at worst (CVC and the English Premiership).
In both cases, the national union in New Zealand (NZR) and naïve club owners in England have been burned and are bleeding financially as a result.
Other countries risk falling into the same abyss if they continue to be seduced by the mythical promise that private equity can fix all your woes with their “expertise”.
But with unsustainable business models, the clock is ticking on international rugby at both franchise and test level.
And the global ambition of Saudi Arabia means sportswashing is only intensifying as we become increasingly inured to the insidious tactic.
When the Saudis bought English Premier League club Newcastle United, I held a faint hope its supporters would push back.
Instead, they drank the city’s pubs dry in celebration. It mattered not one jot that the new club owner is widely believed to have signed off on secretly killing and dismembering a journalist. Nor would Jamal Khashoggi have merited a thought while the same fans this week celebrated their first major trophy success since 1969, achieved by a squad assembled with blood money.
This is what Saudi Arabia is bringing to the modern sports world.
The man the world calls MBS shares a common tactic with Donald Trump – flood the zone until you wear them down.
The amount of international sport the Saudis are now involved in is as relentless as the US President’s obscene offensive blizzard.
One week the Saudis are buying into global streaming network Dazn, guaranteeing coverage of their rebel LIV Golf Tour, and the next they’re teaming up with Dana White to create a boxing version of UFC.
This week, it’s a US$500 million ($860m) investment in creating a global T20 cricket league.
It’s dizzying – and every announcement leaves sports fans a little more hardened in the heart, exasperated or beaten down over the moral argument over a despot and his misogynistic country tearing apart what we know as sport.
I occasionally comfort myself in believing rugby will miss the Saudi bus.
The game has simply become too complicated and there are too many competing agendas to transform it into a sport of true global international appeal.
It is caught between trying to mimic Australian rugby league and veering more and more to a version of American gridiron where bursts of action sporadically break out among interminable breaks in the game.
Its history and traditions are now its anchor.
Not at test level. “Bomb Squad” inventor Rassie Erasmus is portrayed as some sort of tactical genius for flooding a field with 125kg-plus behemoths, and now the French are following his line.
And every time a phalanx of forwards takes to the field in the second halves of test matches, we inch further towards a stop-start version of American NFL.
Rugby’s rules are now far too complicated. And the ugly shadow of concussion risk could end it all, even if they do get the game right.
Admittedly, it’s not all doom and gloom on the domestic front.
David Kirk will make a difference in New Zealand as the national union’s new chair.
His steady-eyed refusal to buckle to NZR’s attempted extortion of the Players' Association to cave into a ridiculous initial Silver Lake deal, coupled with his ability and diplomacy, means the game has a shot at remaining relevant in New Zealand.
But the global pressures the game is facing feel too overwhelming, even for someone of Kirk’s calibre.
The 30-year theory suggests the next seismic shift in rugby is due and it is likely that New Zealand rugby will need to navigate the Saudi dilemma at some stage of his tenure.
At least we have the right leader.
I, for one, will be pleased if Saudi Arabia spare us all the angst by passing on rugby for all the previously outlined reasons.
The game might be in ill health, but it doesn’t need a butcher masquerading as a benefactor to supposedly fix it.
Crusaders chief executive Colin Mansbridge is the latest sports identity to call out Eden Park’s self-appointed description of claiming to be New Zealand’s “National Stadium”.
From next season, Mansbridge’s Crusaders will be an anchor tenant at Christchurch’s sparkling new $683m Te Kaha roofed stadium, rechristened One New Zealand Stadium after a corporate-naming deal.
In a LinkedIn post, Mansbridge called out Eden Park’s claims compared to Te Kaha.
“One has New Zealand in its name and the other claims to be the National Stadium,” the Crusaders boss wrote.
“One is going to be New Zealand’s premier rectangular sports venue and multi-use arena, with a roof, and the other is essentially a cricket wicket that the All Blacks have turned into a fortress and has a few decent concerts.”
It was a cheeky post and there are more important factors to investigate around Eden Park’s concerted bid to stave off a waterfront stadium than brazenly appropriating an exaggerated tag-line.
But it was timely because it goes to what I believe is Eden Park’s unfortunate trait of consistent over-reach – which is something that will surely come under the microscope of Auckland’s councillors when they meet next Thursday to decide on the city’s premier stadium.
Yes, Decision Day is apparently finally upon us in a stadium debate spanning three decades – Eden Park’s “2.1” vision versus Quay Park, the favoured waterfront option.
Both parties will present to the mayor and 20 councillors, who will then finally make a call on one of the longest-running sagas in New Zealand sporting history.
Sport Insider’s moles say Quay Park’s bidders claim they can prove it has funding for its stadium precinct vision and can deliver it without any contribution from central government or Auckland ratepayers.
Importantly, they also claim to have the support of KiwiRail (which is crucial as the stadium will be sited over the top of train tracks that will be retained) and influential iwi Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei.
The council needs to deeply probe those claims.
But equally it must do the same with Eden Park, whose presentations to date have been heavy on emotion and history. I do not believe they have been clear enough who their funders are (or in fact whether they have any).
If Eden Park cannot supply that information – or a business model that shows its ongoing upkeep and maintenance can be sustained without ratepayer or taxpayer contributions – the councillors need to respond appropriately.
If in any doubt at all about either bid, they should pause the process until they get all the guarantees we need. It’s that important.
Yes, it was heartening to see the Warriors bounce back from their Las Vegas season-opening curtain call and defeat Manly in the first home game of the season.
But there was a strange aftertaste to the celebrated victory just a couple of days later when the NRL’s Integrity Unit handed down its findings on an incident in Sin City between Warriors assistant coach Richard Agar and an English journalist.
When news first surfaced of allegations that Agar grabbed the journalist by the throat during the halftime break in the Warriors' match against Canberra at Allegiant Stadium, my immediate reaction was “what was going on in his head?”
Why, when his team was so under the pump in a crucial season-opening match, was an assistant coach focusing more on a get-square than what he was going to do to help his players get back into the game in the second half?
Then in strides Warriors chief executive Cameron George, who did more than just stand by his man.
He not only declared Agar was the innocent party in the skirmish but even outed the journalist’s name to the media before confidently predicting CCTV footage existed and would reveal all.
George’s adamant response caused me, and no doubt many others, to pause and conclude there probably were two sides to this story. Indeed, the Warriors boss gave every impression he had seen the footage.
Yet the NRL investigators clearly saw something different, handing Agar an A$10,000 ($11,000) fine and a three-game suspension (which intuitively feels about right for the offence).
Perhaps George was tired after his flight home when he defended his decision to name the journo.
Whatever it was, this quote from George in defence of the tactic is now looking very lame.
“We don’t play that game, we’re transparent. He wants to make the allegations and the complaint so I’ve got no problem naming the person. We’re investigating it thoroughly so you can’t just throw a grenade and then just run off into a dark corner and be hidden.”
The Warriors are not commenting on the penalty handed out to Agar.
Hmmm ...
I wondered what Liam Lawson and his supporters felt when they read Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko’s comment on rookie driver Isack Hadjar crying following his pre-race crash at the Australian Grand Prix.
Marko, who alongside team principal Christian Horner runs the Red Bull F1 operation, described seeing the French teenager in tears after the incident as “embarrassing”.
Clearly distraught and weeping behind his helmet, the 18-year-old was consoled by Sir Lewis Hamilton’s dad Anthony Hamilton as he forlornly walked back through the hospitality area at Melbourne Park.
Marko’s admonishment at Hadgar’s show of emotion was astonishing, even for a world as hard-ass as F1.
Bravo, Anthony Hamilton, whose son is apparently idolised by Hadgar and who consoled the youngster. Dad stepped up.
The incident advances a gnawing fear of what potentially lies ahead for Lawson (and his mental health) with Marko and Horner determining his career.
Marko appeared an early supporter of the Kiwi but then turned the pressure ratchet right up by declaring Lawson’s lap times needed to be within three-tenths of a second off teammate and world champion Max Verstappen (despite both cars being set up to suit the Dutchman).
Nor did he back off after Lawson’s disappointing performance in Melbourne.
Responding to reporters, he told them he would not pass judgment on the Kiwi rookie until he’s completed “three to five” races with the senior team.
I feel worried for Lawson.
* This is Trevor McKewen’s final Sports Insider column.
Of the 72 players to make the cut, Fox was one of nine to not card an over-par round.