All Blacks Sevens losing to Spain; New Zealand competing in SailGP; Chris Wood playing for the All Whites; Richie McCaw with YouTube influencers. Photos / Photosport; YouTube
The liberal use of the “All Blacks” moniker continues to blow up in New Zealand Rugby’s face while bloated executive and director fees alarm; England to host rugby’s first Nations Cup with Qatar to follow; And Chris Wood’s bizarre Nottingham Forest boss. All in today’s Sports Insider.
The banner headline in the major Spanish daily screamed: “All Blacks stunned by Spain at Dubai tournament.”
“The All Blacks Sevens had long been the team to beat, boasting a formidable reputation forged through excellence and skill on the field,” wrote the media outlet’s correspondent. “Yet, as history proved during the tournament, even titans can fall.”
Park for a moment that Spain twice defeated the New Zealand men’s sevens team (their correct title in the eyes of the overwhelming majority of Kiwi rugby fans) in Dubai in the past week, first in pool play and then in the semis.
But if you believe the average Spanish sports fan has the capacity to distinguish between XVs rugby and the sevens version, or understands the team their country just beat actually didn’t contain a single All Blacks player, think again.
The breathless coverage reminded Sports Insider of the time when the USA Eagles beat our men’s sevens team for the first time and the headlines Stateside read: “USA Eagles shock the world.”
It mattered not that it was the sevens team. Americans didn’t get that nuance.
Back to Dubai. Our men’s sevens team are hardly “titans”. Nor is it a shock when they get beaten (which seems to be increasingly often nowadays).
One wonders if the casual Arab sports fan is no different to the American. Did the All Blacks brand just take a hit in the Middle East, where the biggest sports money tap is now located?
The Dubai results simply reinforce how daft and inaccurate it is that New Zealand Rugby insists the men’s sevens team must be called the “All Blacks Sevens”.
In its collective wisdom, New Zealand Rugby (NZR) believes calling the sevens specialists the All Blacks adds to the lustre of the black jersey and creates additional commercial opportunities and increased awareness of our dominant rugby heritage.
I’d argue it does the opposite. If anything, it undermines the All Blacks brand as casual sports fans around the globe cast a superficial eye over international media coverage and see headlines of rugby minnows increasingly lowering our colours.
And now we have the added folly of the same smoke and mirrors being applied to the XVs game with the “All Blacks XV” now touring annually, when in fact most Kiwis would prefer they were called “New Zealand A” in convention with other national unions.
But Silver Lake and the marketing boffins at NZR don’t see it that way.
It’s obvious the majority of Kiwi fans disagree and overwhelmingly decry the All Blacks moniker being given to anything other than the best men’s XVs team we can put on the park.
It’s a cry that continues to fall on deaf ears.
While this madness is going on, directors and senior executives at NZR are paying themselves unprecedented salaries and fees.
Gregor Paul’s revelations in the Herald this week that, on average, senior executives at NZR are paid $467,000 annually and that directors fees now total $1.4 million a year, the latter being more than the yearly grant paid to Heartland unions, should outrage rugby fans.
An average obviously means some executives are on higher wages.
The provincial rumour mill is claiming that the combined salaries of the top two executives in the game (one from NZR and one recently departed from its commercial arm) total more than $2 million.
If that’s accurate, it’s an even greater outrage.
Elite professional sport does need to employ capable executives and pay for competent directors, and those sorts of salaries and fees are not uncommon. But not when an organisation is bleeding money (almost $80m in losses in the past two years) and its flawed strategy is being exposed on a regular basis.
And nor when the independent Pilkington review, commissioned by NZR, has found the organisation’s governance no longer fit for purpose.
Meanwhile, the self-congratulation continues with NZR patting itself on the back for achieving one million subscribers to its All Blacks YouTube channel.
Let’s not forget that earlier this year, NZR ran the white flag up on its misguided NZR+ digital channel, which is costing it more than $10m a year, to pivot to promoting its premium content on YouTube instead.
And if you think a million subscribers on YouTube is some sort of incredible feat, here’s some context around how the numbers stack up for “the greatest team in the history of (all) sport”. Food for thought:
If you’ve never even heard of Maher, McNulty or Garnier, join the club.
Even then, to increase the audience, the All Blacks have been forced to piggy-back off international YouTube “sports influencers” who have much bigger numbers.
Hence we have had visits to New Zealand at God knows what cost by the likes of some Americans named “Dude Perfect” (60 million subscribers) and a “Japanese sensation” called the Fischers (eight million), who performed such riveting content as learning how to kick a rugby ball and playing “monster tag”.
I wonder what traditional Kiwi rugby fans make of it all.
It’s yet another example of the squandering of money and more of the nonsensical rhetoric NZR continues to push down our throats.
NZR told us during the Silver Lake negotiation saga that there are 60 million All Blacks fans around the world and they wanted to “monetise” them with the Americans’ help. A dollar per fan and there’s $60m annually, went the spiel.
So three years into the deal, we’ve managed to, on average, convince one in every 60 global fans to follow the team’s YouTube content even though it’s free.
Not sure I’d be boasting about that.
Has New Zealand football (with a lower case ‘f’) ever had a more golden period than right now?
Auckland FC sit magnificently astride the top of the A-League table with five wins, not a single goal conceded, and the Wellington Phoenix breathing down their necks, therefore setting the stage for a bumper return derby at Mt Smart Stadium on Saturday that will rival Warriors crowds of this year.
Topping it off, we have a Kiwi occupying the No 3 spot on the English Premier League’s list of top goalscorers this season.
Chris Wood’s match-winning penalty against Ipswich Town last weekend not only made the All Whites striker the joint top scorer in his club Nottingham Forest’s Premier League (EPL) history* but also reinforced his position among the EPL’s top scorers this season.
Only Liverpool talisman Mo Salah (13) Manchester City’s Erling Haaland (12) have found the net more often than the nine goals Wood has racked up so far this season.
The 32-year-old former Hamiltonian’s goal against Ipswich also reinforced his growing reputation as potentially the EPL’s best penalty taker.
Wood has an unblemished record of seven successes from as many attempts during his EPL career and has not missed from the spot in a match of consequence since 2016, when he was playing for Leeds United.
Wood might want to steer clear of celebrating too closely with Nottingham Forest’s owner though.
Greek shipping magnate Evangelos Marinakis is one of the more unusual EPL club owners.
For starters, he had previously been accused of heroin trafficking and match-fixing – both charges he successfully fought in court.
However, he now has fresh charges of “inciting sporting violence” and “funding a criminal organisation” to deal with, both related to the murder of a policeman with a flare gun.
Marinakis also owns leading Greek club Olympiakos and prosecutors in his native country claim he was in cahoots with the club’s notorious “Gate 7 firm” who are accused of killing the policeman during a riot.
He denies the charges.
If Kiwi football is soaring, our sailing stocks aren’t too far behind either.
Not only is the America’s Cup locked away for at least another two years but SailGP – the brainchild of Sir Russell Coutts – has never been in better shape as it heads into its fifth season.
The series will make its long-awaited Auckland debut in the second event of the 2025 season on January 18-19 and is set for bumper summer crowds eager to watch the action close-up.
But it is the commercial performance of the high-voltage foiling catamarans that is catching the eye.
SailGP is set to break even for the first time, with its managing director Andrew Thompson claiming revenue has “at least doubled” since the 2022-23 series.
Luxury watchmaker Rolex has signed up as the series’ first-ever overall naming-rights sponsor and SailGP has since announced two other major commercial deals with Emirates Airlines and international logistics company DP World.
“Our league is growing revenues,” Thompson told business website SportsPro. “It has always been our aspiration that after five seasons, we’d be in a situation where we are at least breaking even. We’re on track to do that, which is something that’s never happened in this sport before.
Thompson described the 10-year title sponsorship deal with Rolex as a “coming-of-age” partnership, saying Emirates and DP World came on board because of SailGP’s growing presence in the Middle East.
“We have had a number of events in the Middle East now, in both Dubai and Abu Dhabi, which has sparked that interest, frankly,” he said, adding that the US and Asia are the next targets for an expanded presence.
Thompson said SailGP’s new deals put the series alongside some of the biggest global sports organisations from a commercial perspective.
“It is a privilege of ours to be alongside the likes of Wimbledon, [the] PGA Tour and Formula One and others,” he said. “It is certainly our aspiration to be amongst the top tier of sports properties.”
Last season, SailGP claimed its broadcast audience had increased by 48% to reach 193 million households across 212 territories.
You read it here first ... it will be announced shortly that England will host the inaugural Nations Cup tournament in 2026, between countries from the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere.
The second tournament will be hosted two years later by Qatar, with the blood money set to substantially boost the coffers of individual national unions as the Middle East finally adds rugby to its dubious hosting list of high-profile sports.
And the United States has been earmarked for 2030, although there are still several caveats on that yet to be satisfied.
If they are, it means the earliest a Southern Hemisphere country can host the tournament is 2032.
Will New Zealand ever host it?
Not unless Saudi Arabia buys us.
Time zones and commercial imperatives mean the Nations Cup will be no different to the World Cup now – its finals will never be played here.
Team McLaren Bruce McLaren’s name will be celebrated internationally if the team the Kiwi icon inspired can hold off Ferrari to win their first Formula One Constructors Championship in 26 years in the final round of the world championship series in Abu Dhabi on Sunday. Ferrari sit just 21 points behind McLaren’s Lance Stroll and Oscar Piastri.
Steven Adams Tops the Herald’s Sporting Rich list (yet again) with $21m-plus, despite a year out of action injured in the NBA.
Howick College The Auckland school’s golden-point win over red-hot favourites Hamilton Girls’ High School in the final was the best game of the popular Condor sevens tournament.
* Before the Premier League era, Grenville Morris scored the most goals for Nottingham Forest, with 217 career strikes in all competitions
The Frenchman says he loves playing in big matches and doesn't care for rankings too much.