Plague on all their Houses

By Benji Crossley

Depending on who decides to blow what up over the next few days, todays vote at New Zealand Rugby HQ was either, the end, the beginning of the end, or the end of the beginning. My hunch is it won’t be the first one so there is still plenty of water to go under the bridge when it comes to everyone’s favourite pub conversation – Governance at New Zealand Rugby.

If you’re enough of a rugby head to be reading this piece, then you likely know most of what went down on Molesworth Street today so the background of what lead us here isn’t necessary. But in the end, it boils down to control. Control of the board. The PUs, in getting their “Proposal 2” across the line have maintained control of at least three seats on the Board of New Zealand Rugby.

The NZR Board and its executive wanted a completely independent board that followed governance best practices in terms of appointment. That essentially means that like any team, they’d have been looking for a variety of skill sets to make sure the board covered all the bases it needed to allow it to function. To achieve this, they would likely have some kind of skills matrix, which unless I am missing something completely, would have almost certainly included some level of knowledge of the wider rugby world. Just because someone is a legal governance expert doesn’t mean they can’t appreciate the plight of the battler club in rural Canterbury.

The provinces maintained that the appointment process wasn’t robust enough to guarantee someone with the requisite knowledge of the wider rugby landscape was appointed to the board, so their proposal required that at least three directors had served on the board of a PU for two years.

And this is the bit that gets me, seriously, how are these two things different? Both parties want a board with the necessary skills and experience. They want a board that will govern the game for all New Zealanders. Simon Jones – Head of Marketing at (Insert fancy marketing agency here) can also be Simon Jones – Rippa convenor at his kid’s club. And surely any appointment committee looking to appoint would pick the Simon Jones who has the experience at the local club ahead of the Simon Jones who spends his Saturdays on the golf course? *

The PUs needing the guarantee of two years on one of their boards is purely about control. This whole fight is about control. And it’s one that has been brewing under the surface for years. Silver Lake was part of it. But before that you had a quiet battle that played out between PUs and Super Teams around the high-performance pathways. A battle the Super Teams, supported by NZR, won.

But this piece isn’t purely a dig at the PUs, though I think by a whisker they are the bad guys in this situation. The Players Association have thrown grenade after grenade into the mix since the early days of the Silver Lake battle. This is an association that’s sole remit is to look after a few hundred professional players in this country. Them having complete control is a real tail wagging the dog situation. But they’re also the group who generate the funds to fund the community game so despite them not being voting members they undoubtedly have huge leverage. But they clearly have not used that leverage wisely over the last few weeks. Threats of breakaways and full-frontal attack on people in PU land, most of them volunteers who have spent years contributing to the game, isn’t the way to influence people. It’s the way to alienate people.

Looking from the outside and reading their communications you get the sense that the RPA thinks they exist in a vacuum, but the players come from somewhere. They come from the rippa grade that Simon Jones is the convenor of. They come through the grades and competitions that the PUs run and nurture. They are a product of the whole system.

Regardless of what plays out over the next few weeks/months it’s a real shame that this is the focus. The on-field product of Super Rugby has been great this year and crowds are coming back to the grounds. We’re about to see the biggest change in the All Black environment since 2003. This should be the time we’re talking about the make up of the loose forward trio for the ABs. Whether the Blues can break their finals hoodoo and just how funny it is that the Crusaders have been so bad. Instead, we’re talking about this.

But do we really need to be having this fight? Are the two methods that different? Is a more formal level of influence and control better than actual best practice which still leaves a good degree of influence? In the end, it’s egos. It’s a lot of people with big egos wanting to win. And in the end, nobody will.

*Simon Jones is an entirely fictitious person, though the version that bowled in the 05 Ashes was pretty handy.

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