My plan to fix rugby
Here’s an idea, cut back on the meaningless [insert sponsor name here] rugby competitions and make the one that really matters an annual event, the World Cup.
First of all, congratulations to the All Blacks for winning the Steinlager Cup … series … championship? Or whatever it was called. They beat Wales at home three games to nil and that is an achievement. Print out the certificate and stick it on the fridge.
Can I also congratulate the NZ ‘‘super rugby franchises’’ on being totally dominant in the ‘‘super rugby franchise’’ competition? And huge congratulations to whoever won the ITM/Mitre 10 provincial rugby championship/premiership, I’m sure you know who you are.
Rugby in 2016 is confusing, meaningless and broken. The only exception is the World Cup and sometimes I think our back-toback victories are possibly the only thing keeping this rickety country afloat.
Before I get too stuck in, can I briefly raise a toast of Steinlager mixed with Up&Go and Powerade (how many official drinks do the All Blacks have?) to the New Zealand Rugby Union who are doing a great job. Kiwi rugby dominance in recent years is probably a testament to them being the ‘‘Apple’’ of what they do.
Unfortunately, like Apple computers, the NZRU probably aren’t paying any taxes, although unlike Apple it’s not through carefully planned tax loopholes but rather because they haven’t been making any money. I’ve been using the same ‘‘loophole’’ for years.
The excuse is always that New Zealand is a small market but I would like to add that it’s because the product is trash. This is bad news in 2016 because the internet has been invented and we’ve been exposed to other forms of entertainment. Rugby is struggling to attract young viewers and I’m convinced that whoever books Eden Park for Blues games is doing so only to demoralise the players as 10,000 fans in a 50,000 seat venue is pretty depressing.
Start with Super Rugby: a competition in which faceless franchises with embarrassing names compete with four conferences spread over four continents.
No one, besides slightly pissed and lonely old men, really cares what happens outside of their own country’s conference, of which two are in South Africa, so they play their games at 3am NZT. Unless the games are in Japan or Argentina. Did I mention that the ‘‘South Africa conferences’’ also include teams from Japan and Argentina? If it sounds confusing that’s because it is.
It should be called Super Jetlagged Rugby because it takes more than 24 hours to fly from Dunedin to Johannesburg. I assume there’s a team in Johannesburg? I’m not sure because the geniuses who designed the competition decided to not include the name of the city in the ‘‘Franchises’’ so they would have the global appeal like … Real Madrid or the Los Angeles Lakers. As a result, the Franchises have about as much passion and history behind them as your local Burger King.
This same problem now faces what was the legendary ‘‘TriNations’’. It has awkwardly been renamed seven times and now weirdly contains Argentina who has only won one game away from home in four years.
Rugby’s only saving grace is the Rugby World Cup which is still one of the most exciting events in sports. This inspires my solution to make rugby more meaningful and geographically relevant; hold the Rugby World Cup every year. Like the Super Bowl, Or the NBA Finals. Or Scrabble world championships
Football and the Olympics are too big to do every year but because of lack of world interest rugby doesn’t have this problem. Each year there’s hardly eight decent teams (only 11 teams have ever even made the quarter-finals) so let’s do it.
First, divide rugby into three zones: Europe, the Pacific and the Americas. South Africa doesn’t fit in and that’s bad, but not as bad as apartheid so let’s chuck ‘em in with the Americans and get on with it. The ‘‘World Cup Finals’’ between the top eight qualifiers from these regions play for the cup. No more ‘‘Tui Golden Lager cups’’ or ‘‘Investec’’ trophies. What even is Investec? They’ve been sponsoring the competition for 10 years and no-one has even looked up who they are.
Do the same thing with provincial rugby, finishing that season with a world club championship and Ta-da! Make rugby meaningful again. What do you think? Moronic? Genius? Has it been tried before?
Feel free to log on to stuff.co.nz and label me an a-hole regardless, like you do every week, you anonymous punks!
I’m convinced that whoever books Eden Park for Blues games is doing so only to demoralise the players as 10,000 fans in a 50,000-seat venue is pretty depressing.