Wellington sevens trumped due to absence of All Blacks
Only a return of the big names can save the tournament.
What do the Wellington sevens and Donald Trump’s inauguration have in common? No stars.
Thankfully the sevens won’t possibly mark the end of western civilisation as we know it, but in the largely melancholy discussions over the lack of interest in the tournament, the fact the players, in every team, are largely anonymous has rarely been mentioned.
Too much booze, too little booze? Too much rude behaviour, not enough rude behaviour? Too much of the ‘no fun’ police, or not enough of them? Families or party animals? It’s been talkback heaven.
But the biggest change from the first hugely successful tournament in 2000 and this year’s struggling show is who is playing the game.
In 2000, coach Gordon Tietjens had Christian Cullen, Jonah Lomu, Mils Muliaina, and Eric Rush in his squad.
Think then about whether you’d be more fired up about the current sevens if Ben Smith, Julian Savea, Beauden Barrett, and Ardie Savea were in the New Zealand team. The fact is that stars sell sport. Call Rupert Murdoch a souldestroying, money-grubbing, grasping, ruthless media baron by all means, but don’t call him dumb.
In 1995 in New York, Murdoch sees Jonah Lomu on television setting the World Cup on fire, and tells his man negotiating a $US555 million southern hemisphere rugby television deal, ‘‘We’ve got to have that guy. No Lomu, no deal.’’
Murdoch knew the value power.
So do the people running Bash cricket in Australia.
For years the common wisdom here is that the problem with of star Big declining support for Super Rugby is that the teams, or franchises, don’t have what’s called the tribal support that English football teams have, and provincial rugby teams here used to have.
So how to explain the massive crowds (and we can see for ourselves that they are massive, not Trumpian alternative fact big) live and on television, for the Big Bash?
Squads in the Big Bash are basically like the Harlem Globetrotters. It’s a pretty big stretch to even call the groups of big-name players, some of whom jet in and out of their sides on virtually a day by day basis - think Black Cap Colin Munro and the Sydney Sixers - a team.
But the important. teams aren’t really Fans know who the individuals are. The Big Bash has the superstars, that’s what matters.
As hard as it is to imagine it now, track and field had two decades as one of the hottest tickets in Kiwi sport.
As a teenager I cadged a lift with a friend to go from Thames to Auckland in 1964 to stand on packed terraces on a clear November night in what was then a capacity crowd of 25,000 wildly excited people at Western Springs, to see Peter Snell set a new world mile record of 3m 54.1s on a scraped cinder track.
When Snell and Murray Halberg were succeeded in the 1970s by John Walker, Dick Quax, and Rod Dixon, the turnstiles kept spinning. At meetings in Auckland and Christchurch, crowds of 20,000 people were common.
But the ‘80s and ‘90s were so devoid of local track superstars the crowds went, and they’ve never come back.
Sevens rugby here is in the same situation.
The men playing for New Zealand this weekend are skilled and fit, but not one is a current 15-a-side All Black.
The biggest names in our rugby are getting ready to play the Super competition. They’re not going to stop heavy weight training, and building aerobic fitness, and switch to speed work for sevens in January.
Keen rugby fans here will know DJ Forbes, captain Scott Curry, Tim Mikkelson and Sherwin Stowers in the New Zealand team. But bravo to any rugby tragic who can name three players in any one of the Australian, South African, or England teams.
Yes, the Wellington sevens is a genuine international competition, but unless some miracle occurs and the big names return, Martin Snedden is right when he suggests it has reached the end of its useful life.