All Blacks, it’s time to step up
New Zealand’s top rugby players are now finding out what a real bubble is like. They can no longer swank about with rich listers and graciously take selfies with the general public. They are in lockdown and finding out their jobs are a hell of a lot less important than the women and men working down the local supermarket. Welcome to the real world.
And let’s hope that in this brave new world our top All Blacks will step up. Let’s take Beauden Barrett as the figurehead in this call to arms. He is after all the most famous current All Black and the one with the biggest value on the world market. Barrett also happens to have been on sabbatical from playing a game he loves, a luxury not available to all those folk currently on the frontline.
At the end of this week we are due to hear a broad ranging statement about what our top rugby players have agreed to take in the way of pay cuts. But what I would really like to hear is individual messages from people such as Barrett. I would like him and others to tell us what he is paid and how much of a wage cut he is taking and even what he is personally contributing to society out of goodwill.
I realise that some players might find this embarrassing. They won’t want to be seen to be showing off in these times. But things work differently right now. Good news stories sell. It’s what the public wants to hear. We want to be set an example. We think, well, if Beaudy is giving $10,000 to his local foodbank, then maybe I can afford $100.
Already this year Barrett has been to Thailand, to Fiji, and on a lads trip to the Super Bowl where he was joined by Israel Dagg and property business millionaires Mark Francis and Kurt Gibbons. There is no envy about those jaunts here, but New Zealand right now needs the help of these people and they can afford to give it.
Francis himself was quoted a while back as saying; ‘‘While businesses’ tax contributions are obviously significant in terms of running a country, we need to think of ourselves as a lot more than just taxpayers and job providers but as role models and example setters in the way we conduct ourselves. The GFC (global financial crisis) period presented a corporate greed side of business that understandably turned people against business. Collectively, we need to turn that perception around.’’
Well, there is no better time than now to turn that perception around. So please, Beauden, and the rest of you stellar All Blacks, show us what you are made of. Inspire us off the field.
Barcelona’s football players have taken a 70 per cent pay cut and Lionel Messi has contributed over half a million dollars to both a Spanish and Argentinian hospital. Of course the pay cut is not entirely straightforward because the government of Spain will lose out massively in taxes so it is important for people such as Messi to make that reparation.
It is a very sensitive subject, and so it should be. It is a disgrace that some of England’s top football clubs, bankrolled by obscenely wealthy men, should have furloughed backroom staff, which means the British taxpayer will have to meet 80 per cent of their wages, whilst continuing to meet the salaries of their overpaid players.
Julian Knight, who chairs the UK Parliament’s digital, culture, media and sport committee, said; ‘‘I think it sticks in the throat because at the moment, they’re (the football teams) paying hundreds of thousands of pounds a week to their Premier League stars while at the same time asking the taxpayer to pay their non-playing staff who may only be on hundreds of pounds a week.’’
The same questions should be asked of New Zealand Rugby. They announced recently that the entire staff was taking a 40 per cent cut. NZR subsequently clarified and said that they were in effect taking a 20 per cent cut, because the government was meeting 20 per cent in its wage subsidy scheme. Is NZR a business that we the taxpayer should really be bailing out?
It is also concerning that the person at the top of NZR is apparently taking the same percentage wage cut as the person at the bottom, who can less afford it. If true, that is outrageous and needs to be rectified. Again transparency and good communication is absolutely vital during times like these.
The players, for whom Sam Whitelock is the lead negotiator, appear to be acting with more sense. I am told that when their new terms are announced, the players at the top of the earnings pyramid will be taking a bigger percentage cut than those on wages of $50,000 at the bottom.
Rob Nichol, the chief executive of the New Zealand Rugby Player Association, sees a whole new world emerging. He believes this pandemic ‘‘may well alter our definition of wealth and happiness’’ and he says that players want to be able to look back in two years’ time and say; ‘‘We stepped up and did our bit.’’
Nichol believes this could be ‘‘the maturing of a generation’’ and certainly sees a very different season ahead. If the borders remain closed through most of the year, as surely they must, the players are proposing a north versus south state of origin series and a provincial competition featuring many of the top players, a vast number of who have already returned from places like Japan.
It worries me that I do not hear much about club rugby in these discussions, an area that is of particular concern to Rhys Barlow, the former chairman of the Wellington Rugby Union and a chartered accountant. He says the loss of revenue from the pokies machines is having a devastating effect and will send many clubs to the wall.
As a result Barlow would like to see, if the Covid restrictions permit such a time scale; ‘‘That club rugby will start on Saturday 18 July with all All Blacks and Super Rugby players available to play, which will be for the first time in 25 years. This will represent a major change for grassroots rugby as the sight of an All Black or Super player playing in a club jersey is but a distant memory.’’
It would also be a wonderful boost for their communities. Probably too much of the mind and soul of the player remains in their old bubble to see such a vision from the new bubble. But I am hopeful, because what else can we be, that New Zealand’s All Blacks will soon achieve far greater things than a couple of back-toback World Cup wins.