NZ Rugby’s ‘big white lie’
The contest between Bill Beaumont and Agustin Pichot for the leadership of World Rugby has generally been represented as a battle between the dark, repressive forces of the establishment and a younger, enlightened movement for change. This is a fairytale.
In reality everyone is in it for themselves. The northern hemisphere wishes to preserve its own income streams. The southern hemisphere envies the money which the larger European populations generate for their countries and wishes to cut in on it.
Both halves of the world are driven by selfishness and greed and the idea that one is nobler than the other is romantic fiction. The Pacific Islands give that particular game away. If Pichot represented the noble forces of change, then the whole of the Pacific would have voted for him. They did not. They do not trust the Argentine.
The reason is simple. A few years ago Pichot caused outrage when he published a rugby league table graded according to the players country of origin. The countries with 100 per cent representation of players born inside their borders were South Africa and Argentina. And so with the self interest typical of the Rugby World, Pichot wishes to tighten eligibility rules. Argentina would be a big winner, you see.
But the Pacific Islands would be big losers. One of the few glories of professional rugby is the financial benefits that it has brought to many poorer Pacific families. Talented players from the islands have migrated around the world and been able to send back large amounts of money to their villages. If Pichot changed the eligibility rules, as he would like to do, then the Pacific Islands would be the poorer for it.
Seven months ago Brent Impey, the chairman of New Zealand Rugby, said of the failure of Fiji, Tonga and Samoa to advance to the knockout stages of the World Cup; ‘‘You can point the finger straight at the likes of Scotland, Ireland, Wales, England. You look at them, you look at their teams and what they have done in terms of rules that suit themselves. I’m very tempted – I probably won’t go quite this far – but I’m very tempted to say it’s virtually colonialism.’’
Now that is probably true. But Impey’s words also seem to emerge from some fantasy island called New Zealand where his own people haven’t been equally guilty of colonialism. That will have the Pacific laughing themselves into the ocean. New Zealand rugby has benefited massively from the economic migration from the islands and given just as little back as the European countries.
They have not shared their wealth. They have not promoted islanders into proportional positions of leadership either as players within the All Blacks or as coaches. They have not gone to the islands and played games. For decades New Zealand Rugby has looked after its own selfinterest.
So why should the islands feel loyalty to anyone other than themselves. Eight and a half years ago Eliota Fuimaono-Sapolu was banned from the World Cup for criticising World Rugby for an unfair schedule and exploiting the islands. He never played for Samoa again. But when Impey did the same thing at the Japan World Cup, no action was taken against him. These are the double standards of colonialism.
When Samoa and Fiji voted for Beaumont, the former England coach Clive Woodward reprimanded them in print. He wrote; ‘‘Our sympathy will be limited if those nations utter a word of complaint ever again at the lack of opportunity to play tier one nations or, in the case of the Pacific Island teams, about their best players being nicked by other countries.’’