Enough of the All Black BS
Chiefs fans, when are you going to say enough of this All Black BS? Right now you should be angry, furious – rightly pissed off. You should be feeling like secondclass rugby fans.
Here’s why: New Zealand rugby just put the All Blacks ahead of your team.
They just took all your All Blacks and said, Stuff you, Chiefs – a camp preparing for a friendly game against a third-rate French team is more important than your Super Rugby championship dreams.
Pissed off? You betcha…! The AB ring-fencing of Chiefs players for a friendly against France demonstrates everything that is wrong with New Zealand rugby. The hijacking of players cost the Chiefs a deserved win in South Africa against the Sharks.
The priority of the ABs over the local game is wrong. Plain wrong. What matters is club rugby (the grassroots game) and it has been abandoned by the rugby Kremlin in Wellington.
For some local fans, it is slowly beginning to dawn on them that New Zealand rugby has got the All Blacks u¨ ber alles regime completely sporting ass about face.
What matters is regional rugby warfare and winning games that have real competition and trophies. Waikato v Auckland used to mean something. Even writing those words sends shivers …Waikato v Auckland.
In the amateur era, we had strong grassroots rugby and the All Blacks.
But the domestic club game is now on life support. No one cares any more because there is only one game in town – the All Blacks. But when the All Blacks play France next month, nothing matters. It’s a friendly – most international rugby games are.
No one benefits with easier world cup qualification. No one gets points towards an easier world cup pool. No one gets relegated to another harder group. No one gets promoted to easier qualification for the between world cup tournaments – because there aren’t any. Rankings in such a small sporting code mean squat. Nothing happens. Nothing really matters, because there is nothing at stake. It’s a friendly rugby farce.
The All Blacks play against countries who play rugby, like we play ice hockey. Rugby is a minor code in almost every country in which it is played. More than 20 years later, rugby professionalism hasn’t moved rugby ahead.
The amateur rugby era was far more competitive than it is today and fans are falling away from the pro game in their thousands. Only 5283 Brumbies fans turned up to the Rebels game this month. Another telling statistic is the average crowd for Racing 92 – the team that paid big bucks for Dan Carter. A mere 8700 turn up each week. Auckland provincial rugby pulls 5000 in our biggest city. And the Blues couldn’t fill Eden Park if it were free entry.
Rugby is built on a financial house of cards, some of it coming undone when the Super BoomBoom had to cull three teams to reduce costs. (There should have been a fourth, Michael Redman and the Auckland Blues).
Rugby got too big for its boots and it’s still kidding itself about expansion into the United States. Sanzaar can’t even expand into western Australia!
So, please, can we get back to Waikato v Auckland?
The All Blacks u¨ ber alles policy has stopped players from making a living playing overseas and representing their country. So what the hell is the difference between players playing overseas and not being available for their local sides or being taken by the All Black management and not being available for their local sides?
The end result is the same – the star local All Black stars are missing from the paddock. Here are some statistics to show how utterly back to front the New Zealand All Blacks u¨ ber alles rugby set-up really is.
This year is Fifa World Cup year, but international soccer is small-fry stuff compared to domestic club fandom. The stats below make the point. The Facebook fans of three major clubs from three countries are listed above the Facebook fans of their Fifa World Cup winning national soccer team.
Bayern Munich: 47,006,336 Germany: 6,274,932 Real Madrid: 108,133,312 Spain: 3,574,880 Manchester United: 73,664,575 England: 6,931,920
The clubs have it. The Fifa model works and the sooner world rugby adopts this private club ownership model as the default for all countries (finally ridding New Zealand Rugby of its Kremlinesque control), the better.
NZR has kneecapped the domestic game and has put all its financial eggs in one international All Blacks rugby basket, forcing it to chase contrived international friendly games in far-off territories dancing for cash in front of expats.
It’s a sad sight seeing the Aall Blacks begging for cash on the streets of Chicago or Timbuktu.
Meanwhile, South Africa’s departure for Europe (predicted in these pages 18 months ago) is confirmation of the game’s shaky financial future.
So, Chiefs fans, on Saturday night, at least one of you has to save our local game and hold up a sign at rugby park:
Hands off our ABs We love red, yellow & black.