All Black v All Black: Trial returns
Mate against mate: Rebirth of yesteryear classic set to kick off between NZ Super derbies and the two-tier NPC competition
Plans are formulating to stage a one-off All Blacks trial between a rejigged Super Rugby and the Mitre 10 Cup competitions this year. Although the rebirth of the classic All Blacks trial of yesteryear will provide a headline act, more fundamental work is understood to be taking place in the background that will supersede any short-term solutions for 2020, and trump anything the hastily-formed Aratipu Super Rugby committee might offer.
One source described Aratipu — a review to grow, regenerate and invigorate Super Rugby — as a front to buy some time and stall licence renegotiations as the real work was done on reshaping New Zealand’s domestic rugby landscape.
Part of that is the idea of an eightteam professional round-robin competition with two extra New Zealand professional franchises joining the five existing Super teams and a Pasifika side possibly based in Suva.
The Weekend Herald has learned there is another option gaining traction, which would see that eightteam competition extended to 12 with the addition of four — preferably eastern seaboard — Australian franchises or clubs, but that option is dependent on the health of Australian rugby in the post-Covid environment.
As one source said, it is not New Zealand Rugby’s mandate to prop up Australia, so the transtasman neighbours must bring broadcast and commercial dollars to the party.
Although these are fascinating scenarios for the middle to long term, rugby’s resumption remains front of most fans’ minds.
This remains a fluid prospect due to the ever-evolving Covid-19 pandemic, but as the situation here and Australia rapidly improves, hope springs eternal the proposed Super Rugby derby competition can start, possibly by mid-June, and be followed by an immediate All Blacks trial.
The mid-June resumption is considered a best-case scenario, and would require the continued progression from alert level 3 to 2 on May 12.
New Zealand teams would then need at least three weeks of contact conditioning training before launching into the 10-week derbies which will pit each side against their four local opponents on a home and away basis, with a first-past-the-post winner crowned.
With the All Blacks’ home tests against Wales and Scotland in July to be postponed within the next week, it was assumed the Mitre 10 Cup season would follow the franchise derbies.
Plans are in place, however, to first stage a one-off All Blacks trial before the provincial season kicks off.
This window for an All Blacks trial would reward performances during the Super derby competition.
Staging an All Blacks trial would allow Ian Foster’s new All Blacks coaching team the chance to interact with players and put plans in place for a potentially rapid return for a Bledisloe Cup series, as border restrictions with Australia are expected to ease before any others.
A trial would also give New Zealand Rugby’s commercial partners, who don’t have certainty about how this season will play out, a much-needed chance for exposure.
The Mitre 10 provincial campaign is then scheduled to follow in its existing two-tiered format. All parties have agreed this competition could run as late as December.
The longer level 3 carries on, however, the more these plans will get squeezed. It is worth noting there has been doubt expressed within the rugby community as to how equipped many provincial unions are to ensure a safe reintroduction of rugby.
Although there is much uncertainty around rugby’s resumption and the longer term plans, including the future of Sanzaar, there is a certainty: The shape of the season will look a lot different in 2021 than it did in 2019.
A potential four-week finals format that would involve teams qualifying from their respective domestic competitions for a European Heineken Cup-style league is another touted concept.
“Everything is on the table but it is too early to commit to anything absolutely,” said New Zealand Rugby chief executive Mark Robinson yesterday.
“We’ll need to work through this quickly because we know the horizon of next year is fast approaching.
“We are in close dialogue with South Africa, Argentina and Australia on this. There’s nothing predetermined.”
Super Rugby tossed into the dustbin of history. As many as eight professional New Zealand teams playing in a competition that may nor may not involve Australia or Fiji, with a name that will be as far away from “Super Rugby” as possible. No more long distance flights to play in Buenos Aires or Durban. And a huge arm wrestle over provincial rugby.
That, according to reliable sources inside New Zealand Rugby, is the immediate future for the game in this country.
At the heart of the plans, to be thrashed out in a hurry in the hope of some rugby being played before the end of the year, is a determination to keep All Blacks playing in New Zealand.
“We don’t want the Brazil model,” an NZR official told me this week, “where all your top players are in clubs offshore. We’re determined to keep as many of our All Blacks here as we can.”
Super Rugby, it’s now conceded at NZR, has been a wounded, dying beast in this country since 2007, when our best 24 players were unavailable for the first two months of Super Rugby, but instead were working on All Blacks conditioning programmes.
Weird expansions, to Japan and Argentina, and contractions, such as dumping the Western Force, have been singled out by some commentators as the causes of Super Rugby’s malaise. But in New Zealand, they were just distractions.
The fact is Super Rugby was screwed here in 2007.
The withdrawal of the best All Blacks was not only a disaster on the field, where many of the returning players weren’t match-hardened and suffered injuries, but also a slap in the face to fans, who had been told for 11 years they were watching the world’s best club competition and now saw it used as just a feeder to test rugby.
The number of people watching Super Rugby on Sky television plummeted by a disastrous 29 per cent. In the key area of males aged 25 to 54, average viewing figures for the top 10 games dropped from 101,700 in
2006 to 68,800 in 2007. The number of fans lost has never been won back.
It’s taken a pandemic to set an upheaval in train.
The idea of strong New Zealand teams playing local derbies every weekend has an obvious appeal.
Would it be even stronger if the teams were based on rugby’s provinces?
Probably, but the demands for a return to tribalism in our rugby seem to be heard mostly from Auckland critics, who were silent when, in the early days of Super Rugby, the Blues were filling up Eden Park and winning titles. The worse the Blues got, the more tears started to be shed for the good old days when Auckland made Eden Park a provincial fortress.
Those days went out the window when players started being paid, and that genie won’t go back in the bottle.
In professional sport, which rugby has been for 24 years, fans around the world want winners, stars and success more than they want geographical identification.
You’ve only got to look at America, still the world’s professional sport epicentre. As just one example, the Dodgers baseball team had been the pride of Brooklyn for 75 years before being sold, moving to the opposite coast, and becoming the LA Dodgers, where, since 1958, they’ve been reinvented as the home town team.
Still, the hardest call and the bitterest discussions in our rugby now will be over exactly what happens to the Mitre 10 Cup, which would continue to be played after the new top-tier professional club competition was over.
“We can’t, and we won’t, turn provinces like Canterbury into fully amateur Heartland sides,” an NZR insider says. “But we do need to work out just how many professional teams New Zealand can afford.”
Those discussions with the provinces are likely to be brutal but, like so many of our businesses have found, ugly issues have to be addressed in a Covid-19 age.
Waving goodbye to All Blacks and wishing them well offshore, relying on old school loyalties to drag fans in, and expecting players to be happy if they get only petrol money are as misguided as the idea that having
18 teams in Super Rugby would somehow make the competition more attractive.
Finding some middle ground between clubs, provinces and the All Blacks is the biggest challenge the game has faced here since Kerry Packer tried to buy Southern Hemisphere rugby in 1995. Finding money of their own saved the All Blacks for the NZRU then. In 2020, the task is infinitely more complex, but it has to be tackled. It will shape the structure and soul of rugby here.
We’re determined to keep as many of our All Blacks here as we can.
NZR official