That’s a great resignation speech from Steve Tew!
Rugby’s Great Schism happened in 1895, when the dyed-in-the-wool amateurs that made up the RFU, and the more progressive Northern RFU, went their separate ways. The issue that created the split was the north’s desire to compensate players for loss of earnings, and it was another hundred years, almost to the day, before the Union game officially went professional. Is another schism, this time between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, a possibility?
The problem is that the game has become too successful for its own good, and something needs to give. Players are being asked to play too much rugby, with ‘player welfare’ looking more and more like mere words, and the northern and southern seasons are almost totally incompatible. Everyone would like a global season, but the chances of it happening look slim.
Steve Tew, the NZRU’s chief executive got very bullish on the subject back in March, saying that progress was being made, but he then committed an act of gross stupidity that might yet end up with him losing his job. No matter how good the All Blacks are, threatening to create a situation where the NZRU organised their own Tests, and saying that there might not be room in their calendar for the RWC or a Lions tour, is tantamount to Tew shooting himself in the foot. He commented that ‘the north can’t do without the south at the international level and we can’t do without the north, either’, but that’s open to question.
The RFU’s Ian Ritchie stepped into the debate when he said that the Six Nations format and dates aren’t going to change and, at a stroke, that blew Tew’s ideas out of the water.The reality is that although the All Blacks are the world champions, Southern Hemisphere rugby is in a mess, and critics are starting to openly say so.
Chris Rattue writes for the NZ Herald, and is never short of a strong opinion, but he’s hugely respected. His column last week was headlined Time for Steve Tew to go and there was no question mark at the end of it.The most telling sentence was: “There’s no nice way of putting this: it’s great to see New Zealand rugby being treated with a bit of contempt.”
He went on to say what many of us in the north have been saying for years, that there’s a sense of entitlement within New Zealand rugby, often driven for political expedience by whoever is in power at the time – if a politician wants to make Kiwis feel good, play the All Black card.
Rattue went on to expose what he sees as the debit items on Tew’s account: the loss made by the NZRU, the sorry state of Super Rugby, the fact that their muchvaunted provincial competition is ‘sliding towards obscurity’, and the general malaise in their rugby outside the All Blacks.
Super Rugby was never really my cup of tea but it worked as a tournament despite its daft Conference system until this season when it was expanded to 18 teams – it’s now too big, there’s too much travel, and the spectators are bewildered by the structure.We keep being told that the New Zealand rugby model is superior to ours, but now we have the veil being lifted to show what a state it’s really in.
Things are far from perfect in the north, with the Pro 12 in a bit of a mess, the French league too big and the Premiership still struggling with the salary cap. That said, it functions, and in the Six Nations we have the tournament the south’s Rugby Championship aspires to be – they envy the north so much that in October they’re holding the match between Argentina and Australia at Twickenham!
So will the north and south go their separate rugby ways? No, they won’t, simply because the south needs the north far more than we need them. Life without the autumn internationals or the summer tours would be different, but for us it wouldn’t be the end of the world.
Revenues would temporarily fall, but the Premiership would be strengthened because the internationals wouldn’t be away from the clubs so often.The Six Nations would continue to prosper, and those cunning marketing folks would soon think up creative ways to get a bit more of our dosh – maybe even involving South Africa as they’re in a similar time zone as us.
Make no mistake however, the impact on New Zealand and Australian rugby would be catastrophic, so Steve Tew would be well advised to remember the old adage, never get into a fight you can’t win.