EDITOR’S LETTER

WHAT SHOULD BECOME APPARENT TO THOSE WHO READ ALL THE WAY THROUGH this issue is that New Zealand Rugby has two distinct yet connected problems.

It’s World Cup year so inevitably there are professional players across the country making big decisions about their respective futures.

There are a handful, men such as Liam Squire, Ben Smith, Nehe Milner-Skudder, Kieran Read and Owen Franks, who have already confirmed they will be taking up offshore contracts after the World Cup.

There are others such as Ardie Savea and Dane Coles who have signed contracts to extend their stay in New Zealand and there are a whole raft of players, many of the biggest names in the country, who have not yet revealed what they intend to do.

Retaining players is NZR’s highest priority. It has become an endless fight for the national body, constantly having to be innovative and resourceful in the deals it offers the best players.

New Zealand has never had and most likely never will have the financial resource to be confident about keeping all the players it would like.

For the last decade or so they have done remarkably well in persuading most, nearly all of the players they have identified as vital to the All Blacks, to commit their best years to New Zealand.

That commitment to keeping the best has not been without consequence however. Innovative contracts that include sabbatical clauses and other rest periods have not been enough on their own to keep the likes of Read, Smith, Sam Whitelock and Brodie Retallick in New Zealand.

These players are also remarkably well paid and by pumping more into the pockets of the best, NZR has been unable to increase the pay, not significantly anyway, of those further down the pecking order.

The move towards creating a 12-team World League is not being driven by anything other than a desire to increase annual income.

This mission to increase revenue has been an allconsuming battle for NZR and perhaps this is unfair, but it feels a little like like they may have taken their eye off the ball in other areas of their jurisdiction as a consequence of being so focused on the top end of the sport.

That should become apparent in this issue as while much of the content is devoted to the state of play with the All Blacks and the wider professional landscape, we also focus on the situation in junior rugby right now.

And it is not pretty. NZR commissioned a major report into schools rugby and the findings, which were published in late January, paint an alarming picture.

Drop off rates among teenage boys are higher than many realised. There are fewer boys playing rugby each year and not only that, more of them stop playing rugby each year.

Had it not been for the astonishing growth in the number of girls playing, the overall participation numbers in junior rugby would be worryingly bad.

The report sought views from across the rugby community, which included students and it was their input that was perhaps the most telling.

What came through was that many teenagers are giving up rugby because they feel their school system is set up to almost exclusively cater for the high performer.

Many kids obviously feel that if they want to play rugby, they have to make a bigger commitment than they would like.

They have to be prepared to train three to four times a week, drop all other sports and prove they are ambitious.

It’s clear from the feedback that the majority of kids don’t want to do that. They want to play rugby for fun – train a couple of times a week with their mates and have access to a coach who knows the game and most importantly is on the same wave length in terms of desire and ambition.

Instead what is happening is that schools across the system have become obsessed with the elite and building high performance programmes at the expense of fostering participation.

Success, it would seem, is determined by how well the First XV does and not by how many teams the school can field.

More money is being funnelled into the super elite at the professional end of the game and then more focus and resource is being pumped into the super elite at the amateur end of the game.

The talent base is shrinking because the game is set up only for those who want to make it all the way to the test arena and play in elite tournaments such as the World League.

For those lucky enough to make it all the way, the financial rewards are enormous.

It creates a vicious cycle where the more wealth there is at the top of the game, the more the development system will cater for those who want a share of that enormous wealth.

But it is a doomed model because in time the All Blacks will struggle to win as much as they do.

They will be selecting from an ever decreasing base of players and it is inevitable that the All Blacks will miss out on quality athletes.

What should become apparent by the end of this issue is that rugby in New Zealand is changing from a mass participation sport to a mass spectator sport and that is not something to celebrate.