Timing of RTS deal puzzling to say the least
RUGBY
MOST of us do not have a degree from the London School of Economics. Most of us struggle to balance the accounts from one day to the next.
But we all have a reasonably fair idea about what is coming in and what is going out.
By and large, one has to equal the other over time.
If too much is going out then more has to come in.
If expenditure becomes way way more than revenue, one has to make some decisions — serious decisions.
That is what is so puzzling about the deal to entice Roger TuivasaSheck to come to rugby.
Didn’t New Zealand Rugby make a yet to be announced massive multimilliondollar loss last year thanks to Covid19?
Didn’t it cut the Heartland Championship and all other representative rugby tournaments below the Mitre 10 Cup last season?
Weren't many, many staff laid off at NZR and a freeze done on hiring around the country?
Rugby people up and down the country — weren’t they forced to take fourday weeks for many, many weeks?
Yet the national union turns around and does a deal to snag a guy, who is going to be 28 in
June, to come back to the 15man game?
The whole move came out of left field, really.
There have been rumours over the past few years about the talented TuivasaSheck coming back to rugby but they have always died away quickly. Big
money contracts from the Warriors tend to do that.
The Warriors were talking up this season as one with a new
squad, new coach and new standards. The Auckland mob says that every year so no surprise there but Tuivasa
Sheck, who is believed to be in the top three in the value of contracts in the NRL, boarded the plane to head to Australia as preseason started for the Warriors.
Within a couple of weeks, talk emerged of TuivasaSheck returning to union and, within a couple of days, it all happened. The deal was done and he will quit the Warriors at the end of the season.
Now there is no denying TuivasaSheck is a talented player. A great sidestep, great heart and a killer instinct.
During lockdown, Sky TV had games of him playing in a schoolboy representative game from 2011 and he was one of the best on the park.
But, and this is the big but, is this the time for NZR bosses to sign him? Spending money on a player while everyone else has made sacrifices? Sure it is a reach to say money being paid for a rugby development officer in Eketahuna will instead line the pockets of RTS but it is the principle of the whole thing.
Also, one thing about the sport in this country is it does not lack quality men out wide.
Now there is talk of turning TuivasaSheck into a midfielder. Hard to see how that would work. As the game gets more crowded in the midfield the skills needed there would be hard to transfer from league to union.
TuivasaSheck cannot kick a ball very well so fullback is not an option, really.
The Warriors captain must have taken a significant pay cut to return to the 15man game but he will not be doing it for free.
The whole thing looks like some Auckland top brass sitting round the table and letting money speak — living in their own bubble and getting what they want.
And they have.
To them, balancing the books does not really enter the equation.