‘Is rugby cool?’ rethinking rugby culture in Canterbury
Canterbury is ‘‘the leading provincial rugby union in the world’’, but it could still be better, says new boss Nathan Godfrey. He explains his ‘‘inclusive’’ vision to Philip Matthews.
We should get the confession out first, the terrible admission. I’m not a rugby person, I tell Nathan Godfrey. ‘‘I’m the same,’’ he fires back. ‘‘I never played.’’
But there is a crucial difference. Only one of us is the chief executive of the Canterbury Rugby Football Union (CRFU).
We are sitting in the boardroom upstairs at CRFU headquarters, Rugby Park in St Albans. This is the holy of holies, past the cabinets full of ancient jackets, trophies and yellowing news clippings. Through the windows, there is the ‘‘hallowed turf’’ – Godfrey’s words – where the mighty Crusaders train and where the Black Ferns thrashed Australia 44-17 the day before. What is a non-rugby man like Godfrey doing in a place like this?
You can put it down to rugby’s urgent need to reform, at a provincial level and a national level. Rugby has been going through one of its occasional bouts of soulsearching.
Has rugby kept up with social and cultural change or has it fallen behind? A few recent events would suggest the latter.
The list is familiar. At the top you would find the notorious Chiefs scandal in which a stripper was abused during the team’s ‘‘Mad Monday’’ celebrations. There was Aaron Smith’s ‘‘tryst’’ in a disabled toilet at Christchurch Airport. There was young Wellington player Losi Filipo’s assault charge. There was Ali Williams’ cocaine bust in Paris and Dan Carter’s drinkdriving bust, again in Paris. It has sex, it has drugs, it has racism. The local angle on rugby’s misery has largely been about race. A handful of high profile examples prompted the launch of the CRFU’s pioneering ‘‘We All Bleed Red’’ campaign in May.
There was the abuse dished out to Southbridge player Peni Manumanuniliwa, who said he prayed before every game that he would not be racially victimised. There was a racial insult from a Christ’s College player to a Fijian student from St Thomas of Canterbury College. And there was the story of Sake Aca, too upset by racial abuse from Lincoln University supporters to continue playing.
These are sad stories. Is there a racist culture in Canterbury rugby?
‘‘I don’t think it’s isolated around rugby,’’ Godfrey says. ‘‘We’re trying to take a leadership position in terms of the statement we’re making around racism and any forms of discrimination. It’s in society, whether we like it or not.’’
The line ‘‘we all bleed red’’ came to him during one of his long weekend bike rides to Sumner. He may not have played rugby but he is a fitness nut who represented New Zealand in track and field. His event was the 400 metres.
He and his Australian wife, who is expecting their first child, moved here ahead of his start with the CRFU in February. It was not accidental that they chose to live next to the Christchurch Adventure Park in Cracroft, but the timing was awful. The Port Hills fires came only weeks later and they had to evacuate.
The next thing he is working towards is an ambition of running a marathon on all seven continents by the time he is 40. And he is 39 now. The last of the seven, Antarctica, is scheduled for March 2018. The hardest so far has been South America, where the marathon course follows the Inca Trail and
ends at Machu Picchu, high in the Andes mountains.
‘‘I ran that in six hours. It takes some people three days to hike it. It was absolutely brutal.’’
And once the Antarctica marathon is done, he will hang up his running shoes.
Anyway, back to rugby. ‘‘We All Bleed Red’’ was launched with much fanfare, including an endorsement by Race Relations Commissioner Dame Susan Devoy. And it is more than rhetoric. It is about changing the judicial process, the governance. In plain language, Godfrey was horrified to hear about teenage kids cross-examined by lawyers in late night meetings.
He was not alone. St Thomas’ principal Christine O’Neill said in 2016 she had ‘‘no confidence’’ in the CRFU’s approach to racism complaints, calling it ‘‘archaic and inappropriate’’.
The CRFU received 12 complaints at the under 18 level in 2016, ranging from foul play to referee abuse, offensive sideline behaviour and two incidents of racism.
The process has become more relaxed and informal, a restorative justice approach.
It was only weeks before the new style was tested. Theona Ireton was at a youth game in Hornby when, she alleged, she was racially abused by a man she took to be a coach from a Shirley side. After it exploded on social media, the CRFU heard about the incident and referred it to a judicial review.
It was disappointing to launch an awareness campaign and then have insults traded in public like that.
‘‘My door is open, my phone is always on,’’ Godfrey says. ‘‘I would much rather we do it internally because [otherwise] all we’re doing is damaging the game of rugby, at the end of the day.
‘‘I was pretty clear it wasn’t a marketing stunt. We were going to be tested and now we need to make sure we take strong leadership. I rang the victim myself and she was really happy with what we had done, how quickly we had reacted and the support she had. That’s the most important thing.’’
Has anyone called him politically correct yet?
‘‘They haven’t, but I’m sure they’re thinking it.’’
‘‘Part of my vision is around growing women’s rugby. I’ve seen the effect the AFL women’s competition has had in making sure a club is a family club and not just about blokes.’’ Nathan Godfrey, CRFU Chief Executive
Not ruthless enough?
The top job was split in two last year. Hamish Riach would be in charge of the Crusaders. The new CEO would run the CRFU, including the winning Canterbury provincial side.
Godfrey remembers that the job interview took two and a half hours, a real grilling. At around the halfway point the board asked, ‘‘Why does an Aussie want the job here as CEO?’’
Australian? Well, he was born there, but he lived here, his parents are still here, he went to school here. Hang on, he went to school here? Which school, they asked.
The room went quiet. The answer really seemed to matter. Christchurch Boys High School, he said.
After doing a double degree at Otago University in sports management and marketing, to which he recently added a MBA, he worked in the UK for five years. Then he did 10 years in Australia, including in the Australian Football League (AFL) in Adelaide, followed by 18 months as head of commercial at Wellington Phoenix Football Club.
‘‘That was about getting out of the AFL bubble,’’ he says. ‘‘It’s the number one in code in Australia and it was amazing to be in that environment but it wasn’t global. Soccer was obviously a global sport and certainly a big threat to rugby.’’
He is proud of what he achieved with ‘‘what I consider a losing brand, as horrible as that sounds’’. There were big commercial partners: Huawei, McDonalds, Singapore Airlines.
Different roles, different challenges, exciting opportunities. This is beginning to resemble that very long job interview. But it is true that, from outside at least, AFL culture contrasts strongly with the CRFU.
The AFL is – well, how would he describe it?
‘‘I would describe it as ruthless. On and off the field, they have that high-performance culture. It’s probably something I want to bring to this organisation.
‘‘We’re looking at a strategic plan but our vision is to be the leading provincial rugby union in the world. We probably are. We’ve won eight of the last nine years and we’ve got the Ranfurly Shield. I challenged the board. I said, ‘On the field we are but off the field we’re not. We’re just not. If you think we are, you’re kidding yourself. There is a lot of work to do.’’’
Such as? Take the way the CRFU engages its community. Current practice is to send out results on a Saturday night via a text message written by a staff member. There should be an app for that.
‘‘We could be doing a hell of a lot more in that digital space. We have all the reach and our brand is 137 years old and has had a huge amount of success.’’
The board knew it had to catch up, Godfrey says.
‘‘I think that’s what they saw in me and my interview. I would describe the organisation as clearly successful on the field and with some work to do off the field, but probably a little bit lethargic. But that’s exciting too because it means there are opportunities for us to improve.’’
From the outside, rugby generally seems complacent and lethargic in New Zealand.
‘‘Yeah, absolutely,’’ he agrees. ‘‘I think you’re right. There are threats from other codes and challenges with the game itself, so there is a hell of a lot on the horizon. When you’re steering this big ship in that direction, you can
easily just relax and run with the status quo but at the end of the day, if we ignore that, at some point we are going to be at risk.’’
What are the threats to rugby? Apart from the other codes, he sees the threat of inactivity in general and another that seems surprising.
‘‘One of the fastest growing sports is e-sports. Professional computer gamers playing in live studios or stadiums, filling them up all round the world and live streaming that to a global audience. That’s one of our biggest threats.’’