The All Blacks went in hard as nails last week. Reports in New Zealand claimed that their actions “threaten to split the game in two” — nothing remarkable about that, as rugby is split in two wherever rugby is played professionally, with the professional and amateur arms wrangling in the least holy of alliances.
We should not make the mistake either of assuming that this is only a Kiwi problem, because at heart it is a global issue that has held professional rugby back by decades.
But there was something pointedly chilling about the announcement by the All Blacks and other elite players. On Thursday there is a vote among all the key stakeholders in New Zealand rugby as to whether they will accept the recommendations of an independent report which would transform the administration of the sport in the country.
• Alex Lowe: New Zealand rugby on brink of civil war as players rebel
The independent report recommends that the overall Kiwi governing body, New Zealand Rugby (NZR), be recast so that most of the executive power would be placed in the hands of nine independent specialists in various fields, with the influence of the old-style nominees from the various provincial unions — many of them amateurish officials — reduced to almost nothing. The report was widely seen, and especially by the elite playing community, as a vital upheaval for a modern future.
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All seemed fine as the vote approached until the old guard struck back, as they have done all over the rugby world, and a group of the provincial unions, including the influential Wellington union, issued a counterproposal that (how did you guess?) recommended that the old-style unions maintain far more influence and representation than the report had advised.
This was when the All Blacks and their supporters finally lost it and decided that the best form of defence was all-out attack. This was described as “one of the most dramatic developments in the national sport since professionalism”. They put out an announcement that if the alternative proposal (called Proposal 2) was adopted at the meeting on Thursday, or if the status quo prevailed, “then the professional players will no longer pass to the NZRU, via a collective employment agreement, the right to govern the professional game”.
Their solution was thus: “A new body will be established to govern the professional game in New Zealand. Directors appointed by the professional players will represent the players on this body and on other bodies.”
This was sensational. It amounts to a power play, a lock, stock and barrel takeover move, raising the possibility that there could be two competing bodies in charge of the elite game in the country. Just to set the seal on the strength of the players’ authority, the signatories included David Kirk and Richie McCaw (both World Cup-winning captains) plus the great Sam Whitelock and Sam Kane, together with the Black Ferns’ Ruby Tui and the young thruster Will Jordan. Ian Kirkpatrick, another great, also came out against the old guard’s proposal.
The present governing board was hardly conciliatory. It went blah-blah-ing about noting views of the players’ group and remaining “committed to working closely with stakeholders” and all that stuff. But it said that it would apply the outcome “that voting members choose at the special general meeting”.
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It also pointed out that it was the board’s “firm intention that any outcome on governance reform will not impact on teams in Black”. Well, it may just impact on teams in Black, if none of the players come to play.
Fascinatingly, the Taranaki union broke ranks by underlining the deficiencies inherent in retaining old-style officials in charge of New Zealand Rugby.
“While this is good in theory, the structure is not serving us well . . . as the calibre of candidates we are putting forward as provincial unions is simply not high enough,” the group declared. “And because of this, we are struggling to attract high-calibre independents to work alongside the provincial union representatives.”
This is a startlingly accurate line and something that could have been written in almost every country in the world where professional rugby has come along.
It is indeed true that the sport in New Zealand and South Africa, and also in England, is administered in almost exactly the same way as it was in the amateur era. It may be harsh on some officials at Twickenham, who do not deserve to be classed in that category, but the fact remains that the RFU and Premiership Rugby, instead of forming a single body to administer the professional game, are endlessly involved in uneasy negotiations to try to hack out a path between them.
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Only last week, the latest clash of the old and the new came in discussions to revive the Championship in England, which we understand have now reached a juddering and bitter halt.
And now in 2024 Wales have only just brought in independent administrators to replace the old-guard club servants. Taranaki’s observation shows that simply coming to be an administrator as a keen amateur gives you a limited scope when set next to professional specialists. Buffoons in blazers.
Furthermore, it is absolutely staggering that it has taken a set of players so long to rebel. There have been mutterings in the past. In 2000 England players briefly threatened to withdraw their labour before a match against Argentina at Twickenham in a contract dispute. We all had great fun picking our England teams without the top 35 players, but in the end it all calmed down.
What else? More than a decade after the RFU committee commissioned an expensive independent report that concluded that the committee had to go, the committee is still there.
Wales had a brief but rather nasty livelihood dispute and a threat of strike action prior to their Six Nations game against England last season, when the bungling of the Welsh Rugby Union plus the lack of commercial clout and true leadership finally hit home and hit the players in their wallets and with their families. Even then, they went ahead and played.
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The point is this — that life as an elite professional player is so testing and loyalty is at such a premium that hardly anyone has time to make a judgment on how their careers are being administered and how their interests are being represented.
The other disaster has been the total lack of informed and wise retired players moving into administration. Some players have moved across but only years after their retirement, when they would be figureheads without executive power.
None of the great Welsh teams of the 1970s became administrators; none of the England World Cup winners of 2003 moved into the running of the game. How many of the current Irish squad will end up in admin? Look around the world.
The loss is profound. It is absolutely astonishing how few international players are in administrative positions. Someone like the great Conrad Smith, a fabulous player for New Zealand with the wisdom to make the switch, is one of the few successful conversions.
Say McCaw had become an official. Say Sam Warburton or Alun Wyn Jones in Wales, Will Greenwood or Joe Marler in England, John Rutherford in Scotland or Gordon D’Arcy in Ireland had made the jump.
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And what about World Rugby? Sir Bill Beaumont has been a safe pair of hands as chairman for years. Now the body and the sport desperately, desperately need a dynamic and challenging new figure. Say Agustín Pichot, the splendid and radical Puma. “But Gus makes people nervous,” one grandee told me last week. Heaven be praised. Get him in, then.
What about the great All Black, Sir John Kirwan, featured in these pages last year, an inspirational, clear-thinking, epic, radical force for change? A shoo-in? Instead, we are told that the only candidate so far is the conservative, long-serving Kelso farmer, John Jeffrey.
Time-servers. The works of rugby administration have been gummed up almost solid for so long. Why not a forest fire of players, across the globe?
You would hate to see a New Zealand match called off and it is still unlikely. But it is going to take vivid gestures such as that made by McCaw and company to ensure that rugby has a viable future.
In New Zealand, the players have reacted in anger to Proposal 2, a proposal following still the smug and vision-free route most trodden throughout the rugby world — the world where everything, slowly, rots in hell. All hail, the All Blacks.
