NZ Rugby v Ineos: Memo NZR – This is what happens when you ‘dance with the devil’ - Sports Insider

Tyler Wright; Erica Dawson and Micah Wilkinson; Scott Barrett; James Fisher-Harris. Photos / Photosport

New Zealand Rugby were warned about doing a deal with Ineos but nobody listened; league’s All Stars game looks doomed; why a second NRL team out of Auckland will never happen; and the growing Olympics medal scandal. All in today’s Sports Insider.

If you’re going to dance with the devil, best make sure you lead.

It’s an old saying, but I wonder if anybody in New Zealand Rugby (NZR) thought about it when headquarters signed up with a company labelled by Greenpeace as “an oil-and-gas-polluting conglomerate” in a sponsorship deal that has turned as sour as Ineos’ reputation.

When NZR did its six-year deal with the British petrochemicals giant in 2022, a mate texted me the following: “Sometimes the devil is pretty, sometimes he’s not, but he is always deceptive.”

His next text read: “Dancing with the devil is easy; it’s stepping away that’s hard.”

These are lessons NZR is learning the hard way in dealing with Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the Ineos founder who has walked away from a multimillion-dollar sponsorship deal for rugby in this country.

On the face of it, there’s little doubt in the court of public opinion who is in the wrong here, and there will be general support for the legal action NZR says it is intending to launch.

In my opinion, former All Black Chris Laidlaw is entirely correct in his summation that Ineos is in the wrong here.

Laidlaw is also one of 100 Kiwis who signed a public letter to NZR three years ago warning of the perils of jumping into bed with a company repeatedly accused of “sports-washing”.

Then there’s Ratcliffe himself. He has always operated in a maverick style.

As Manchester United’s fortunes have fallen on the field and Ratcliffe and his co-owners have introduced redundancies to backroom staff, the Daily Mirror reports he has developed a “penny-pinching reputation” and angered fans with new plans for ticket pricing.

Incredible tales of bizarre penny-pinching have emerged in the past 12 months.

Then there’s the Sir Ben Ainslie America’s Cup affair which burst open just last month.

Sir Ben Ainslie, skipper of Ineos Britannia's America's Cup campaign. Photo / Photosport

Ratcliffe is not afraid of a fight and NZR’s threats will not faze him. He has deep pockets and will stand firm on what he believes to be points of principle.

One international source I spoke to overnight claims: “One of the reasons he wants out is he feels he’s been sold a pup. He bought into a performance narrative that the All Blacks are the greatest team in the history of sport. Instead he’s looking at a team now rated third or fourth in the world, at best, in a niche sport.”

Whether that justifies walking away from a signed contract halfway through the term is a moot point. But it shows what NZR is dealing with.

All of which raises the question: why do the deal in the first place?

This columnist was among a plethora of critics who warned the national union about doing deals with Ratcliffe.

It is easy to blame Ineos in this instance, but I wonder how well the relationship was managed, including expectations, by NZR when it was signed.

Did NZR live up to its side of the bargain? Did it pay enough attention to Ineos' idiosyncrasies? Were the right people involved in relationship management?

As Laidlaw pointed out, it was easier for NZR to secure a big deal with a sports-washer than a more legitimate company.

It shouldn’t be any surprise that it has now been burnt.

The financial hole just got bigger

The Ineos drama has come at the worst possible time for NZR. It was already staring at tough financial forecasts.

The back-of-the-envelope maths is not looking good.

A renewed and reduced Sky TV broadcasting deal is set to trim at least $20 million off NZR’s bottom line.

Silver Lake, the American private equity company that has been missing in action since doing its deal with NZR, starts taking $20m+ dividends from this year.

And now we have Ineos reneging on a deal said to be worth between $8m and $10m a year.

Sports Insider is reliably informed NZR has known about the Ineos stand-off for months now.

NZR might get away with a windfall from World Rugby’s mooted Nations Cup that will help offset the threatening storm.

But sleepless nights await its new board and executive, with the latter group surely needing to be held to account for recent decisions, including the Ineos deal.

The NRL’s dilemma with its All Stars game

What do you do when the top four players in your organisation can’t or don’t want to play in your showpiece game?

That’s the dilemma facing the National Rugby League (NRL) ahead of this Saturday’s match between the Māori All Stars and their indigenous Australian counterparts in Sydney.

The NRL bravely introduced the All Stars concept in 2010, borrowing it from American leagues like the NBA and positioning it as a festival-style season-opener a few weeks ahead of the competition proper starting.

It was originally meant to be the best indigenous Aussie NRL players taking on the world’s best players from the rest of the competition but quickly morphed into a transtasman clash involving Māori.

For a while it worked and was a welcome part of the league calendar, initially finding a home on the Gold Coast and then moving around other parts of Australia.

Rotorua hosted the clash in 2023 and by then there were already signs the concept was waning. A crowd of 17,664 sounds healthy, but it was actually the lowest in the concept’s history after it peaked at 41,000 in Brisbane in 2013.

Last year’s clash in Townsville set a new crowd low of just over 15,000 and the match itself was swamped by media hype around the NRL’s historic Las Vegas competition-opening double header.

How many fans turn up in Sydney may well decide the match’s future.

The fan appeal won’t be helped by the four best indigenous Australian players in the game declaring themselves unavailable.

For various reasons, Cronulla’s 2023 Dally M winner Nico Hynes, South Sydney pair Latrell Mitchell and Cody Walker, and flying winger Josh Addo-Carr were not available for selection for the Australian side.

Cronulla have pulled Hynes and its star players for consideration due to being involved in the 2025 Vegas opener against Penrith in a couple of weeks.

That makes the Warriors’ decision to make Kiwis captain James Fisher-Harris, Charnze Nicoll-Klokstad and Jacob Laban available for the Māori team commendable.

James Fisher-Harris will feature in the Māori All Stars match against their indigenous Australian counterparts this weekend. Photo / Photosport

And the appearance of Newcastle’s Queensland Origin star Kalyn Ponga in the Māori line-up is further cause for interest in the game.

But there is now talk of moving the match to the end of the season, playing it one week after the NRL grand final.

There are already problems dramatically affecting the international test game with the new Pacific tournament. Adding the All Stars into that mix only deepens the problem.

Sadly, the concept looks like it is running out of legs, which is a shame.

It’s another example of the NRL club competition flexing too much control of other opportunities simply because its season is too long.

The NRL could learn a lesson from the approach taken by America’s NFL competition, which has a dramatically shorter season but still captivates fans.

All that glitters is not Olympic gold ... or bronze

Calling cyclist Ally Wollaston, yachties Erica Dawson and Micah Wilkinson and our women’s coxless rowing fours: what sort of state is your Paris Olympics bronze medal in?

Micah Wilkinson and Erica Dawson celebrate with their bronze medals at last year's Olympics. Photo / Photosport

Sports Insider asks this question after recent reports that some of the medals handed out at last year’s Olympics in France are looking decidedly worse for wear only six months after being handed out.

More than 100 Olympic and Paralympic athletes have requested a replacement medal following “deterioration”. It’s not yet known if any Kiwis from our record Olympic haul are among them.

This issue caught Sports Insider’s attention several months ago when reading that Olympic champion kayaker Finn Butcher had admitted his gold medal was looking a little “tardy”.

It was suggested that athletes were being too generous in allowing their medals to be handled by lots of people.

But now it seems the cause of deterioration – apparently more obvious with bronze medals than gold and silver but by no means restricted to them – is a faulty chemical mix during the plating process.

“It looks like my medal went to war,” lamented American skateboarder Nyjah Huston on social media.

Paris Games organisers have promised to replace any tarnished medals by the end of April this year.

Ryan Reynolds does it again

The best Super Bowl ad at this week’s showdown of the big commercial guns?

Sports Insider is a fan of the viral videos being produced by Wrexham FC co-owner Ryan Reynolds.

The Hollywood star’s spoof involving his gin label and club sponsor and the Wrexham players was delightfully self-mocking and hilarious, roping in good mate and fellow actor Channing Tatum as a central character.

Watch it here.

Man City: A team that knows no shame

Manchester United might be a basketcase under the aforementioned Sir Jim Ratcliffe, but few people in the game have much love for crosstown rivals Manchester City either.

Given blatant flouting of agreed financial fair play rules in both the English Premier League (EPL) and the Champions League, there has been a high degree of schadenfreude around City’s travails this season.

But this is a club – or rather a group of owners – who care little for sport’s ideals.

So it’s no surprise that City have launched a legal challenge to EPL rules governing commercial deals linked to a club’s owners.

This of course is the mechanism City employed to purchase their team of Galacticos, assembling the highest-paid playing squad in football’s history.

The club’s Emirati owners use national assets to top up playing wages with creative additional “sponsorships”.

It’s a rort and City have been world champions at exploiting it.

But last November, under rules voted through by top clubs, that shifty avenue was shut down.

It means there are now three live legal cases between City and the Premier League – one covering more than 100 charges against City for alleged breaches of the league’s financial rules and on this new challenge.

Sorry City fans, but your club knows no shame.

Team of the Week

Jordan Mailata The former South Sydney junior rugby league player grew into a man mountain who was part of a Philadelphia Eagles defensive unit which produced what has been described as the greatest Super Bowl performance in history against the Kansas City Chiefs. Not bad for a kid from Sydney’s inner suburbs who was told he was mad to pursue a career in the NFL.

Tyler Wright The world champion Australian surfer and only openly gay competitor on the World Surf League’s men’s and women’s tours will wear a LGBTQ+ pride flag on her competition singlet in the second stop of the tour in Abu Dhabi – where homosexuality is a crime. Can the Middle East just get out of sport, please!

Australian surfer Tyler Wright in action. Photo / Photosport

Caleb Clarke Pushes against the grain and opts out of Super Rugby Pacific’s “fantasy” game. Another example of the growing trend of players with a conscience pushing back at the likes of dubious initiatives ultimately designed to wring more money from fans (it’s a short jump to encouraging betting, though Clarke says it’s not a religious or a faith thing).