Dame Sophie Pascoe, Amelia Kerr, Joe Schmidt and Tom Brady. Photos / Photosport, Dean Purcell
The quest by the Warriors to kick off this season’s NRL with a win over the Raiders in Sin City just got harder; Aussies woo Joe Schmidt to extend his Wallaby contract and Netflix boots Six Nations rugby reality series to touch. All in today’s Sports Insider.
The Warriors are confident of a strong contingent of travelling and expat New Zealanders turning up in Las Vegas for next month’s NRL season double-header opener.
Apparently Sin City-bound planes out of New Zealand are filling quickly.
That’s good because the Auckland-based franchise will need every set of Kiwi tonsils they can find to barrack against the Canberra Raiders in the opening match of the 2025 competition on March 1.
With more than half the expected spectators likely to be locals, or American sports fans looking for something different on their Vegas weekend, who gets hometown support among the “neutrals” in the crowd will be intriguing.
The Warriors are already up against the tide given the local NFL franchise playing out of the spectacular Allegiant Stadium is called the Las Vegas Raiders.
The Canberra club is working overtime to exploit the sharing of the Raiders name and provide Ricky Stuart’s side with an on-field boost.
But if Canberra and the NRL pull off an approach to American football GOAT Tom Brady, the hill will be even harder to climb for Andrew Webster’s men.
Brady is a part-owner of the Las Vegas Raiders, buying in last year when the franchise moved from Oakland in California after the city of Vegas built the US$2.31 billion ($4.07b) Allegiant Stadium, regarded as a sports fan’s nirvana for live games.
The NRL has asked Brady, a seven-times Super Bowl winner, to blow Canberra’s Viking horn ahead of the team running out against the Warriors.
In recent seasons, the horn has become an iconic feature of Canberra matches and is the catalyst for the start of a slow Viking clap that reaches a crescendo when the players from the Green Machine emerge onto the field.
Our own former Kiwis and Warriors star Ruben Wiki, along with Aussie legend Mal Meninga, have been among Raiders royalty who have acted as chief horn blower at past big matches, but Brady would trump them all.
Brady’s presence would help the NRL’s quest to sell out all 65,000 seats for the double header (reigning premiers Penrith play the Cronulla Sharks in the second game).
But it certainly won’t make the Warriors’ task of a first-round victory in their 2025 campaign any easier.
The NRL will be hoping the Las Vegas doubleheader inspires another successful season after last year’s inaugural venture set the competition up for a stellar season.
But the controversy over future expansion plans continues to be a dark cloud on the horizon for the Australian competition.
Sports Insider’s long-held view that the decision to grant Papua New Guinea the 18th team licence is massively flawed seems to be shared by Australian fans – and crucially a key political figure.
This columnist has been in Australia for the past three weeks and is yet to meet a single league fan who believes the PNG venture – based on funding from the Australian and US Governments which is understood to be intended to keep China out of the south Pacific – is a worthwhile exercise.
That won’t stop an organisation motivated by the A$600m ($661m) in funding promised by the two Governments.
Nor is the American contribution in any jeopardy since Donald Trump took office. Trump is already putting China on notice and won’t back out of the deal.
But there are signs the Australians may have a different view if Opposition leader Peter Dutton rolls Anthony Albanese in May’s federal election.
Dutton came out as a sceptic in the Australian press last weekend, saying he was particularly troubled by the plan to effectively build a “forbidden city” compound in Port Moresby to ensure players and staff at the franchise are safe.
Recent riots in PNG highlight how volatile the country is, and it’s been widely reported that the NRL is lobbying Albanese for tax-exempt status for any players who sign for the new club.
There are other troubling signs as well.
According to Australian press, the franchise licence cannot be rebranded or recycled if PNG do a political deal of any scope with China, forcing the Australians out. Nor can the NRL seek any additional funding over the term of the 10-year licence.
Dutton also has a personal card to play.
He is a big fan of the North Queensland Cowboys who are the one franchise with the most to lose in competition with PNG for players.
I have never understood the fixation with PNG, even if rugby league is its most beloved code.
Surely the NRL would be better off focusing the Australian and American dual spends on Fiji, Samoa and Tonga where there is more raw playing talent and equal geopolitical motivations (yes, that was a shudder you just heard from rugby over that potential).
In the meantime, of course, it seems that the NRL continues to shy away from the most obvious expansion franchise of a second New Zealand club.
Sports Insider sought comment from the NRL.
Joe Schmidt has long been admired within New Zealand rugby circles for his integrity and honesty.
Schmidt would not play ball with NZ Rugby’s move to try and depose Ian Foster mid-season two years ago and persuade his then assistant to link up with Scott “Razor” Robertson.
That moral stand won Schmidt many plaudits, even if there is a strong argument the All Blacks could have done with him alongside Robertson last year as an experienced older hand.
So, as we know, the Aussies swooped.
Now it seems the 59-year-old Kiwi’s approach is achieving similar growing status within Australian rugby after taking on the Wallabies at short notice last year and creating immediate improvement on their northern European tour.
There is little of the antipathy that previous Wallaby Kiwi coaches like Robbie Deans and Dave Rennie encountered in their tenures with the green and gold. Even legendary Kiwi basher David Campese has changed his tune and become a Schmidt fan.
Which is why there is a growing call on the Aussie side of the Tasman for Schmidt’s contract to be extended until the 2027 Rugby World Cup which the Aussies will host.
Technically, Schmidt’s deal with Rugby Australia runs out after this season’s tour by the British and Irish Lions.
There is increasing confidence in Australia that the Lions tour will not be the walkover everybody has been predicting for the past two years.
And if Schmidt can pull off the seemingly impossible and humble a Lions squad coached by his former protege Andy Farrell and stacked with Irish internationals the Kiwi knows well, RA would surely be mad to let him go.
The word is RA chief executive and former Wallaby flanker Phil Waugh is on a mission to secure an extension from Schmidt even before the Lions arrive.
Netflix has dumped rugby from its menu of Drive To Survive docu-series genre after just two seasons.
The second season of Full Contact, the behind-the-scenes look at the Six Nations, dropped on Netflix last month but the streaming giant confirmed there are no plans to film the 2025 tournament.
The first season of the series, covering the 2023 tournament, was underwhelming and there were reports Netflix was unimpressed with the level of (non) co-operation from several coaches, including Wales’ Kiwi boss Warren Gatland.
It all looks like another example of rugby shooting itself in the foot while the (viewing) world moves on.
The code and its national coaches are ridiculously precious about dressing room access and so-called “trade secrets” and eschew anything remotely controversial with almost missionary zeal.
Meanwhile, the likes of America’s NFL and NBA continue to grow audiences by letting fans into the inner sanctums.
The Six Nations, which kicks off this weekend, is irrefutably the leading international tournament in test rugby.
Even in the eyes of the most rabid southern hemisphere fans, the European event long ago surpassed the Rugby Championship in appeal and lustre.
But challenging times lie ahead.
The tournament is in the final year of its current broadcasting deals with the BBC and ITV which between them screen all games free-to-air. That has kept the competition relevant to many northern fans, including casuals who might not be interested in paying to watch.
But the Six Nations overlords and their private-equity investors believe they can generate an extra £10 million ($22m) in revenue by chasing a bigger pot of gold from pay broadcasters.
Yet after investors CVC take their cut, that amounts to only a bit more than £1.4m ($3.08m) for each of the six national unions which is chump change in the bigger picture, particularly if fans can’t access free coverage any longer and lose interest in the tournament.
In the meantime, having spurned a chance to join rival European-based club competitions to create a British and Anglo-Welsh league, England’s club premiership has announced plans to dramatically revamp the competition’s commercial face.
Premiership Rugby says it plans “significant investment” in digital content, centralised sponsorships and overseas games to revitalise itself.
These are grandiose plans given three clubs (Worcester, Wasps and London Irish) have disappeared into bankruptcy in the past two seasons, but the competition claims to have added nearly a million fans in the 18-34 age bracket in the past 12 months.
As a result, organisers are touting a focus on “player-led” content around its stars.
Significantly, the Premiership seems to have learned from New Zealand Rugby’s strategic faux pas in wasting millions creating its own digital app.
The primary platforms for the player content will be TikTok and YouTube. NZR recently pivoted its same content to YouTube after its NZR+ app met with a less than lukewarm response from fans.
Officials say they will also “definitely consider” overseas games if opportunities arise with the United States considered a key market.
“We’re not going to neglect our core audiences, but what we know from our research is that both audiences – existing fans and new fans – want the same thing from rugby,” said a spokesperson.
“They want physicality, they want jeopardy, they want athleticism, they want narrative, and those are the things we’re really, really focusing on.”
The view is consistent with recent comments from American sevens rep Ilona Maher, the most followed rugby player on social media, who recently said the game requires a cultural shift in mindset if it wants to showcase the personalities of its athletes and attract new fans.
Dame Sophie Pascoe: Calls time on a glittering swimming career that forced New Zealanders to rethink their attitude towards paralympic athletes. Enjoy your retirement.
Patrick Mahomes: The Kansas City Chiefs quarterback has been an NFL starter for seven years. In five of those seasons, he has led the Chiefs to the Super Bowl and in the other two, he lost in overtime one match short of the Big Show. Watch out Tom Brady, there’s a new GOAT on the horizon.
Amelia Kerr: The Kiwi wunderkind wins the ICC women’s cricketer of the year after taking a New Zealand calendar year record of 29 wickets in 18 T20 matches along with 14 ODI wickets. With the bat, she scored 651 runs across both formats.
Andrew Webster is confident the Warriors will bounce back next week against the Broncos.