Rugby rebels scored super payday

Jonah Lomu helped the Blues to victory over the Hurricanes in 1996 in the first game of Super Rugby ever played. Photo / Getty Images

The game’s professional revolution sparked into life on the pitch when Super 12 kicked off 19 years ago

The start of another Super Rugby season seems as natural and ordinary as
the rolling of the tides but, while the competition is well past its salad days, its inception was revolutionary.

Super Rugby and the era of professionalism it heralded officially kicked off on March 1, 1996, at the Palmerston North Showgrounds, with the Blues beating the Hurricanes 36-28.

To understand how that game came about, it's necessary to look back to 1994, when grumblings about amateurism were reaching fever pitch in the New Zealand game.

At that time, cash-poor rugby was under siege from rugby league, whose scouts circled local union talent like seagulls around a trawler.

Anxious NZRU officials moved to bind top players with contracts that would require a transfer fee to be paid should they switch codes.

It seemed logical but was met with consternation by rugby's old guard, including New Zealand Rugby Council member Peter Wild.

"If leading players had to be called on to sign an agreement, they would not be worthy of wearing the black jersey," he said.

The union used every available measure of suasion to get players to commit, including the bully pulpit. Instead of receiving their contracts in the mail, players were hand delivered them by Colin Meads in an early suggestion of the blunt-endorsement appeal he would put to good use in deer velvet commercials a decade later.

The modern game is marred by a pervasive blandness of expression but things were different in '94.

Former French coach Jacques Fouroux said a professional circuit would "be like an atom bomb falling on the game" but NZRU boss Eddie Tonks said it was "pie-in-the-sky stuff", in part because it would mean more games.

"Our guys bitch if you ask them to play three tests in six weeks," he said.

When All Blacks coach Laurie Mains suggested New Zealand flout the IRB's strictures on not paying players, Tonks called the idea "plain ridiculous".

In spite of the wrangling, the contracts were signed in December but, as 1995 dawned, the professionalism debate got into full swing.

There quickly emerged two competing media tycoons who would duel for the soul of the game - Rupert Murdoch, with an $828 million television-rights plan, and Kerry Packer, whose World Rugby Corporation was set to rival his earlier efforts with rebel cricket. Like a good British prime minister, the NZRU sided with Murdoch.

A clandestine tug-of-war ensued, with each side trying to snare talent. In a remarkable show of defiance, New Zealand players refused to automatically fall in line with their union. The Herald reported as many as 80 players, including several All Blacks, signed WRC contracts.

But a pair of high-profile signatures helped swing it Murdoch's way in the end.

On August 11, the union announced Josh Kronfeld and Jeff Wilson had agreed to their terms. Wallaby Jason Little did the same in Australia, and the WRC's house of cards collapsed.

The Murdoch plan built the blueprint for rugby as we know it: a Tri Nations series (now the Rugby Championship) and a Super Rugby competition involving franchises drawn from the Southern Hemisphere's heavyweights.