Gregor Paul: Time for a return to the golden age of NZ rugby

Matthew Ridge in action for Auckland in 1988. Photo / Photosport

COMMENT:

We went into the lockdown in March 2020 but hopefully, rugby-wise, we will be coming out some time around the late 1980s.

Turns out, that was rugby's golden period: the time when everything made sense. There was nothing contrived or forced about that period: 15 blokes would stick on a provincial jersey and play another 15 blokes who had done the same and it piqued the interest of thousands of fans.

When it was Auckland v Canterbury, that's when the whole nation got interested.

Humans are unfathomably complex and yet also staggeringly base and a rugby game between the largest province in the North Island and the largest province in the South Island could invoke in New Zealanders' feelings that staring at the Mona Lisa never could.

The simplicity and value of rivalry has been lost in the professional age. Super Rugby has never been able to tap into the almost primal feelings that were generated by the National Provincial Championship in its prime.

In New Zealand Rugby's defence, they never set out with a deliberate plan to kill the sense of tribalism that stoked fan interest and made life interesting.

They made decisions that seemed right back then – fitting for the brave new world they were entering.

Now is not the time for blame to be apportioned as all that matters is to realise it was a mistake to cultivate glitzy new professional teams.

And just as important is to remember that rugby promoted itself just fine back then by doing nothing more than being itself. In the late amateur period there weren't people paid to keep the media in check or manufacture and market a competition theme as Super Rugby does each year, one that we were all expected to latch on to.

Everything about rugby was organic back then and no one needed to be told to hate Auckland, they did it naturally and passionately and no one needed a theme to buy into.

Any competition that needs to explain why it matters and what fans should feel about it, is doomed. The proliferation of marketing jobs in Super Rugby is of itself a giant indication of why Super Rugby failed: when people care about their team they will find out for themselves everything they need to know.

And when they care, they don't need to be advised what to feel. That happens all by itself: the magic of sport twisting emotions in unpredictable directions.

Matthew Ridge in action for Auckland in 1988. Photo / Photosport

So while the lockdown has brought a depth of previously unimaginable financial pain, it also fostered a strong retro vibe – a mass realisation that we weren't wrong to pine for a return to the good old days of afternoon kick-offs and provincial rivalries.

New Zealand built its love for the game and global excellence on the back of a ferocious and meaningful domestic competition where the players didn't emerge from unknown academies or pseudo professional school teams, but from their local club and hence walked large among us.

They were known because they were us and that's why so many people cared and that's why so many people have seen the blockade to persevere with cross-border Super Rugby as a giant opportunity to wind back the clock and reconnect the emotional cables that were cut when professionalism arrived.

Tribalism is healthy, possibly even imperative if fans are going to return to re-engage with the sport when it resumes. Rivalries are to be encouraged and promoted because they generate authenticity and authenticity has to be at the core of the Super Rugby rebuild.

The canvas is effectively blank in regard to what could happen in 2021 and who would disagree with the idea of effectively recasting the current Super Rugby teams as, respectively, Auckland, Waikato, Wellington, Canterbury and Otago?

If more are needed, then Tasman, Bay of Plenty and Taranaki seem like good names and deserved areas in which new teams could be based.

The media needs storylines that resonate and players posting videos of themselves on social media doing so-called amazing tricks in their respective backyards doesn't really cut it.

Intense rivalries are the strongest currency any sport can have. Tennis boomed when John McEnroe and Bjorn Borg were on the same court but never the same page.

Everyone says Tiger Woods in his prime drove golf's spiked viewership but what really had viewers transfixed was the possibility that his known dislike of rival Phil Mickelson might flare at any time..

We need rugby to see that controversy sparked by players speaking from the heart is not a publicity crisis that needs to be avoided at all costs, but the best promotion the sport can have.

Sport is built on raw emotions. It is played by insanely competitive people and supported by wildly passionate and invested fans.

That's all those redrafting Super Rugby need to remember.