A new entity will be created to govern professional rugby and NZR will finalise its competitions and elite pathways review that will most likely end up with Super Rugby clubs taking control of all aspects of player development. The National Provincial Championship would be shifted to a new, slimmed-down format and possibly even to a new place in the calendar where it runs concurrently with Super Rugby Pacific.
And at the same time as these events play out, the unions will likely find that those people and organisations who supported the adoption of the Review Proposal, and the sort of high-calibre, rugby-savvy directors the game needs, refuse to be associated with the new world the provinces are trying to construct.
The provinces will sit on the margins – isolated and effectively disenfranchised. They will discover that they didn’t vote themselves into a position of power at the special general meeting, but like the fabled dog with the bone seeing its reflection, will lose what they had because of a misjudged overreach.
The only unknown in rugby’s future is how long it will take for the unions to realise the mistake they have made and return to the negotiating table, and how much damage will be caused in the interim.
The unions have seriously misread the respective opportunities and threats each of the two governance-change proposals presented both to them specifically and to the overall health of rugby generally.
They have – despite their conviction that they voted in favour of an effective and modernised means of appointing directors to create an independent board – simply rebuilt a different version of the current system. This system is killing rugby through parochial decision-making and a chronic inability to understand or manage the full range of complexities the game in this country is facing.
There are so many flaws, inconsistencies and sheer absurdities about the collective decision-making of the provinces to have backed Proposal 2, as to make it faintly comical that a system that has been deemed not fit-for-purpose because it concentrates power in the hands of a few self-interested unions has seen those very unions use their power to preserve their power.
The greatest absurdity is that the provincial unions agree that the game is broken, that the current system of governance is failing them and every other stakeholder in the game.
They have seen NZR produce big financial losses in recent years which has led to a reduction in provincial distributions; they have seen teenage boys continue to leave in their droves, senior clubs struggle to field male teams and the NPC battle for audience and traction. They agree talent pathways for the elite players are confused and that too much money is being spent by too many entities in identifying and developing players.
And so faced with a broken system, one that is failing them and everyone else in it, they have voted to preserve it.
The greatest flaw in their thinking has been convincing themselves that their change proposal was in fact a change proposal.
Of all the fallacies promoted by the provincial unions these last few months, their insistence they supported the concept of an independent NZR board was perhaps the most egregious.
They chose, either deliberately or simply through ignorance, to interpret the term independent as it applies to directors, as meaning “independent of rugby”.
It created an emotive and binary argument to say independent directors would lack rugby knowledge of any kind, and hence the need to mandate that at least three NZR directors have experience on a provincial board.
But the term “independent” as it was being used by David Pilkington, the former Fonterra executive and widely respected board director who led the review into NZR’s governance, meant free of affiliation to any one stakeholder.
His argument for recommending NZR adopt an independent board was persuasive and came after he had access to confidential board meetings.
He said that the current representative model whereby unions are able to effectively manipulate the system to ensure they get people who they want on the board, to then act only in the best interests of the unions who put them there, was the barrier to the game being able to successfully tackle any of the problems it faces.
Proposal 2, under any reasonable and independent assessment, can clearly be seen for what it is – a blueprint that enables the unions to preserve their influence over the panel that appoints directors. It will perpetuate a system that enables the unions to have representatives on the board who act not for the whole of rugby, and not even just to focus on the provincial and community games, but with a mandate to preserve and protect the NPC.
There is a core inconsistency in their argument. While they say they see inherent danger in having non-rugby folk on the board and being able to greatly influence decision-making, they (twice) voted to allow US fund manager Silver Lake – the most non-rugby folk of all – to have two board seats and enormous influence in managing and directing every aspect of rugby in this country.
But of course the unions shared a $37 million windfall for voting in favour of a deal with Silver Lake. So it seems the unions can be entirely flexible and creative in determining their feelings about non-rugby folk having board seats and influence.
The 69 votes cast in favour of adopting Proposal 2 are votes for chaos and quite possibly the destruction of rugby in New Zealand.
