Super Rugby backlash: Gregor Paul - How New Zealand Rugby became isolated and vulnerable

OPINION:

When poet John Donne wrote that "no man is an island" 400 years ago, he couldn't possibly have foreseen that 12,000 miles away in the Pacific there would be such determination to prove him wrong.

But New Zealand Rugby have done just that having found themselves isolated and vulnerable without a single friend in the world.

It started with Australia and South Africa but the list of organisations and territories NZR has now alienated has been expanded to include their own players' association and the Pacific Islands en masse.

The move to island status for NZR began in July with a unilateral declaration to blow up Super Rugby.

Now they have all but completed the job with another unilateral decision to unveil next phase plans for the competition which has led to the New Zealand Rugby Players' Association saying it's had enough of the national body's "arrogant and dominant stance" in regard to trying to structure the professional landscape next year and beyond.

The various Pasifika syndicates that have spent the last two months bidding to enter Super Rugby are equally disaffected and bemused that NZR conducted a bid process for something it couldn't deliver.

For something in fact it has no legal ability or right to deliver because despite all the headlines and unilateral proclamations that Super Rugby is dead, all Sanzaar parties are currently locked into water tight, irrefutable contracts that they will be participating in a 14-team competition in 2022.

If Sanzaar had any kind of strategic nous or leadership it would have followed Mark Twain's lead and spent a bit of time these past few weeks reminding everyone that reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated, because while it may not suit NZR's newly adopted belief that it is the owner and governor of Super Rugby, it categorically isn't.

Mark Robinson (R) is the Chief Executive of New Zealand Rugby sitting with NZR Board Chair Brent Impey (L). Photo / Getty Images.

Agreement was reached among the Sanzaar partners that due to Covid, member nations would be free to make alternative arrangements in 2020 and 2021 but there has been no unwinding of Sanzaar and all the commercial arrangements that are locked into it in 2022.

Rob Nichol, who heads the NZRPA, is not alone in wondering on whose authority NZR currently feels it is acting in relation to the bid process to expand Super Rugby Aotearoa in 2022.

It feels like NZR has been strutting around like the self-appointed Prom Queen, lining up its pick of dates because it has also appointed itself as the chief organiser of the whole event.

But it has no legal right to see itself as the chief organiser and so the four bidders who were told yesterday they are still in the frame for inclusion in 2022, should be aware they are in fact in a race to nowhere and not a race to be part of Super Rugby.

The arrogance is what Nichol and others have found breathtaking, but they worry more about the impact of alienating so many prospective partners.

This Pandemic-impacted time is an opportunity to unite and collaborate not leverage and dominate.

It's a time for the so-called strong to protect those who are struggling and NZR must surely see that it is complicit in keeping Rugby Australia in a place of weakness by refusing to engage in good faith terms about how the two nations can build future competition structures together.

Rob Nichol. Photo / Getty Images.

It's classic chicken and egg with NZR saying Rugby Australia is too high risk as a partner because it has no broadcast deal beyond next year.

Yet NZR has not afforded Rugby Australia an opportunity to be part of Super Rugby and therefore, they don't have anything to take to their broadcasters to secure a deal.

It's a self-serving, exploitative position that ultimately won't produce any winners.

And it's not too dissimilar to the stance NZR took with the Moana Pacific proposal to be part of Super Rugby next year.

The proposal, which was not actually put forward as part of the bid process, showed that a Pasifika team could be launched in South Auckland next year with a squad mostly comprising players who had test experience.

There are also high level coaches, some with test experience and many with Super Rugby exposure, lining up to be involved and yet NZR cited concerns about player quality.

NZR also aired its belief that financially, it was too big a risk to include Moana Pasifika next year.

On that basis there is justification, but as Nichol is now advocating, no one actually knows the answer to that because the key questions have not been asked and the right people have not all been in the room together to thrash out the feasibility.

The notion has been prematurely rejected and what he's asking for is a sustained, combined effort in the next month to get this team off the ground and shoe-horn it into the schedule for 2021.

He accepts that it may still be unsuccessful, but it will at least satisfy the various interested Pasifika parties that NZR exhausted the possibility of inclusion in 2021 and that will be the first step in the national body winning back some friends that it desperately needs.