Rugby needs private ownership that works

Blues coach John Kirwan. Photo / Getty Images

The John Kirwan saga, disaster, tells us why rugby is struggling in New Zealand.

The national game needs a form of private ownership that works, that is driven by the excitement of success and the fear of failure. At the moment, it is run by an impotent sham.

Kirwan's attempts to cling on to his job have done us a revealing favour. Reports detailing the divided Blues board are more interesting than the game itself.

The Blues are run by New Zealand Rugby, Auckland Rugby, a private owner and, oh yes, the Blues. The old boys network can be added to that. Throw in all the personalities and back issues and it has led to chaos. The most effective sports outfits are run by clever dictatorships, especially a dominant coach and chief executive who are on the same page. It won't always work well, but it will work way better than what we have got.

Scrutiny should not just be on the disaster in the north. Look around at stadium numbers etc etc and you have a game that is crashing, a situation masked by the phenomenal All Blacks.

NZR chief Steve Tew is now mediating between a board in which Auckland rugby and the Blues are at war over Kirwan. But Tew is hardly an independent, since NZR pays the coaches and players' wages and is All Black-centric.

An irony is that the men in charge - and they just about are all white middle class men which is one of the problems - are (I'm guessing) your classic right wing voters, believers in the free enterprise model. But when it comes to the national game, they run a cross between the old Kremlin and a monopoly.

There is no real, desperate incentive for the franchises to fill their stadiums, to compete in a market, to find ways of keeping great players, because the squillion dollar broadcasting contract which derives most of its value from the All Blacks keeps them afloat. If the cold winds of reality were really blowing in rugby faces, we would have a decent Auckland football stadium already. But rugby dawdles along, with 8000 bored-sounding people in its 50,000 capacity cathedral.

Rugby is about to get its comeuppance in Auckland, where the Warriors are finally poised to surge under new chief executive Jim Doyle. He does have to answer to people - owners Eric Watson and Owen Glenn. But as a unit, the Warriors can act decisively, and are responsible for their own bottom line.

In contrast, the NZR is afraid to let go, because it doesn't trust anyone else in looking after the elite players. It thought winning the World Cup was a panacea, a state funded one at that.

For a health check, look at all the empty seats in Wellington for what should have been a glamour clash between the Hurricanes and Chiefs on Saturday night.

Throw in confounding rules, endless delays in matches, and a rising population of people with fascinating entertainment choices and ways of communicating, and you have a national game in danger. The NZR does face tough issues and the answers are far from simple. But it must try. Rugby needs to attract dynamic and diverse people with the power and incentive to act. The All Blacks won't prop the game up forever.