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Chief's departure points to a bleak future |
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Written by Jamie Troughton
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Friday, 19 October 2007 |
THEY'LL be cheering on the rugby forums, while small clusters of former referees will be clustered together in dark woolsheds toasting each other with cider and performing their secret handshake with reckless abandon.
The Dark Prince has fallen on his lance, vanquished and beaten.
Yet Paul Abbot's resignation as Bay of Plenty Rugby chief executive isn't a victory for anybody - it just exposes the next poor sap to the same grim future that Abbot was peering into.
Abbot's four-year tenure wasn't perfect - the whole Andre Bell appointment and reappointment saga was flawed from the start and may well have cost the Steamers several spots on the ladder this year.
He was also inclined to be too confrontational with his detractors, in many cases giving them credence where none was deserved.
The farcical case of the ex-referees - who threw a tantrum over being pulled back under union control and losing their monthly vanilla wine biscuit allowance - was a prime example, and responding to various criticism was another.
Instead of focusing solely on the bigger fight, constant sniping proved distracting and in the end may have swamped him.
But by and large, Abbot was approachable and sensible. He fought fiercely for Bay of Plenty at NZRU level and hoisted Steamers colours proudly at every opportunity.
The biggest question to come out of his resignation is this: if Paul Abbot couldn't turn Bay of Plenty Rugby into the rugby superpower supporters crave, who the hell can?
The answer lies somewhere amid the dysfunctional chaos of club and sub-union rugby.
Every year, various club elements bitch and moan about what an awful job chairman Stu Harvey and his board are doing.
Then every year they shuffle into the annual meeting like a herd of cats and with all the organisation of a school of jellyfish caught in a tsunami.
What do they expect?
If they got their act together, the club delegates could control their union - witness how Waikato supremo Gary Dawson suffered the wrath of his stakeholders and was made to walk the plank.
The next chief executive of Bay of Plenty Rugby has a simple job.
All that needs to be done is to appease the 37 clubs in the province, get their bars ticking over and their teams performing.
Then there's the simple matter of finding a couple of extra million in sponsorship, buy in a couple of All Blacks to play for the Steamers and smash those pesky Aucklanders in the 2008 Air NZ Cup final.
Should be a breeze. For an encore, maybe a quick stroll out to White Island with a snack of bread and wine would be appropriate.
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