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Hamish Riach, CEO of Canterbury Rugby Union, on a recent visit to the Bay of Plenty to see Kevin Senio play.
As the NPC is starting, the up and coming elite of the rugby world are again being tempted with promises of glory, black shirts, loads of dosh and wads of plane tickets (to go back to their real home) to play for the five Big Boys of New Zealand Rugby. Yes I hear you say we have a new competition and it has a salary cap so those nasty super 12 sides can’t poach our talent and this will all change. Well I say baloney! All that will change is that we will no longer have poaching where players are routinely trawled and stockpiled in the big five provinces. Instead we will have stealth bombing raids where the best players in a union, players who a team is built around, are whisked away to the five big unions. This type of raid breaks down the fabric of the team, just like the stealth bombers removing the foundations of the buildings they bombed. And what is worst is that to meet the proposed salary cap, many of these players will not even play for the big five union, but instead they will be cast out to associate unions so the big five can stay under their salary cap. It’s already started – right Rico?
Confused, well so was I so I started researching how all this worked. I started with the Bay of Plenty Rugby Union where it looks like they are about to lose their star halfback, Kevin Senio to Canterbury and the Crusaders. Look at what is on offer. Better pay, a side that has a history of cultivating All Blacks and he would be playing inside Dan Carter and Aaron Mauger with a pack full of current or ex All Blacks in front of him. He can be number one halfback in the Crusaders or number two in the Chiefs. Plus he probably will be enticed with unlimited travel to come back to the best part of the country, Mount Maunganui. He’s made All Black selection but this move could consolidate his position…….it’s a bit of a no brainer! If Bay of Plenty manages to retain Kevin then it will be up there along side Cambo winning the US Open – an amazing achievement!
I interviewed Paul Abbot, Chief Executive of Bay of Plenty Rugby Union and he said to me that Kevin’s case was a “bit unusual” due to the circumstances in Canterbury. He still holds out hope as the Bay rescued Kevin’s career when he was released by Auckland and he has risen to the top because of the Bay’s success. “We have a winning team, good environment, great coaching team, we’ve looked after him and he has great mates here”.
These last comments seem to be a regional province’s best defence against a stealth bomb from the Big Five. Paul said the real problem for them was holding onto the players at a tier just under Kevin. “These guys are the backbone of the team and are there week in, week out”. Regional Provinces do not have the big money to keep players so the regional team has to rely on winning, the old value of loyalty to the jersey and that they are part of a more family environment rather than a cold professional corporate organisation.”
So, what about the salary cap. Well at the moment the New Zealand Rugby Union has no public documents on the structure of it. The NZRU is in negotiation with the Rugby Players Association so all the details are hush hush. However they did confirm that it will definitely be in place by kick off of the new competition in 2006 – phew! Rumour has it that a side will be able to get about a group of 22 highly paid players and stay under the hush hush salary cap. If players are strategic to a Super 12 side, then they will be bought by an associate union in the Super 12 franchise (with money from Super 12 profits no doubt). I haven’t been able to check the exact details of this with Rico but if I find out I will let you know. Of course the associate union will not make promises about a Super 12 contract as this is not allowed by the NZRU. And if you believe this then here are a couple of other facts you might not be aware of - Helen Clark is having an affair with Don Brash and Sue Bradford is dating Winston Peters!
The real problem with the salary cap is that I don’t believe the NZRU will give it any teeth. The salary cap will only work if the NZRU are prepared to put serious sanctions in place to put some deterrent for the Big Five to flout the rules. The NRL wiped out the Bulldogs points two years ago but it still hasn’t stopped sides being in breach. The National Rugby League (NRL) board has issued a total of $275,000 in fines to five clubs for salary cap breaches last season and announced that it will trial changes to salary cap rules, despite the fact they failed win clubs' approval. Premiers the Bulldogs ($72,295), the Sydney Roosters ($25,000), Penrith ($25,000), St George Illawarra ($32,286) and Melbourne ($120,000) have all been issued with breach notices for a variety of salary cap transgressions. (source www.nrl.com.au 13th April, 2005).
Or could you imagine the NZRU doing to Canterbury what the Australian Rules Football League did to Carlton?
(except from Financial Times Information Limited Dec 6, 2002)
“Carlton, which finished bottom of the league last season, was stripped of its first four national draft selections for the 2003 season and excluded from the first two rounds of the national draft for the 2004 season. It means the club loses any hope of bringing in the best young players and improving its league position - the purpose of the draft. It was also fined £330,000. If that was not enough, the newly elected club president Ian Collins then realised that Carlton was already £430,000 over the salary cap for next year and was told by the AFL to make the necessary cuts or face fines in excess of £1m.”
I can just see Jock Hobbs and Steve Tew, two Canterbury stalwarts imposing these sorts of actions on their beloved province, Canterbury. In the immortal words of Tui Billboards, yeah right!
The basic problem comes back to money. Super 12 provincial unions (i.e. Auckland, Waikato, Wellington, Canterbury and Otago) link their sponsorship deals back to the Super 12 side. This means if you sponsor the home union you will get linked to the Super 12 franchise. In all these cases the Super 12 franchise is run by provincial union therefore this is an easy promise for them to make. This gives the provincial union a much better sponsorship proposal, they make more money, hence they have a stronger financial base from which to recruit the best players.
One solution to the lack of money for non Super 12 unions is if all the Super 12 sides put their profits into a central fund which were then distributed to the 29 unions. This is not all that crazy when you consider that all Super 12 players are paid by the NZRU yet it is the Big Five that take the bulk of the profits and revenue opportunities. But this action is about as likely as Osama and George agreeing to a quiet bourbon together.
So what can the non big five unions do? They have started by banding together for talks last week to see if there is any common ground for them to have more commercial power. Paul Easton, CEO of Taranaki Rugby Union told TV 1 that they were looking as a group to undertake sponsorship proposals as jointly they have far more to offer a sponsor.
Meanwhile we just have to hope the players collective agreement does not make it even harder for us to keep our players as player’s association quite rightly want players to have the right to earn what they can and play where they want as they have a limited window of opportunity to make money. Brian Finn of the NZRU said that as well as the players' collective needing to be signed off, the New Zealand union had to meet the Commerce Commission to work through the implications of a salary cap. The most obvious point of discussion will centre on whether the salary cap breaches New Zealand laws on restraint of trade. (source http://www.stuff.co.nz/ 15th July, 2005)
At the end of the day Paul Abbot summed up their best defence to the stealth bombs of Canterbury, Auckland etc – WINNING. “If we are winning games then players want to stay, they develop a loyalty to the jersey and as long as we are looking after them well and have good coaching, it makes the decision much harder to leave” said Paul.
On that note all we can do as fans is to get down to the park and support our team to win. We have to let the players know that here they are a valued individual whereas if they leave to the dark and gloom of the Big Five, they are just a number on the substitute’s bench!
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