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Forget Poaching, Stealth
Bombing is here!
19th August 2005
From the most diligent of Mafia researchers - Drago
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
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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