A win is a win
NZRC positioning itself to turn on-field success into cold hard cash, PLUS: The Week That Was and the Weekend that Will Be
The appointment of a rugby administrator wasn’t the most startlingly interesting news of a frantic sporting week but it has the potential to be far reaching.
Expat New Zealander Craig Fenton has been appointed chief executive of New Zealand Rugby Commercial, replacing inaugural chief executive Richard Thomas who resigned in May.
NZRC, sometimes referred to as CommCo, was formed in the wake of American investment giant Silver Lake taking an equity stake in New Zealand Rugby.
Fenton’s appointment came with the usual meaningless platitudes.
“The Teams in Black represent the top of our professional sport, of any team in any sport, and elite performance like this is sustained by the foundations on which it is built,” Fenton ‘said’. “Growing the commercial value of NZ Rugby through an engaged and expanding global fanbase is vital to supporting our current players and nourishing the grassroots that represent our future.”
Reading “Teams in Black” was the visual equivalent of listening to fingernails being scraped against the blackboard and “nourishing the grassroots” projects all sorts of fertiliser vibes, but it’s his first day so let’s go easy.
He does have a big job ahead of him though. Silver Lake and the rugby community in general will be/ should be demanding stakeholders.
As one rugby insider who was involved in talks with Silver Lake during the courting phase told The Bounce, the only way the move to partner with private equity would be viewed as a success would be if the bloke buying a jug at his rugby clubrooms on a Saturday afternoon could reel off a couple of “wins” that the venture had produced.
Not that easy when much of the revenue strategy, you presume, will be invisible, such as increasing the All Blacks commercial presence in Europe, Asia and North America. Increasing the All Blacks technology capabilities and reach through pioneering use of AI (and potentially NFTs, which already seem to have lost their lustre) could also be in the works, but how that moves ‘yer man in Morrinsville’ remains to be seen.
So far, apart from the vague promise of an app-based platform - NZR+ - that will be a fan-engagement tool but may not be a revenue-generating concept, there is nothing to point to yet.
There has also been talk of more “inside-the-sheds” type content and it’s understood production company Whisper had access during last year’s northern tour. That hasn’t resulted in anything of note to date, but a keen observer spotted multiple youngsters in All Blacks gear with cameras on the field following this year’s tests, so maybe all this content will filter into a film about the World Cup campaign. While this concept already feels outmoded (remember the excruciatingly dull All Or Nothing series featuring the 2017 All Blacks), a World Cup win at the end of the year sells itself.
In reality, that’s NZRC’s biggest win so far - the fact that the flagship team is winning again.
A win is a win.
That should make Fenton’s job a lot easier.
THE WEEK THAT WAS
If you’ve seen me around the traps over the past couple of days and wondered why I look like a tarsier that’s spent a week at an ayahuasca ceremony while listening to the Twelve Dreams Of Dr Sardonicus on heavy rotation, there is a two-word explanation.
The Ashes.
My fears that the final test would drift into irrelevance after the big wet of Manchester went unfounded. It was another belter of a test.
There were a couple of delicious ironies to go out on.
Australia worked themselves into a lather about the sudden change in condition of the ball. Even the fact they were right to feel aggrieved - the ball that was changed in the 37th over bore little resemblance to the one it was replaced with and immediately starting hooping - doesn’t alter the fact that seven of the Australians on the field at The Oval were on the field at Newlands in 2018. That might be why it was Ricky Ponting leading the charge, rather than Pat Cummins or Steve Smith.
A cricketer who has spent most of his career being a decent but dispensable wingman ends up being the Alpha Dog. Step forward Chris Woakes, a man who looks built to forge a middle-management career in low-risk financial services. Woakes didn’t play the first two tests of this series and makes a lie of the idea that correlation ≠ causation. He enjoys a bromance with Mark Wood who also, incidentally, missed the first two tests of the series.
Or, as Barney Ronay in the Guardian put it when writing about Woakes:
Baz chat, Baz logic, Baz reasoning will circle the Baz embers of the first great Baz series of mankind’s Bazball era. But make no mistake, here it was something more classical and gentlemanly, the pistol inside the rolled-up newspaper that did for Australia.
There was a lot of bubbling machismo in this series. Woakes was the antithesis of this yet somehow out-bloked the blokes.
The masters of ‘mental disintegration’ appeared to mentally disintegrate across the course of the series. Australia were unquestionably tired. Six tests in two months will do that to any team, especially when you lose the one bowler, Nathan Lyon, that was guaranteed to give the quicks extended rest while keeping the pressure on England. But it looked like more than aching joints and soft-tissue strains. It looked like nagging doubts had penetrated their psyche. Was it the B word?
And perhaps therein lies the greatest irony of all: the series ended up being a thrillingly inconclusive, opaque referendum on Bazball. We wanted answers but instead we got a multichoice poll.
Did Bazball…
A. Cost England the urn?
B. Propel England to a drawn series against a superior side?
C. Emasculate Australia?
D. Bring test cricket back to the people?
E. Get too close to becoming an FBI-monitored cult?
F. All of the above?
It’s futile trying to make test cricket a black-and-white issue. The shades of grey will always win. Just as it always should be.
Bring on 2025 and “Jofra Archer from the Stanley St end”.
Kane Williamson is back (click on the photo for some of the best throwdown action you’ll ever see). Next step… Ahmedabad, October 5?
Knee looks fine to me.
Hard on the heels of the news of Wally Lewis’ probable CTE diagnosis, comes the news that 125 former league players in the United Kingdom are suing the Rugby Football League, the British Amateur Rugby League Association and International Rugby League.
The suit is being taken by Rylands, which is also representing more than 300 rugby players in their action against World Rugby and some of its subsidiary bodies, which started to move through the courts in June.
Rylands Garth will this week formally launch the action on behalf of the group who have been diagnosed with conditions including early onset dementia and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), mirroring the legal dispute embroiling rugby union. Richard Boardman of Rylands says the action is a matter of “life and death”.
They argue the sport did not take proper action to protect rugby league players from injuries caused by repetitive concussive and subconcussive blows during games throughout their careers and are now seeking damages as a result.
Former Great Britain halfback Bobbie Goulding is one high-profile player who has publicly announced he has joined the action.
Never before has the World University Games received such global coverage.
From CBS:
The chairwoman of Somalia's national athletics federation has been suspended amid accusations of nepotism after a seemingly untrained female sprinter represented the African country at the World University Games in China, and took more than 20 seconds to finish the 100-metre race, far behind her competitors.
It must have been the skip of delight at the end that sent it viral.
THE WEEKEND THAT WILL BE
A short selection of things I’ll be watching over the weekend.
There is no better illustration of the enormous leap of faith the rugby public has embarked on in the past month or so than the lack of outrage and clamour over the All Blacks team to play the Wallabies in Dunedin. I have mixed feelings about it. A test against Australia, especially on home soil, is a test worth winning well and I’m not sure that creating a backline that will never assemble in the same place at the same time again is the best way of going about that particular mission. By winning the Rugby Championship and securing the Bledisloe Cup so early, however, Ian Foster and co have earned the right to rest key players ahead of tougher campaigns to come.
Either way, it should be a bit of harmless afternoon fun.
In Fozzie We Trust… or something like that.
NZ v Australia, Dunedin, tomorrow 2.35pm, Sky Sport 1
The long lonely nights of the bye weekends are done for the year. The free points are all in the bank. The Warriors now must have two corresponding goals for their remaining five matches: to muscle their way into the top two, a task made more difficult by Penrith and Brisbane having a four-point gap; and to not slip out of the top four.
There is little room for error but working in their favour is five eminently winnable matches against the Gold Coast, Wests, Manly Warringah, St George and Redcliffe. Tonight shapes as their toughest test in the final month of the regular season.
Gold Coast v NZ Warriors, Robina, tonight 8pm, SS4
It really does look like all the eggs were in Grace Nweke’s nest. That was a fairly grim 24 hours in the World Cup history of the Silver Ferns, collapsing late to draw with hosts South Africa - how does a professional team with years to prepare not have a functioning run-down-the-clock strategy - before collapsing slightly earlier to take a hammering by Jamaica.
Still, there is hope.
Curiously, despite their slipups in crossover play, New Zealand ended up with the semifinal they probably wanted. England beat Australia in a thriller to advance at the head of their pool, but coach Noeline Taurua won’t necessarily be upset with that. The TAB has them pegged as even money and, curiously, has Australia ($1.62) as strong favourites to beat Jamaica ($2.15), despite the Sunshine Girls through Jhaniele Fowler looking unstoppable at the shooting end of the court.
England v NZ, semifinal, Cape Town, tomorrow 9pm, SS1 (followed by Jamaica v Australia at 2am on SS2)
My engagement in the Fifa World Cup went into a lull after the Football Ferns insipid exit at the hands of the Swiss, but sparked into life late last night with some skilful intracontinental toggling between matches in Brisbane and Perth. Neither game was especially skilful, but the drama was riveting. In the end, the improbable combined results of Morocco defeating Colombia 1-0 and South Korea and Germany drawing 1-1 saw the two-time champions and world No 2-ranked Germany ousted before the knockouts. With Brazil already gone and No 1-ranked USA the width of a post from being bundled out, this has been a wildly unpredictable tournament.
In the round of 16, you have Switzerland (ranked 20th), Colombia (25th), Nigeria (40th), Jamaica (43rd), South Africa (54th) and Morocco (72nd). That’s pretty cool.
This weekend’s games are as follows. All are on Sky Sport and the ones in bold are recommended.
Switzerland v Spain, tomorrow 5pm; Japan v Norway, tomorrow 8pm
Netherlands v South Africa, Sunday 2pm; Sweden v USA, Sunday 9pm
NB. Keep an eye out next week for a PSA around World Cup newsletters for both rugby and cricket.
Another great read Dylan.
Quick rant about the All-Blacks test tomorrow afternoon. I'm usually a big fan of afternoon rugby but having the last home test of the season coinciding with the start of the Heartland championship seems like an egregious oversight by the powers at be.
Surely an organization so keen to prove that they support grassroots rugby would be more conscious about making me choose between my beloved Steelformers and the AB's.
Even having the game start at 4/4.30 would have kept the afternoon feel and would've allowed those of us trying to support the grassroots game an easier choice, unless of course there was another factor behind the 2.30 time slot.
I'll put my pitchfork away now but seems like some hypocrisy that should be getting more coverage (the fact it's not proves how little the media etc. seem to care about the lower levels of the game).
Well I think we know who our starting first five will be.