All Blacks See Red

There was some surprisingly good news for rugby fans in Fiji and the Pacific this month, but it was quietly tucked away, buried deep within the media reports on the more than $21 million loss reported by the New Zealand Rugby Union.

The headlines of course were dominated by the mass of red ink suddenly washing over the All Blacks’ balance sheet. Of the $21.3 million year-end loss just under half of that, $8.4 million, related to the NZRU’s investment in the hosting of the 2011 Rugby World Cup. But of that, $5.6 million was reported so as to meet accounting practices and by 2011 the ‘losses’ will be returned to the NZRU balance sheet.

With me so far?

If the RWC’s actual and paper costs are stripped out of their accounts, the next thing to focus on is the operating loss, in other words the difference between what the organisation budgeted to earn and pay out, and what actually happened. The operating loss was an eye-popping $12.9 million, a sum big enough to sink a decent-sized company in these straightened times.

Again, there were some fancy oneoff financial reasons why this sum was so huge – unhedged financial exchange movements and reduced interest income, totalling almost $6.5 million. But there was also a budget overrun of $3.6 million in the medical treatment of injured players contracted into the All Blacks which guarantees elite player-payments. Think of Ali Williams for instance, with his two long periods of recovery from Achilles injuries. Not only is the NZRU paying him fullwhack while he is recuperating, they have to contract an additional player or players to take his place. Factor in other big names like Richie McCaw, Keven Mealamu and Luke McAlister, who’ve spent more time off the field than on, and you see why the NZRU budgeted $1.3 million but ended up paying out almost $5 million.

Now we come to the really interesting part, as far as Fiji rugby fans are concerned.

Almost out of sight, paragraph 13 in fact in the New Zealand Herald report, was this bland statement: “The other major catalyst for the blow-out was a budget deficit of $4.2 million (F$5.6 million) on domestic and foreign match income. The bulk of this came from a lower than expected return on the Bledisloe Cup test in Tokyo.”

This was where I got really excited and started shouting “Good luck! Good luck!” at my computer screen.

When I was involved with the Fiji Rugby Union and working with Samoa and Tonga to put together the Pacific Islanders combined team, one of the most dispiriting things was the attitude of the Australian Rugby Union and, to a lesser extent, the NZRU.

Everybody was perfectly polite to all our entreaties as we discussed how we might join the SANZAR structure. They listened respectfully, nodded their heads, but everything they subsequently said and did pointed to the fact they had already fallen in love with Japan, the yen and the gazillions of dollars they imagined could be made if everybody bought a Wallaby and/ or All Black jersey, key chain, boxer shorts, etc. It was like sitting with an attractive girl and giving her your best stuff, but she was always looking over your shoulder at someone else.

Look at us, I felt like shouting. Take us seriously. But it was difficult. The ARU had this Japan-fascination particularly hard, personified in the shape of half-Japanese former Wallaby coach Eddie Jones who had a long relationship with the Suntory team (unusually, his ARU contract allowed him to maintain a coaching link with the Tokyo-based club). The NZRU had a slightly smaller dose of this manic infatuation but they had it nonetheless: several senior executives talked lovingly to me of playing in a New Zealand Universities side that toured Japan and played to full houses everywhere. It went unspoken that if the Japanese were sufficiently rugby-starved and/ or stupid to pay to watch what rugby writer TP McLean called “graduates, non-graduates and never-could-begraduates”, imagine what they would pay to see the All Blacks.

Well now they know: not very much. Japan is a mature market with settled consumer tastes and their appetite for paying to watch rugby is as remote as Fiji’s is to pay to watch baseball. I searched long and hard across the internet to find the official attendance for the Australia-New Zealand game played in Tokyo on October 31 last year (the ABs won the match 32-19 and took the Bledisloe Cup 4-0). The only figure I could find, from scrum.com, was 45,000. This reads suspiciously like a made-up figure. Either way it’s significantly less than the Olympic Stadium can hold.

Certainly, as the New Zealand Herald reported with great understatement that “the venture fell short of expectations.” And in that piece of bad news for Japan, could be good news for those of us in Fiji and the Pacific who believe a solution to the hohumness of much of SANZAR’s rugby product lies much closer to home.

Charlie Charters is a former Fiji Rugby Union official and resides in North Yorkshire, England.