Anger about rules and referees ruining rugby matches ran for days in the media after last weekend's Rugby World Cup final. Players, pundits and even current national coaches have said the game is 'broken' and bad to watch. But billions of dollars of media companies' money keep rugby going - so will the media fix it for fans?
Referee Wayne Barnes shows a red card to New Zealand captain Sam Cane during the Rugby World Cup final between the All Blacks and South Africa at Stade de France. Photo: Andrew Cornaga/www.photosport.nz
Most fans hoping international rugby’s biggest showpiece would be a spectacle didn't get what they hoped for from last weekend’s Rugby World Cup final.
But some could see that coming.
Two days before the final, on the academic website The Conversation, University of Cape Town academic Clive Thompson crunched the numbers and concluded an early red card could ruin the final.
“The spectacle is lost whenever there is a mismatch in numbers,” he wrote presciently.
TVNZ’s rugby presenter Scotty Stevenson told Seven Sharp the day after the All Blacks lost by one point that World Rugby’s rules had turned top rugby games into “a crime scene".
Plenty of others thought so too -- though few fans here were saying that when New Zealand ended up one point ahead after an even lower scoring one-try slugfest final in Auckland back in 2011.
Israel Dagg was one of the winners that day, but on Sky Sports' live coverage last Sunday he condemned the game as a “snore fest” not good enough for a final and he reckoned the refereeing had ruined it.
“This is our showpiece event being overshadowed by a couple of people . . . taking the glory and gloss away from the players that have worked their absolute butts off. There's people out there absolutely spitting tacks, he said.
And was at half-time with the result still in doubt.
Having paid millions for exclusive live rights to rugby, it was hardly what Sky TV bosses wanted subscribers to hear.
Later on his own radio station SENZ Dagg said: “You can see why people switch [from] the game. It’s boring as hell.”
TVNZ’s Andrew Savile told Newstalk ZB, “it wasn't a great advertisement for rugby.”
ZB’s own Mike Hosking was even more scathing.
“Rugby isn't cool. It can still be played well, but too often it isn't. Yes, the All Blacks lost - but not as badly as rugby did,” he told ZB listeners last Monday.
But it seems World Rugby - which makes the rules - is focused on giving fans more of the same.
On Tuesday, its plans to expand the World Cup and create a new challengers’ series were described as “horseshit” by Scotty Stephenson on the Irish podcast Second Captains.
“That press release sent out by World Rugby was word confetti of the highest order. I got to the end of it, and even then my brain hurt and I felt violated. It's just nonsense. The whole thing is nonsense,” he said.
All this is also a worry for the media which need the public to be interested - specifically Sky TV.
In 2019 Sky paid an estimated $400m-$500m to retain the broadcast rights to All Black and domestic rugby for five more years.
New Zealand Rugby became a shareholder in Sky TV as part of the deal - and even bigger numbers were involved in NZR selling a bigger stake in itself to the US-based Silverlake.
That deal is detailed in a BusinessDesk podcast series Pieces of Silver produced by Paul McBeth and presented by Trevor McEwan, a veteran sports editor who's also held senior executive positions at New Zealand Rugby and worked with Sky TV.
Is the current backlash about boring and over-reffed rugby a real problem for the media?
“I think it's justified. The media got a role to reflect what the fan is saying and what commentators are saying. And it's also largely true,” he said of the criticism.
“We tend to look at these World Cups through the filter of success or otherwise for the All Blacks, but it's not just New Zealanders who are saying this,” McKewen told Mediawatch.
“The game used to come down to a team's ability to impose their style on the other. It's not like that anymore. It's a lottery. Your checklist now for a game as a fan is not only who's the referee, who's the TMO - and who's the faceless guy that makes the decision to upgrade a yellow from red (card). We don't even know who that guy is,” he said.
“World Rugby is overseeing a game of lumbering Godzillas where the sledgehammer approach is the best way to win a game. Other ways just don't succeed because it's too much against you. That's not good for the game. It's madness,” he said.
But if broadcasters bankroll the whole thing by paying huge sums for broadcast rights, do they hold all the cards to demand the change to make it a better media product for fans?
“They do. But the northern hemisphere and southern hemisphere press and media are at odds philosophically as much as the (national rugby) unions themselves are,” he said.
“Those in the north don't see any problem. They will look at this World Cup and say: ‘Look at the sellouts. Look at every game going down to the wire.’
"I think the reality is that the north hold the power and I don't see any willingness for World Rugby to tackle the issues that this World Cup has raised,” he said.
Does all this put the trio of Sky TV, NZR and the Silverlake investors in a quandary? Silverlake is the part of the plan to push the reach of rugby - and the All Blacks - to new markets around the world- but it's hard to promote a product establish fans are bagging.
“It's business as usual worldwide in this space to see broadcasters working directly with sports. Across the ditch, we see it with Fox Sports and the AFL and NFL - the symbiotic nature of understanding what works and working closely together,” he said.
In four years time, will fans be watching the next World Cup on TV - but also still be griping that the game needs to be fixed?
“The first part of the problem is in the hands of World Rugby. Do they stop the time-wasting and the forensic technology overkill and take the game back to what we used to remember? We can't even celebrate a try now because we have to wait to see if it's gonna get past the TMO gatekeeper first,” he said.
“In terms of New Zealand Rugby - if they act and do those things as recommended by that (recent) independent review panel, it will definitely be in better shape in four years. Whether the game overall is, I'm less confident because of the competing agendas and the self-interest of particularly of the northern nations,” he told Mediawatch.
