Spectator & TV booster: Tri-Nations to Five-Nations by ‘09?

The pressure is on SANZAR to finesse its rugby tournaments in the southern hemisphere and to provide the three Rugby Unions, their sponsors and broadcasters, with rugby tournaments that are relative and contemporary to modern sports fans.

Change and a makeover of rugby is inevitable and it has to happen sooner than later. And now is as good a time as any to reinvent itself for the future and good of the game.

SANZAR as the rugby triumvirate of the rugby unions of South Africa, New Zealand and Australia, tasked with charting a strategic course for rugby in the southern hemisphere, has shown it is out of step with the rugby tournaments and offering in Europe.

In the fast paced world of international stadium sports, the existing SANZAR flagship tournaments and format of the Tri-Nations and Super 14 rugby tournaments have gradually become sterile and lack the innovation and dynamism to attract new spectators and television audiences.

It is uncanny that the rugby sponsors and television broadcasters, who are supposed to be so in touch and in sync with their customers, consumers and target audiences on a daily basis, should be silent witnesses to the steady asphyxiation of rugby.

Players and fans, who are the sponsors’ target market, are clamouring for change and none is forthcoming from SANZAR.

Where is the modern day rugby branding and strategic positioning of the game for the future?

The symptoms of the demise of the outdated tournaments are the persistent exodus and loss of elite players to Europe and plummeting gate attendances.

South Africa alone, has hundreds of elite rugby players abroad plying their trade in some 20 countries around the world.

The All Blacks could field a potent charismatic side made up of their players in Europe. It almost suggests that a contest between an overseas All Black side playing the current crop of All Blacks, or an overseas Springbok side versus a local Springbok team, would pack the spectators to the stadium rafters with sellout crowds. It would, but this far out and wild idea would be an anathema to the rugby unions, in the likely event that the home based team lost to the talented players overseas.

Rugby in the southern hemisphere must not be tinkered with. It must undergo an overhaul of tournament structures to rejuvenate the game.

The way to do this is via the cross-pollination and addition of two other rugby entities in the southern hemisphere, the Argentinean Pumas and a Combined Pacific Islands side, made up from Fiji, Tonga and Samoa, both of which pack a powerful punch to threaten and challenge the ‘superiority’ of the tri-nations, in a Five Nations tournament.

Travel is equalised and when rugby players and coaches squawk at the “travel factor”, please do remind them of the travel demands made of the top professional soccer players, golfers, tennis players, Superbike &amp and F1 drivers, week in and week out, all year round. They are all modern day gladiators in the world of sports and entertainment and travel schedules are just another challenge to deal with.

Directly under the Five Nations is the Super 14, which also needs the introduction of a relegation and promotion series in each of the three SANZAR countries, with the addition of a franchise in each country, to mirror the Five Nations.

This formula offers a clinical, coherent and lucid, strategic overhaul of the SANZAR Tri-Nations and Super 14 rugby tournaments, bringing in new sponsors, more television exposure and more spectators that are the lifeblood of the game.

It is not for nothing that the prefix of SANZAR is South Africa, and first in line.

Now is the time to demonstrate this with swift and remedial action to the antiquated tournaments, thinking and lack lustre administrators.

Let the President of SA Rugby step forward as the custodian and statesman of the SA Rugby Union, as he is charged with by the SA Rugby Constitution, to lead rugby out of the darkness and into the light.