The Super 12 competition will provide a feast of top quality rugby and television viewing, but the lesser unions not invited to the meal are likely to starve
RUGBY: Jon Swift
THE new Super 12 competition has kicked off amid all the magic that a media circus tends to give an event which it has spawned, nursed and paid for.
At the top end, the Rupert Murdoch-sponsored southern hemisphere provincial competition has a lot going for it. On a more parochial level, it has some glaring inequalities to answer for.
Taking the cream off the milk invariably leads to the rest of the bottle having a flat and somewhat wishy-washy taste. In the context of rugby, the Currie Cup and the Ranfurly Shield have — no matter the history, tradition and passion engendered by them — instantly become secondary competitions.
The provincial grind, the cornerstone of the game as it used to be played and the home ground of talent both nascent and hardened, has been relegated to the position of bridesmaid … you’re part of the ceremony, but not party to the action that really counts.
It also leads to the speculation that the personnel involved in the home- and-away competition — something of a misnomer as a true home-and-away tournament would take up more time and money than even Murdoch would be willing to wager — will not really alter from season to season.
In South Africa, where the foot-soldiers will wear the colours they are contracted to pull over their heads, it will lead to shifts of playing staff at the end of the season when one or more of the four present Currie Cup participants is eliminated from next year’s Super 12.
And why shouldn’t they move? As in the case of soccer, the big money really comes from the European competitions. You have to be in it to win it. The Super 12 is no different.
The players worthy of a place in the Super 12 will move to sides qualified to play in the competition. They have to if they want exposure and the chance of playing for the Springboks … for make no mistake the public will demand that the players they watch make the national side.
And the selctors will — as they did consistently before Kitch Christie rattled the cage — concentrate on the games as a feeding ground for the voracious maw of Test rugby.
In short, too much emphasis has been given to the televised version of the game as it is played south of the Equator, and not enough thought has been given to the game itself.
There is also the problem of the crowds who have turned the stadiums in this country from places to go and watch a game into mini industries with general managers, PR consultants and the like. Justifiably so, the game has changed and the people who play it are different. And those who watch it have new and varied demands in terms of entertainment.
At core though — no matter the tampering with the laws as they used to apply — rugby remains a constant: a hard and physcial contact sport which, while it may earn the select few big money for a number of years, remains a character-building exercise which produces life-long alliances. No money can change that aspect of the game.
What the Super 12 has effectively done is add another almost unreachable rung to the ladder leading towards the game’s ideals. And, sawed off a couple of the lower rungs by producing a new stratum and lowering the status of the existing layers.
No one is advocating a return to the status quo that existed before the advent of players being properly recompensed for putting their bodies on the line, or harking back to the days when administrators became more valuable than they managed or the commodity they peddled.
The player must be paramount. More important than the marketing effort. More crucial than the voice of the spokesman and more integral to the long-term growth of the product which is being put before a public with a choice of channels than anything else in the complicated equation.
Still, one senses that this has not been the case. At least not in this country. And we risk the scenario which has become fact in the United States, where a primary school child not good enough to make the first team at under-12 level ceases to become an active participant in what is after all a right of passage to man or womanhood — the right to get out and enjoy oneself in the air the Lord gave us all.
In America, a failure to make “the cut” at the most basic of levels, means that there is little chance of coming back higher up the age scale. Spectatorship becomes the only option and screaming at those who have made the transition to TV stardom the only outlet.
It is the very essence of an elite that it excludes those who do not qualify for membership. The Super 12 has the definite feel of a made-for-TV spectacle which is aimed exactly at this objective.
The New Zealanders — bless their fern-lined jockstraps — have not been slow to understand this. As well they should. For a nation which has always counted the elevation to the status of All Black higher than sainthood, they have looked further than putting the week-to-week combiantions out on the field.
Jonah Lomu, disqualified from playing by virtue of his provincial commitments to Counties, will nevertheless compete in the colours of Auckland by virtue of the New Zealand draft system.
It is right that a player of Lomu’s stature and ability should get the showcase the Super 12 offers. But it is the thin edge of the wedge in two respects. Firstly, it denies the Auckland winger — or wingers — who got the famed and fearsome side into the competition in the first place — the opportunity to embrace a wider stage and paint on a bigger and more brightly lit canvas.
And secondly, it makes a mockery of the qualifying process, opening the way to abuses beyond the comprehension of the fan who is going to pay for his ticket or his decoder. Just as a spin-off the less successfull unions must surely be due for a drop in gate money. It is not the cash which is the primary worry, but the lack of bums in seats at lesser stadiums.
Somehow, the verdict on the Super 12 must also include a retrospective look at the eddies which surge about a competition run by the masters of media manipulation.
The verdict must stay out on the tournament untile these eddies have reached further shoeres thatn the fringes of the flickering light of a TV.
One suspects that there is as much potential harm in what has become the major competition in our rugby lives as there is the opportunity for witnessing great players in action, great games in progress and great televison in the sanctity of the living room.