NZRU, ARU won't leave SA behind
Tue, 05 Aug 2008 10:56
The New Zealand Rugby Union (NZRU) will not back a proposed replacement competition for the Super 14 rugby that excludes South Africa.
That was made clear in no uncertain terms by the NZRU's general manager of professional rugby, Neil Sorenson, who on Tuesday said that such a restructure would be at odds with the union's preferred position at the moment.
According to the The Dominion Post, representatives from provincial teams North Harbour, Wellington, Canterbury, Auckland, Waikato, Otago, Hawke's Bay, Taranaki and Southland have been meeting in recent weeks over a restructure and realignment of Southern Hemisphere and New Zealand domestic rugby. They are exploring a "new direction because they felt that the Super 14 competition had reached its use-by date", according to the report.
The newspaper reports that the abovementioned unions wanted to replace Super 14 with a trans-Tasman home-and-away competition involving nine New Zealand teams and five from Australia and excluding South Africa altogether.
This would also mean doing away with New Zealand's premier domestic competition, the Air New Zealand Cup, according to the report.
The "breakaway faction" also want a European-style tournament of 24 teams in four pools of six playing matches every four weeks. It is proposed that this competition would include teams from South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, the Pacific Islands and America.
SANZAR's Super 14 and Tri-Nations contract with News Limited does not end until 2011, but the report said that this date would have to be brought forward in order to have the new competitions up and running in 2010.
But Sorenson poured cold water on the idea.
"SANZAR's current position is that it is a very much a three-country expansion of Super rugby with South Africa involved.
"The trans-Tasman idea does not include South Africa and that is absolutely not the NZRU's preferred position at the moment," he is quoted as saying.
"At this stage SANZAR are unified in New Zealand, Australia and South African teams being involved in Super rugby and Tri-Nations going forward.
"There can be no break-up of SANZAR, absolutely not. SANZAR needs to remain very, very strong, particularly in today's rugby environment which is very trying."
Sorenson said the NZRU had a lot of options "thrown at us" from various groups and individuals.
"This one has been mooted before... we have been over some of these ideas over the last few weeks."
The NZRU had been invited to attend a meeting on Friday but Sorenson was unsure if it was about the reported new competitions.
Furthermore, the NZRU's "final draft decision" on the future of the Air NZ Cup championship was due out on Wednesday.
Unions have until September 5 to give their feedback and the NZRU board will ratify and produce a final decision on September 25, Sorenson said.
Meanwhile, the Australian Rugby Union (ARU) also added their weight to the idea of expanding Super Rugby with the existing SANZAR structures intact.
A statement from the ARU confirmed their committed to Super Rugby transformation as the way forward for the SANZAR alliance.
A report in a New Zealand newspaper this morning suggested ARU managing director and chief executive officer John O'Neill was "briefed" at the weekend on plans - drawn up by representatives from a number of Kiwi provinces - that support replacing Super 14 with a trans-Tasman competition.
"The understanding that I was briefed on this group's plans is incorrect," said O'Neill.
Mr O'Neill said he was casually handed a paper and did not read it for two days, adding that alternative competition structures "cross my desk all the time".
"Expanding Super Rugby is what the game needs," he said.
"There is no deviation from that aim."
SAPA
