Rugby: Heat turns up on grand plan

5:00AM Sunday May 20, 2007
By Gregor Paul

The risk element of the All Black reconditioning programme has been realised, cranking up the pressure on Graham Henry's squad to deliver the reward later this year.

Not that the All Black coach will see it that way- he knew the Super 14 would be a casualty this year.

There was no way taking 22 of the best players out of the first seven rounds was going to be anything other than a suicide mission for New Zealand franchises.

By the time the likes of Richie McCaw, Jerry Collins and Dan Carter returned to action they were fitter, faster, stronger and refreshed but had no match conditioning. Their bodies hadn't logged the necessary collision hours and their brains weren't accustomed to picking the visual cues and reacting to them.

There was no glorious return. The competition did not go whoof when the big names returned and, come finals time, the South African sides had the form and momentum.

For only the second time there was no New Zealand presence in a Super rugby final and that will have further decimated what were already bleak viewing figures.

According to AC Neilson figures, the average audience for all live games dropped 38 per cent this year. There was a 30 per cent drop in all live games that featured a New Zealand team and a 38 per cent drop in total viewers when games in Perth and South Africa were excluded.

The Blues average crowd was down 4 per cent, the Hurricanes 7 per cent and the Crusaders 17 per cent. The Chiefs were the exception, enjoying a 10 per cent rise but the good numbers in Hamilton can't deflect the truth - the 2007 competition has been a massive commercial flop.

The New Zealand Rugby Union has tried to play down the ramifications of dwindling interest. Sky TV, Ford and Rebel Sport all agreed to the conditioning window as they were prepared to take a financial hit in return for having an association with a world champion team.

News Limited, which owns the broadcast rights, paying about US$5million into the NZRU bank account every quarter, was not consulted and didn't care much for the snub.

The NZRU are obviously banking on 2007 proving an aberration but having failed to respect Super 14, who's to say the crowds will return in 2008? Who's to say the competition is not now indelibly tainted with the whiff of being second-rate, perceived as just another development competition for international coaches to meddle with and treat as a play-thing in their search for new heroes?

Brands take years to build and only minutes to destroy. When it is time to renegotiate the broadcast contract which expires in 2010, News might have statistics to support a massively reduced offer.

Having the All Blacks as world champions will strengthen the bargaining position with both News and other commercial partners.

Maybe it's even fair to believe that winning the World Cup is imperative to the financial security of New Zealand rugby.

So much has been risked to deliver a trophy whose 20-year absence has bred a smouldering shame with which the NZRU is clearly obsessed.

Their desperation to end the drought persuaded the executive team to license Henry in a manner none of his predecessors ever were.

He was allowed to experiment for almost 18 months, and, at times last year, interest in tests seriously waned.

The All Blacks were still winning and still playing good rugby but there was always a sense that so much of it didn't really matter. Test football is the money earner, the lifeblood of the game in New Zealand and the suits messed with it.

Now the end must justify the means and assistant coach Wayne Smith is sure it will. Or at least he is sure the reconditioning programme was essential. "When it comes to conditioning you never have any doubts. The only doubt I have is what happens long-term to players if they never get a conditioning window. That is a major issue the game is going to have to face.

"I'm not saying the way we have done this conditioning window is the answer. It's not. Clearly it's not because of the public interest and the stakeholders involved, but it was the only way we could see.

"All I know is that any elite athlete needs a period of preparation. In the past we have fitted in, playing pre-season and conditioning at the same time and we got by. But we decided that should not be the case this year and I have no doubts that from a player perspective it has been the right thing to do."

All the science says the coaches were right. Every other aerobic, high-impact contact sport affords its elite players an extended pre-season to prepare. Gut feeling says the All Black coaches were right and maybe, most importantly, history says they were.

Look at the 2003 All Blacks - they had a month off at the end of 2002, peaked in the Tri Nations and by October, when it really mattered, they were dropping down their form and fitness curve.

Everything in 2007 is geared towards peak form in September which is why the All Black panel are not concerned some big name players were relatively quiet on their Super 14 return. Their investment will mature in four months.

"We started our conditioning in December and if you said are you ready to play a test match at the beginning of April we would struggle," says Smith.

"After the conditioning it was going to take a number of games to come right and we always knew that was going to be the case. Unfortunately the expectation grew and people thought these guys were going to be Superman. But people who know about conditioning know it doesn't work like that."

How it works is that by September the athletic conditioning and match sharpness of the All Blacks will peak in unison. The grand plan is that the players have enough rugby behind them to be at the very peak of their playing craft and are boosted physically by the conditioning base they laid earlier in the year.

The theory is sound, but this is New Zealand and the pressure is really on to prove that decimating the Super 14 was a risk worth taking.

NZH