Where to now for rugby in a world of the sporadic, virtual spectator.

Last week saw what has been universally described and rightly so as one of the greatest  rugby tests of all time. This was however a game that emphasized the singular problem facing  New Zealand rugby. In short  there are two forms of the game that really matter- that of schools and clubs and that of the All Blacks. Super Rugby and ITM are still, in some ways important, but  struggle to maintain meaning  for most New Zealanders across what is an incredibly long season.

We have a professional rugby season- that is a season where NZ rugby wants us to pay money to watch rugby- that stretches from late February into October. This is not so much a problem if we consider the audience primarily as a broadcasting one- that is, the supporters now pay money to Sky TV to watch rugby and sky TV in this way funds much of NZ rugby.
 In such a scenario games such as the recent All-Blacks -Springboks test are exactly what is needed as they provide a product that everyone wants to see repeated in a format whereby  the decision to pay to watch has already been made and all I have to do is sit on the couch and turn on the TV- and I don't now even have to watch it live. I don't have to get up in the middle of the night- I can watch a replay on sky the next morning or evening or i can record it on mysky.

Compare this  to going and watching an ITM game live.
 After watching the test match replay i then decided to not watch the live Wallabies-Pumas match. Instead I got ready with my daughters to go and watch Canterbury play Counties in the ITM cup as we have season tickets and this was one of the few afternoon games. We already knew that Counties would be fielding a second-string team as, having made the play-offs they were concentrating on the Shield defence coming up.
 So, needing to collect others and get a park we - as usual- leave about an hour before the game begins.
 We drive and then park, then walk for about 15 minutes or more depending on the crowd, line up and shuffle through the gates.
 I might buy a pottle of chips for $4. I won't buy an overpriced  tasteless beer or coffee or a minuscule exorbitantly expensive tiny bottle of wine.

We make our way to the seats where we wait while we are blasted by whatever noise the hosting radio station I never listen to attempts to do some pre-match 'entertainment'. At least at the ITM we don't get the cheer-leaders who, i am proud to say, my daughters always boo having been properly taught to identify both sexism in action and kitsch.

But we wait in a half-empty stadium, some come in late in front as the game starts forcing everyone to stand up and we miss bits of the game.  The game itself is dreadful in the first half. Canterbury has won 5 previous championships but today they are  horrible and sloppy and if i had paid specifically for this game i would have been very upset.  Of course the risk in  professional sport is you can find yourself paying money to watch a bad performance.

At halftime we need to buy some chips so we go and line up and find some eftpost machines don;t work so have to change ques.

The second half is  a much improved effort and is  40 minutes of enjoyment. Then  we stand up and make our way slowly out of the stands, and then out of the stadium and along the road back to car. once in the car we make our way out into the traffic and are on our way home.

From leaving home to returning it takes on average 3.5 hours.

 I have been doing this, often at night, often in winter, since February...

Increasingly in New Zealand professional rugby is watched in half-empty stadiums as supporters decide that the time involved, rugby played and  the surroundings/entertainment/facilities/provision of food and drink are not worth venturing  away from home to encounter.

 Nine months is a long time to maintain enthusiasm for a variable experience...

 If i have some spare time i might turn on the TV and watch a game, but i can eat and drink what i want, when i want, in the warmth and comfort of my home- and then during or after the match i can do what i want when i want.  In short the game gets fitted around the rest of my life and that of my family. If i compare most games to what i saw in the All Blacks-Springboks test then they are second-rate at best- and most often meaningless. And that is the problem- for increasing numbers of supporters most rugby- because there is too  much of it- has become increasingly meaningless.

I was talking with a fellow rugby-tragic who has season tickets next to me. He commented that he now never watches most rugby on TV as it has become a low-quality meaningless extended blur.  And yet also the  ritual of coming to the rugby, to live rugby, over 9 months is losing its allure.

 Speaking sociologically,  we are facing disenchantment. In turning the game professional we have turned it into just another form of entertainment we pay to watch. The exchange has increasingly become drained of sustainable meaning. 

 

What the Ranfurly Shield tells us

The two weeks in which Otago won and then lost the Ranfurly Shield are a reminder of where value lies in this age of professionalism. Sport, to become more than paying money to watch other people play for money, needs a drama associated with it that takes what is watched and turns it into something that is experienced. This is the success of the ITM cup- its regionalist, tribal drama and contest. This is not the invented identities of Super 15 wherein corporations claim to represent many regions that traditionally oppose and combat each other. This is sport at its most tribally theatrical. As  the french intellectual Roland Barthes wrote in 'what is sport', sport operates as a theatre in which the spectator is caught up as a participant. The shield matches succeed because the shield itself is a scarce commodity- it is set aside as sacred. People want to see it, to touch it, to be in its presence. Not for what is is- wood with metal, but for the mythos, the story, the claim it  represents. In short, for what it symbolizes- for both those who win it- and for those who lose it.
 The shield is where the local identity, the local value, the team as that which the spectator participates in is best realised.  This is why we have shield processions, it is the city, the province celebrating itself as having achieved something of worth.
If super rugby is the the mercenary game, then ITM cup, by holding onto the shield, by locating itself as properly provincial,  is now the lace where what can be called 'the real' of rugby is still located.

the nomos & anomie of rugby- or why teams succeed & fail

The American sociologist Peter Berger in discussing what held society together and enabled it to function  talked of society as a dialectical phenomenon wherein it is at one and same time a human product and an external reality that acts back upon its creators.That is, we create society but also experience it as if it is more than a human creation that in turn we respond to. This process creates a meaningful order (nomos) upon experience.

Nomos = a social construction that keeps at bay the terror of social disorder and isolation.

 This meaningful order  (nomos) is what keeps the experience of disorder (anomie) at bay.

 This can be read in tandem with  the great sociologist Durkheim's work on functionalism.

 For Durkheim, society  is divided into parts and sub parts that fit together- each institution and social group has its function to perform for benefit of society.

 Society  is more than sum of  its parts- for if all parts function well and are connected then a new whole/society occurs.

 Durkheim also looked at what held society together at its functionalist core.

He looked at primitive society and identified as central the totem- an animal or plant that the group identified itself with- and identified with versus the totems/groups of others

 Durkheim saw the  totem as materialist principle of totem of god, but also  that the totem could be symbol of society without them even realising it

 So argues, Durkheim,  god and society are one: that a society is its god and its god is its society- worshipping your god is worshipping your society- and so society is the real object of religious veneration

  However we are unaware we worship society because society too abstract and complex to be materialized into a totem to be worshipped

 The symbols become the expression of the collective consciousness.

 This is the experience of what Berger terms the nomos.

 So what has all of this to do with rugby.

Over the weekend I saw two teams that displayed a  nomos, a functioning society, able to express the totemic value that holds them together. Both the Canterbury ITM  team and the All Blacks succeeded despite often going for periods without the ball, despite not really playing very well at times, despite having to integrate new players into an existing set-up.

 Both teams demonstrated that the nomos, the central totemic values, the team society are such that the collective can transcend the individuals. as such it is not so much about the players as how they play together.

In contrast Australian rugby continues to be a society experiencing anomie.

 Perhaps there is an internal competition of totems, the lack of a collective society that all are prepared or able to buy into.

 The Canterbury rugby team and the All Blacks are, in the end, their own totem and their own nomos. That is the secret of their success: they play to defend and venerate themselves. To lose is to risk losing their own self-identity and to risk anomie.

End of Super Rugby review: random thoughts

So I was wrong on my score prediction of the Crusaders-Chiefs semi-final but this was a game the Crusaders should have won- and back in the 2000s they would have won. But that was then and this team is not the team that was. Carter is himself not the consistent player he has been and a sabbatical is actually the last thing he may actually need. He is sluggish in decision making, becoming predictable and able to be out-smarted by opposing coaches. He does not have the same quality of players around him as in the ABs so lacks the support and cover.
 In short, the crusaders need 2 new half backs and a new second five, a new hooker and a  new blind side/no8  who is not a whitelock.

We also know the Crusaders backs are not the consistent force they need to be, but even more worrying was the way the Crusaders forwards were effectively beaten-up by the Chiefs.

 Liam Messum is not as good a player as he is made to look by the Chiefs and he is very one-dimensional. but he has been exceptionally coached and in Craig Clark the Chiefs had their version of Reuben Thorne; the gutsy, hardworking, do the basics exceptionally well and lead in a way all will follow player central to any successful team.


 In considering the Crusaders it is evident that this is a very solid, capable team but  it is starting to have a bit of the Nonu factor is that all the All-Blacks in it really seem to need the AB environment to play their best.

 This is a worrying trend in NZ Rugby whereby the ABs are now effectively playing a different style and type of game to that played and experienced at super rugby level.
The ABs in super rugby are having to constantly adjust to a different level and type of game, and this is not helped by the break in super rugby caused by the mid-year tour.

The most concerning thing about the season for the NZRFU must be the failure to attract big crowds. The discretionary dollar has many more options today and the number of games over a drawn out season, too many night games, cold weather, coupled with too many second-rate teams is turning people off.   The NZRFU needs to realise that 12,000-15000 is what they need to expect to almost every game- and if that is not enough to break even then they cannot blame the fans. Is super rugby too expensive for a small nation? Is it too expensive when too many games are played, too many night games, too many indifferent games.

When a reported 3000 can turn up to  the Christchurch club rugby final played in the afternoon, but only 15,000 turn up to a super rugby playoff  then  questions need to be raised as to how meaningful is super rugby to many people.
Remember the huge crowds for  Ranfurly shield matches back in the 1980s. We cannot expect to return to those crowds because such games were rare and meaningful. Scarcity is a value in sport- too much and it becomes mundane. 

 So now we turn to the ITM cup- and what do we see- far too many night games. Turning rugby into a nocturnal activity may please the broadcasters but it is killing the game. Too much rugby makes it it mundane- and makes it easy for the population to become indifferent.

on finals footy- and booing

I didn't make it to the game between the Crusaders and the Reds because Finals footy has lost its edge.
 Is this disenchantment? A sense that the  super rugby series- if not the game- has lost its magic?
 When I recently did a public lecture on the religion of rugby a very pertinent question was asked in the lead-up to the Crusaders- Reds game: Why, if we are in the finals playoffs, is there so little celebration and excitement and interest.
This was evident in the failure to have a full stadium for that game, evident in the slow sales for tonight's semi-final between the Chiefs and the Crusaders.
 My reply was that the dictates of sky tv has caused the disenchantment. The season is too long and too many games are now played in the evening in the middle of winter.  A season stretching over so many months, a season broken by what was, to be honest, a totally meaningless tour by the French, a season that could never hope to compare with the intense passion and interest of the Lions tour of Australia.
 It is hard enough to get yourself and your kids- to 7.30 games in person, especially on a friday night; even more so when it is cold and dark and there is a threat of rain.
 It is hard to keep your family on side when they face months of 7.30 friday and saturday nights dominated by often poor- and to be honest- often quite meaningless rugby games.
I will watch tonight's game- but i will watch it on replay at 9.30 because the rest of my family- quite understandably- would prefer to watch Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries at 8.30.

 In the end the question I think increasing numbers of us ask- and these are not the temporary fans- but those of us who are in some ways sports and rugby tragics is- what is the point?

Super rugby has lost its lustre. It is too long, too large and needs to get its mojo, its magic, its enchantment, in fact its point, back. The attraction of the northern hemisphere game is the number of different competitions that a rugby season entails. Super rugby is  just one, overlong and ill-timed competition.  The glory that is the ITM cup occurs over a very short, intense period with a good number of afternoon games. This is real sporting tribalism, real sporting competition. A short sharp shock of footy. Similarly, this is why the Ranfurly Shield is so important- it actually has real meaning, has a real history.
 I was reminded of this when i sat up too late, too often, watching sessions of the Ashes. The Ashes is an event in the truest sense,  a rupture into and of daily life and existence when what occurs transcends the mere occurrence unfolding.

Super rugby has lost its sense of the event. That is why the booing of Quade Copper was so indicative of what has gone wrong.  In our household he is known as the aussie fossa- given his  resemblance to the civet-like predator of Madagascar. We don't like him because of the type of person he seems to be. But we can admire his skill as rugby player.
 The booing of Cooper signals a shift from a crowd who are there to watch the skill and drama of the game to a crowd looking to express a herd-like mentality. A crowd ultimately bored by rugby will boo at every opportunity, just like they will indulge in the mass stupidity of constant mexican waves.

I am not bored by rugby- but i am disenchanted by what has become an overlong, seemingly meaningless series.
For the record, the Crusaders will win by 10 or more but will loose to the Bulls in the final. But do I really care? Not really. And i suspect- and hear- increasing numbers of fellow rugby tragics agree. The NZRFU would be wise to take note.

Learning from the Lions

The magnificent series victory by the Lions over the Wallabies demonstrates two simple facts.
 One is that the secret to coaching is as much knowing who not to select as who to select- and being able to follow that through. The second is that team culture is central.
 The team must be able to transcend the internal differences that exist and that will always exist. A coach that has created a good team culture will be able to not select certain players- and survive; a coach that has failed to create the team culture will always fail.

 An important element that Gatland and his team were able to bring to fulfilment was the mythology of the Lions.  In many ways this tour was the make or break time for this mythology. In a world of professional sport could a concept like the Lions exist and succeed  when players appear to have so many transitional and divided loyalties? Was the Idea, the Concept, the Myth, the belief in 'the Lions' strong enough, big enough, meaningful enough to be able to triumph?

 The secret of the Lions is that  is a scarce experience, it exists separate from anything else in world rugby. The Lions exist in many ways as a sacred event, in the sense of sacred meaning 'set aside'. If the Lions became an annual event, or even occurred every 2 years the experience would be in danger of being profaned. Because the chance to wear the red jersey, to play against the red jersey, is a scarce event it remains perhaps the greatest mystique and value in world rugby.

 The All Blacks have tried extremely hard to create and perpetuate a similar mystique with the black jersey- but theirs is actually based on the success of the team, not on the more transcendent mythologies that the Lions embody. If the All Blacks lost more regularly then the mystique would fade. The only way to restore it would be to play less often.

The biggest problem facing Australian rugby is not the rebuilding of team culture, for McKenzie has demonstrated that he is capable of doing that. it will be that of not selecting players. Already the Melbourne Rebels have shown the way forward.
 The irony is that in the past, when Deans was coaching the Crusaders talented but troublesome players like O'Conner would have been shipped south to be sorted out.

the All Black problem

On Saturday night two games of rugby were played. The first was bungled boring affair only redeemed by two acts of counter-attacking brilliance. The set-pieces were mangled,there was little inspiration or intelligence on set-piece attack as much of game was actually two games between the French playing rugby and the All Blacks playing their highly effective league-rugby hybrid game. New Zealand over the Henry years moved All Black rugby to a new level, but in playing a type of 'total football' whereby players all have the same skill set something has been lost. The game the All Blacks play is now closer to league than it is to rugby as it was played. Part of this is that The defensive lines are such that it becomes a crash and bash game. It is also that we have discovered that negative rugby can win, especially with a host of crash and bash players. This is why sonny bill was  revelation, he brought  subtlety new to current All Black rugby. Likewise the old fashioned skills of Beaudon Barrett and Ben Smith have brought something new to the team. But they rarely get to express them except on counter-attack. Nonu may be brutally effective, but he has killed positive back play. Slow half backs don't help, especially when the first five becomes a shoveller through necessity as opposing back lines are up so fast. We have too many forwards loitering all over the field looking to do our equivalent of the league mid-field hit-up. It is apparent too that this style only really succeeds when you have loosies on the top of their game. We sorely miss McCaw and Kaino, as well as what Thorne brought in the rucks and mauls.
 The only acts of intelligence and subtlety are those rare moments of counter-attack that seem to be the only way we can score tries. The fact that the crowd in New Plymouth booed the French drop goal should tell us all we need to know. To boo a central skill  exposes the mentality created by  All Black rugby and the crowds who turn out for these experiences in corporate nationalism.

The difference with the rugby played between the Lions and Australia couldn't have been more striking. This was rugby in all its drama, passion, flair and structured brutality.  It was how rugby should be played, with a clear distinction between backs and forwards, the desire to use set-pieces as forms of attack and defence, the use of the rolling maul. It was a game, a contest, a challenge to our senses, and not  what increasingly seems to be hybrid game of  the current All Blacks. The All Blacks probably would have beaten both teams- but it would have been a rugby tragedy if they had done so.
 Is it the coaching? perhaps. Is it the types of players who now reach All Black status? perhaps. Is it a reflection of the way that NZ rugby crowds can be divided into those that want rugby and those that want the 'winning entertainment experience?' most certainly. All Black rugby attracts a different type of crowd to that who attend Super Rugby and the ITM cup. It is not about the rugby played, it is about 'The ABs winning'- and that is the central issue.

Thankfully we can forget the current All Black rugby experience for a couple of months and wtach the Lions play rugby- and watch the rugby of the Super 15.
The All Blacks can return to playing rugby- and we may lose test in the process- but I would rather have the drama and passion of a proper ruby game- even if we lost than the boring hybrid we are currently inlficted with.
We need forwards to be forwards and backs to be backs. We need to return to the dark arts of the scrum and to reinstate the rolling maul. We need half-backs who not only can pass long and fast, but also take control of  a game.  We need a midfield that has subtlety. Conrad Smith has been  a standout in the past but has now gone one season too long. He is very good- but never has been in the class of O'Driscoll.  Nonu exemplifies the type of player and rugby we need to move away from. We need loosies who attend to core business. Yet the players are there in New Zealand rugby:
Starting 15:

Full Back:Beaudon Barrett
Wings: Julian Savea, Israel Dagg
Centre: Ben Smith
2nd 5: Dan Carter
1st 5: Aaron Cruden
Halfback: TJ Perenara
No 8: Kieran Read
Openside: Richie McCaw
Blindside: Stephen Luatua
Locks: Sam Whitelock, Brodie Retallick
Props: Owen Franks, Ben Franks
Hooker: James Parsons