Tew on this: Campaign will go on

OPINION: It is extremely likely Steve Tew and his henchpersons on the wharf in Wellington are waiting for the steam to go out of the campaigns in the provinces that are sitting on death row.

They will figure that now they've finished playing, the Save The Turbos, Save The Makos and Northand's Stop The Drop efforts will fizzle. No-one is quite sure what Counties-Manukau is doing.

Tew and Jock Hobbs braved the masses in Palmerston North and Blenheim to accept their petitions last weekend. No doubt they have spent all week poring through them one by one!

Tew has become the ogre in all this, but at least he fronted. Like Manawatu chief executive John Knowles, he has been on every media outlet known to man, except Radio Antarctica.

While Tew fronts, the board members who will make the call are anonymous. Did you know old trade unionist Ken Douglas is one of them? Four of them live in Wellington and yet only Hobbs made the effort to drive up the road to Palmerston North.

If the board boots out Manawatu, it will be Tew who will cop it.

The NZRU's credibility over this fiasco is already shot and if it perseveres with this, it risks the most bitter negative reaction since the 1981 Springbok tour.

Many rugby people, even in places like Auckland, believe the whole thing is daft.

And yet Tew keeps banging on about how the unions asked for change. No-one believes it was as simple as that, not when we know there was a huge financial incentive to expand the Super 14, despite it being about as popular as bombing Iran's nukes.

The union officials were presented with a window between the boring Super 14 and November. Then they were asked by one of those smooth-talking facilitators to go into groups and agree on how best to make everything work. Then hey, boxes had to be ticked and 14 teams wouldn't fit.

Of course they agreed. They had to if they wanted to play in this year's competition.

It is impossible to believe the NZRU will defy public opinion and plough ahead and consign rugger to the Stone Age in four provinces. Surely the board members from Marlborough (Mark Peters) and Northland (Wayne Peters) will self-immolate outside the big grey warehouse if it goes ahead.

They, of course, are gagged from speaking out. Only the chairman talks, but Marlburians have been publicly brassed off at the deafening silence from their Peters.

Tew keeps banging on about bringing up two Heartland unions into division two (division one) when we all know Kia Toa would skewer most of those so-called first-class sides.

It might have to get legal. Get the legals to argue what the hell "meaningful" means, what being "solvent" means, and what "doing best by the game under its constitution" means.

We in Manawatu are privileged to host teams in national leagues, even if it comes at a cost.

Everyone knows the rugby situation but every few years the Manawatu Jets basketballers battle to make ends meet.

There have been many last-ditch operations to save them financially, but they have always come through. Now coach Tim McTamney has pulled the plug.

He'd liked to have worked fulltime, but that has never been an option for our coaches dating back to the first days of Joe Frost as coach. It seems the Nelson Giants have eight fulltimers, so they must be well backed.

The YoungHeart Manawatu soccer team almost went west when its licence was temporarily revoked three years ago. It might be painful but it is to the community's benefit that we stay buoyant at national level rather than turn into a sporting wasteland.

- © Fairfax NZ News