Sell our national game? It really could happen

It has been one heck of a start to the international rugby season.

What with All Blacks going off the rails, off to France and all over Ireland and England, there has been more than enough to keep most of us happy.

And behind the scenes there has been plenty happening, too.

Rugby has started the grand review that will dictate the landscape of the game for decades to come.

If you connect all the strands of information starting to emerge from negotiations between the NZRU, its provincial unions and international cohorts in South Africa and Australia, revolution appears to be in the air, with a major dust-up in the offing over the ownership of Super 14 teams. Be certain News Ltd will play a significant role.

Not long after New Zealand Rugby Players' Association chief executive Rob Nichol stirred up a hornet's nest by saying he was in favour of private ownership of Super 14 franchises, Aussie rugby boss John O'Neill leapt on the bandwagon and became the concept's staunchest supporter.

And since then the momentum has grown.

Former Aussie rugby chairman Dilip Kumar is now reported to be leading a consortium of wealthy Sydney businessmen who want to buy the Waratahs.

People on this side of the Tasman are also starting to wonder whether Nichol might have been onto something, perhaps even warning us bigger things were afoot. The answer is no - or not at the time, anyway - and I should know because I wrote the story that kicked things off.

Nichol had wanted to create debate and challenge entrenched views on the matter. He succeeded beyond all expectations.

With O'Neill banging his drum, the spectre of News Ltd wanting a slice of the action has crept into the equation. And this is what I mean by revolution being in the air.

News Ltd, owned by Rupert Murdoch, transformed the game when it bought the broadcasting rights to southern hemisphere rugby in 1995.

For more than a decade, it has been a reasonably hands-off stakeholder.

But it has a track record of hands-on ownership in rugby league across the Tasman and, of course, in a raft of other businesses in many fields.

So could things be about to change in rugby?

For the hell of it I road-tested the theory on Nichol a couple of weeks back and he said: "They are already involved so why wouldn't they, or for that matter some other media company, want to increase their involvement?"

The NZRU may have already floated the idea with Murdoch's men; NZRU chief executive Steve Tew had dinner with News Ltd's Australian head honcho in Auckland recently.

Adding value to News Ltd's interest would be a major card to play so early in the renegotiation process but it would be one way to inflate the value of the product on sale.

If that happened, the NZRU would have more cash to splash around - solving some of the problems plaguing the provinces - while the media company would bring in their considerable expertise in the business and entertainment industry.

Regardless of your views on its merits, the financial realities may leave no other choice, especially if O'Neill has his way across the Tasman.

News Ltd may have its eye on an even bigger prize - ownership of the new competition itself. That, Nichol said, would be far less desirable for rugby. Control of our national game would be lost.

Either way the rugby landscape is about to change in dramatic fashion. By how much is the only unanswered question.

- © Fairfax NZ News