Sides stick to guns in rugby rift

Manawatu and the New Zealand Rugby Union appear as far apart as ever, if an exchange of correspondence is anything to go by.

Long-serving Palmerston North radio commentator Bill Anderson voiced his concerns in a letter to NZRU chairman Jock Hobbs about the proposed four-team cull of teams from the premier division.

The cull is likely to include Manawatu when the decision is announced on December 10.

Hobbs' reply showed the NZRU was as intractable on the issue as it has ever been and provoked Anderson into firing off another letter.

"Nothing I have seen or heard throughout 2009 has dissuaded me from the view that the most important domestic competition is the Air New Zealand Cup," he said.

"To meddle with it will disenchant present and future generations, thus dismissing the preferences of the game's stakeholders causing damage that will take many years to repair."

Anderson maintains New Zealand rugby has been manipulated by offshore interests, another way of saying Australia rugby boss John O'Neill has got his way in extending the Super 14 to Super 15. The New Zealand Rugby Players' Association newsletter shows that Super 15, in non-World Cup years, will start in February and will not finish until the first weekend of August. That has compressed the window available for domestic rugby.

Hobbs, meanwhile, claims the World Cup has already returned "infrastructure benefits" of more than $400 million to New Zealand. Anderson says most of that was being spent on Eden Park in Auckland.

Hobbs says the expansion of Super rugby "is necessary for revenue generation, the retention of players and a winning All Blacks team".

He reiterated how in May the nine non-Super 14 unions had asked the NZRU to address issues they faced related "to the sustainability and affordability" of the Air New Zealand Cup.

"There was a unanimous view that some change was necessary."

But as Manawatu Rugby Union chief executive John Knowles said yesterday, "we weren't talking about changing the competition".

"We wanted it to be sustainable and it was also about distribution of players across the country."

Anderson added: "There is considerable suspicion at the methods by which their [G9] signatures were acquired."

Hobbs also conceded TV ratings had improved this year but gate attendances had fallen by 17.6 per cent since last year, without explaining that had not been in Manawatu, but in the major provinces.

He added unions are projected to lose $2.7 million in the competition this year, without explaining that forecast deficits by the likes of Canterbury will make up a huge chunk of that.

Hobbs conceded that some unions had become more competitive on the field since the competition started in 2006.

"However, these results have not diminished the challenges these unions face off the field."

He claimed long term the changes were for the "greater good" of rugby as a whole.

Anderson wasn't wearing any of that. "You failed to acknowledge the falling attendances at Super 14 matches in 2009," he wrote in his reply. "Might I suggest this is due to the brand of rugby being played."

- © Fairfax NZ News