Time to take back control of NZ rugby

With a predicted loss of almost $40 million of New Zealand taxpayers' money looming on the 2011 Rugby World Cup plus the debacle of the TV rights for our "National" game, I fail, given the cost, to see the point in hosting this event at all.

The future of rugby, as it stands at the moment, lies in the professional club scene in the heavily populated northern hemisphere and the New Zealand Rugby Union unfortunately sold our "brand" (the All Blacks) to the northern hemisphere fat cats many years ago.

So it is time to take action and suggest the New Zealand Government, since it is happy to fork out $40 million-plus, offers to financially back the NZRU telling the International Rugby Board we are "going it alone" and any other worthy rugby-playing nation can come and tour here on our terms, i.e. afternoon test matches, midweek matches and with full-strength touring sides.

What would future Rugby World Cups be without the All Blacks anyway? A non-event, surely, as every recognised rugby nation wants to play and beat the All Blacks.

We are surely the bench mark of world rugby.

Further, does anyone honestly believe that the other powerhouses of international rugby will elect not to tour here because the IRB says they can not? This in itself could see the end of the IRB and New Zealand getting its national sporting identity back where it belongs, in our hands and on our terms.

Then all we have to do is work out which set of rules we would play by as, unless I am mistaken, there are currently two.

The NZRU is a cop-out and does not represent real rugby followers in this country.

Greg Glendining
Glenross

- In recognition of the importance of readers' contribution to the letters page, the newspaper each week selects a Letter of the Week, with a book prize courtesy of Dunedin publisher Longacre Press.

This week's winner, Greg Glendining, of Glenross, receives a copy of Wendy Davie's The Accidental Organiser, Longacre Press, $24.99.