Rugby: McLauchlan defends Highlanders board

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By Hayden Meikle on Thu, 2 Jul 2009
Rugby
Stuart McLauchlan
Stuart McLauchlan
The Highlanders chairman Stuart McLauchlan is confident he will keep his job despite the looming changes to the franchise's board.

McLauchlan was defiant yesterday when asked to comment on his own future and the performance of a board that has essentially been taken over by the New Zealand Rugby Union.

The NZRU has prepared a rescue package for the financially troubled Highlanders, agreeing to underwrite the franchise for the next two years.

It has also shaken up the structure of the board, creating a spot for a Dunedin City Council director and reducing the number of provincial directors from four to three, but McLauchlan said that did not mean his board had failed.

"No, I don't believe we have. I think we've been very responsible," McLauchlan told the Otago Daily Times from New York.

"We've kept the NZRU informed and we've been transparent about what we've been doing."

Asked if he expected to remain as chairman once the transitional board was in place, McLauchlan replied: "Yes, I do."

The NZRU has given itself the option to appoint a new Highlanders chairman, and McLauchlan said the national body deserved that right because of the support it was giving the franchise.

He believed other New Zealand franchises had lost money but the Highlanders had been particularly affected because of their small catchment area and plummeting crowds.

"We've been struggling over the last two or three years, mainly because we're the smallest franchise. Crowds have fallen off, and that's the main driver of income. We wanted to secure the future of the Highlanders through to the construction of the new stadium. I believe we've done that with this arrangement.

"This is a realisation by the NZRU that it needs five strong franchises. The reality is we're the smallest. Others are having issues, I'm sure. But we were hit 2 to 3 years ago."

The Highlanders board was already looking for two new members, with Carisbrook Stadium Trust head Malcolm Farry stepping down as an independent and Steve Thompson relinquishing his Highlanders and Otago positions.

Incumbent independents can choose to complete their terms, as can any provincial directors voted back on to the board.

The new board will be asked by the NZRU to adopt a "recovery plan" and look at the management of the franchise.

That raises the possibility of the Otago Rugby Football Union, which handles the day-to-day affairs of the Highlanders, being squeezed out, though McLauchlan declined to blame the struggling union for the professional franchise's woes.

"I suppose rugby in general is to blame. It doesn't matter whether it's Otago or Southland or Auckland. Everybody has experienced a substantial downturn in attendances.

"We're a smaller city, so we felt it first. We predicted others would eventually feel it and they have."

McLauchlan is adamant the Highlanders are going nowhere and maintains the NZRU is ignoring the occasional call for the franchise to be relocated.

"There are obviously some sections of the rugby community who would like the Highlanders to be moved somewhere else. But that would just be shifting the same problem," he said.

More than anything, the Highlanders need success on the field to bring back the fans and keep the wolves from the door.

They have had some assistance through the draft but NZRU chief executive Steve Tew said there were not many other options available.

"We did all we could last year in the confines of our own policies," Tew said.

"But we've got to balance it with the fact there are four other franchises equally keen to have a competitive side and the talent is already spread thinly."

Tew said the Highlanders were the only franchise getting special assistance because they were a special case.

He denied the NZRU's moves were necessary because of the failure of the Highlanders board.

"It's an indication that they're in a very difficult situation. We don't want to criticise what they've done because the Highlanders have actually shown some innovation and put in a lot of energy.

"But at the end of the day, the revenue that drives the franchise cannot sustain a professional rugby team."

Highlanders board

New structure:

- Three NZRU-appointed directors
- Three provincial union-appointed directors
- One DCC-appointed director- NZRU has right to appoint chairman- Transitional board for two years
- NZRU to underwrite Highlanders for two years

 

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Always a problem ..

Submitted by MikeStk on Mon, 06/07/2009 - 1:29pm.

If they didn't anticipate it they were running around with their eyes closed, or, as you point out, covered with dollar signs.

Professional sport everywhere has this problem - successful teams can afford to spend more to get the best players, and stay successful, other teams lose their fans because they lose too often and the successful teams have no one to play. Professional sport doesn't really work unless periodically every team has a winning streak to rile up the fans - back in the good old days it happened because we got our sportsmen and women from within our own communities and every province would throw up a great team every so often. That's what amateur sports gives you - a team that's genuinely your own.

To make that actually happen in a world where players are mobile and respond to the highest bidder the fix has to be in - it's a bit like professional wrestling.

Salary caps are one way to help solve the problem, American football teams actually give the least successful teams the first choice of the best players every year.

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Highlanders

Submitted by Coates42 on Fri, 03/07/2009 - 1:09pm.

Seems like Otago rugby needs a real shot in the arm. From the rugby perspective and from a supporters point of view. I hear from a source that Mike Brewer is talking with Queensland at the moment. Why doesn't the ORFU and the NZRU get him back to Dunedin? It will probably take the likes of Eion Edgar to step in and make something like this happen. Another lost opportunity

Ex pat in Europe

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The real problem

Submitted by Ian Smith on Fri, 03/07/2009 - 11:54am.

So filled with potential 'dollar-signs' was the vision (or lack of it), of those who welcomed the era of fully professional sport, that they overlooked one crucial factor, namely that what they were not anticipating, was that rugby, (and more recently netball), have become not the battle of teams out there on the playing surface, but instead, 'The Battle of the Cheque-books'.
How are smaller Unions such as Nelson-Marlborough, Northland, or Otago ever going to foot-it against the buying-power of Auckland and Canterbury under the present system? Unions such as Taranaki and Waikato may at times, 'punch-above their weight', but the dice are firmly loaded against them, regardless. Where, I might add, was the DCC when we rolled over, tummies up and delivered Otago Netball to Southland on-a-plate, simply because they, and not us, were awash at the time with 'dairy-money' and the prospect, (since diminished), of unlimited prospects for more? Surely a token show of 'lead-in-the-pencil' could have been made in respect of a city, which, after all, has a University with a School of Physical Education. But no, support for sport is selective, rugby to the fore, always, even to the extent of one bail-out, by whatever means, after another, while it heads, resolutely down-the-gurgler due to a failure to live within its income.
Until there is a salary-cap, so that teams such as Auckland have on their payrolls fewer 'specialist' coaches, than some other teams have players, the situation is going to remain inequitable, and the Highlanders are going to languish. It's all money-driven, and Rugby has 'done-it-to-itself'. In any case, the netball is far more entertaining, or at least would be, if it didn't rely on such fatuous, over-hyped and misleading TV promotion, which seems to have the aim of presenting it as a game for idiots.

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Highlanders

Submitted by Alanmac on Thu, 02/07/2009 - 4:59pm.

Muliaina, Smith, Howlett, Kahui, Mapusua, Evans, Cowan, Ngaopu, Thompson, McCaw/Whitelock, Donnelly, Ross, Hayman, Flynn, McIntosh - all playing top level rugby, all once part or still part of the Otago/Southland, Highlanders system. A formidable team lost. Perhaps the the new NZRU administration can keep the future stars in place - the Highlanders never kept many of the old ones. Byron Kelleher, Callum Bruce and Toby Morland do quite a bit for the bench as well.

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Strongly agree

Submitted by farsighted on Thu, 02/07/2009 - 11:30am.

Freudian slips will out: "McLauchlan is adamant the Highlanders are going nowhere". I'm sure that there will be little disagreement with this sentiment around Dunedin.

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