Rugby saturation reaches bursting point

Time for the businessmen to butt out

There have been some disturbing statistics over the past couple of weeks, which show more clearly than ever that rugby's media bubble is apparently bursting. But it is not the fans who are deserting the game, as some would have you believe, merely that they are not interested in artificial realities, according to Danny Stephens.

In France, Canal +, the television channel that covers the Top 14 club competition, revealed that of the 200,000 viewers who had initially switched on to watch the Toulouse v Biarritz match – a match between two of France's flagship clubs – nearly half of them switched off at half-time. The reason? Namely that Biarritz had taken one glance at the fixture calendar, a calendar which four times this season gives Biarritz three games in eight days, and chalked the match off as a 'don't mind if we lose because we can make the semi-finals anyway'. It is not the only game in France that has been ruined for the fans like this since the season began in August's heat.

In England, Andy Robinson convened his England team for a three-day get-together, but he must have been wondering if he had not wondered onto a scene rehearsal for a re-make of 'Saving Private Ryan', such was the assembled carnage limping around Loughborough University's turf.

In New Zealand, television viewing figures have fallen slghtly, but strangely, so have attendance figures at matches. It appears that the decision to show nearly every single Air New Zealand Cup match on television has left those casual supporters intent on watching a match free to pick and choose their television fix, rather than hurry along to their local stadium. Not even the most ardent rugby fan has the time to settle into the armchair for the duration of all seven matches on the box over a weekend. Nor one live and five others on the telly. Thursday night rugby was recently introduced to spread things out, but evidence so far suggests that it has barely made a ripple.

Back to France, or rather, Ireland in France, where Munster's delegation pitched up at a meeting of Heineken Cup representatives with scolding words from Magners ringing in their ears about how they were not taking their domestic commitments seriously enough. Maybe fair enough, considering the European Champions currently lie next to bottom of the Magners League and are punching well below their weight, but what are they supposed to do when the IRU insists that all the Ireland international players have to rest until late September? Likewise Leinster's.

Back to New Zealand, where Graham Henry is involved in a fight with News International about the devaluation of the Super 14 by Henry's withdrawal of 22 All Blacks from the first half of next year's competition. Back to England, and the never-ending fight between the clubs and the RFU over who plays for who and when. Back to the Southern Hemisphere nations who could not sell out their stadia for Tri-Nations matches…

On and on it goes. And it shows no sign of getting any better.

There is a common theme in all of this: businessmen, and particularly media businessmen. It is doing rugby no good at all. The sport appears to have sold its soul to these people in its fledgling professional years, people whose insatiable appetite for creating a 'big occasion' has them completely out of sync with rugby's culture. But then you look at the number of actual ex-rugby players running the game. In England for example, Francis Baron and Mark McCafferty are the warring tribe leaders of the RFU and Premier rugby. Show me the top-class rugby playing careers of either.

This year's Tri-Nations could have been exciting in the usual home-and-away format, but as it was, South Africa were out of it before they were even on their way home. That decision to include that ridiculous extra round of Tri-Nations fixtures was made largely on the back of the money offered by the non-playing media, and the non-playing businessmen in charge of some of the unions. It is a sorry day indeed when money offered by that compensates for the fact that bums are not on seats at the games.

The November Tests ought to be a sure indicator of World Cup form, yet so many nations will have fifty per cent of their top players missing because of fatigue and injury that it will hardly be a true representation of what the countries could have to offer. It will be interesting to see how many games – aside from the France v New Zealand matches – are completely sold out.

You see, the players are still the forgotten factor. The media businessmen responsible for us having such a saturating supply of rugby are responsible for all the television traders now queuing up for their pounds of flesh, yet the pounds of flesh – as Andy Robinson discovered this week – are too worn out. The media workers then sensationally lambast the players in public for not playing well as the businessmen promised, but in truth, the players are too tired to do what the businessmen asked of them. Being a professional rugby player is an impossible job these days – and Graham Henry is right to resist the insistence of News International that the players are commodities and contractually obliged to appear in a tournament. He – with the support of his regions and union – is at least fighting his players' cause at last, even if in many respects he has gone too far the other way. But it is no coincidence that his sympathetic union is run by former All Black player Jock Hobbs. The players' side is spoken for, and look how happy New Zealand rugby is.

But the initial over-riding impression from all the statistics is that fans are simply turning off, or, not making the efforts to get to matches like they used to. This is not true, it is just that fans are not watching more than they used to to match the increased supply. Rugby fans are not in constant need of the 'big occasion', nor are they in constant need of a never-ending supply of rugby, such as football fans have become so aggressively addicted to the world over. Rugby fans are people who enjoy and pursue things in life beyond the sport, just as all the players generally are. One live match a week – two at the outside – is the fix we need, and the rest we can just read about.

So the businessmen can complain about their figures, but I doubt I would be interested in watching Biarritz's second team get thrashed by Toulouse either. If the businessmen were to involve the players and make a sensible and varied rugby schedule conducive to having the best players fresh and on show all the time however…

By Danny Stephens