Trouble all the time

The term ‘back office’ can be over­used at times when assess­ing a sports organ­isa­tion, but with Wel­ling­ton Rugby it is hard to come up with any con­clu­sion oth­er than things are not right.

Last year’s ITM Cup cam­paign was an unmit­ig­ated dis­aster, with just one win to the Wel­ling­ton Lions in the entire sea­son for the first time since 1894. The team lurched from one defeat to anoth­er, set­ting new levels of embar­rass­ment along the way. Los­ing to North­land by 30 points, throw­ing away a 21-point half-time lead at Eden Park, going down to Tas­man at home by more than 20 points, and being defeated for just the second time in the last 29 matches against Tarana­ki were the stand-outs, but they tell only part of the story.

All of this was played out in front of rap­idly deplet­ing crowds. Ten years ago the num­ber of sea­son tick­et-hold­ers was over 15,000 (with a wait­ing list). Last year the attend­ance for some games hovered around the 1,000 mark.

The com­plex inter­twin­ing of the Hur­ricanes and Lions fran­chises, includ­ing the Wel­ling­ton Rugby Foot­ball Uni­on (WRFU) hav­ing a 50 per­cent share in the Hur­ricanes, has meant that pro­vin­cial rugby has largely taken a back seat in terms of pre­par­a­tion and plan­ning. This was exem­pli­fied by the appoint­ment of Wel­ling­ton Lions coach Chris Boyd to the Hur­ricanes role in the middle of last year, all the while car­ry­ing on with his Wel­ling­ton job.

He had a fair bit to do for the Hur­ricanes, not least filling sev­er­al holes due to people leav­ing at the end of last sea­son. On top of this he had the role of New Zea­l­and Under 20s coach, which is one of New Zea­l­and Rugby Union’s mar­quee jobs. And the 2014 Juni­or World Cup was being held in New Zea­l­and for the first time, adding to the pres­sure. As a res­ult of all this, Wel­ling­ton was, unsur­pris­ingly, ill-pre­pared at the start of the cam­paign, and it nev­er got better.

So who signed off retain­ing Boyd as the Wel­ling­ton coach with all that going on? There was nev­er any com­ment on that, des­pite the rumours that, because Boyd was con­trac­ted until the end of the year, find­ing a replace­ment would be expensive.

The penny-pinch­ing did not stop there. The incum­bent num­ber 10, Lima Sopo­aga, asked for a mod­er­ate and jus­ti­fied pay rise pri­or to the start of the sea­son. It nev­er came, Sopo­aga moved to South­land, and five dif­fer­ent play­ers were used in that vital pos­i­tion over the first six games.

Apo­lo­gists poin­ted out that there was a high­er-than-nor­mal injury toll dur­ing the sea­son, and that was true. But Wel­ling­ton is a big province, its club com­pet­i­tion is as strong as most, and its Under-19 team are nation­al cham­pi­ons. There is play­er depth. Mean­while, vari­ous IT pro­jects are said to be stut­ter­ing, and there is a high turnover of staff at head office.

Then there was the appoint­ment of Boyd’s suc­cessor, and the pro­cess around it. A press release came out just after 5pm on 19 Decem­ber announ­cing that Earl Va’a had been appoin­ted Lions coach. That was announced five minutes after the office shut down for just under a month, with nobody avail­able for comment.

The selec­tion of Va’a raised eye­brows, espe­cially as there were some massive doubts over the pro­cess. The chair of the selec­tion com­mit­tee was Ken Laban, a close per­son­al friend and long-time ment­or of Va’a. Laban had to come out him­self and state that he declared his con­flict of interest at the start of the pro­cess, but the Wel­ling­ton Rugby Uni­on did not con­sider it to be an issue.

When an organ­isa­tion is devel­op­ing a repu­ta­tion for poor gov­ernance and lack of trans­par­ency, it becomes even more vital that everything must appear to be above board. The fact that it was left to Laban him­self to cla­ri­fy his pos­i­tion said a fair bit in itself.

Va’a may well have inter­viewed well, and been the right man for the job — and we wish him the best for the chal­lenges ahead — but with such a behind-closed-doors policy it is impossible for us, the pay­ing cus­tom­er, to know.

So we head into anoth­er rugby sea­son with a gen­er­al feel­ing of mis­trust and dis­ap­point­ment at how the nation­al sport is being run in the cap­it­al. It would appear that under the cur­rent WRFU set-up, only the play­ers can turn this around.