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Why All Black fans are about to 'hear a lot of the term fan-centric'
By Ned Lester
New Zealand Rugby is promising a deep dive into what the fans want to see in international rugby, leading the charge into what it hopes will be a more exciting future for the game.
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Much has been made of match metrics such as ball-in-play time and the general entertainment value of the game in recent seasons, with efforts to speed up play and reduce stoppages filtering into various levels of the sport to mixed avail.
The Rugby World Cup saw the introduction of the bunker system with the aim of eliminating extended stoppages whilst officials decide on a relevant punishment for foul play amongst other rulings.
The World Cup produced some of the greatest spectacles the sport has seen, but also some controversy.
“We saw some incredible rugby at the tournament and early on we saw, especially in southern France, some incredible scenes around fans being able to get close to teams,” New Zealand Rugby CEO Mark Robinson told media this week. “We saw some great footy and some significant upsets.
“It’s fair to say as the tournament grew there was fan frustration around some elements of the game. We are very interested to be part of the ongoing discussion that’s going to take place in the near future to look to address that.”
Onwards and upwards appears to be the motto for New Zealand Rugby, with a clear focus on alignment across the global game, with meetings early in the new year being held in Europe.
“We are very clear in New Zealand, and we believe in Australia, and we believe other parts of the world are starting to acknowledge that the fan has to be far more greatly considered in our consideration of what we’re going to do with the future state of the game.
“We will be looking at the challenge of making the game more fan-centric at the international level. There will be key meetings at the end of February in Europe between ourselves, our Sanzaar partners, the Six Nations and World Rugby and right at the heart of the conversation is how we look to continue to make sure we’re more consistently seeing the kind of rugby we believe all fans want to see.
”A number of key strands go into that work. We’ve got to have the right information so we’re clear on what fans want to see. How does that then impact on our laws? How can we support our match officials, and our players and coaches, to make sure the product can be truly spectacular and special so more and more fans around the world want to gravitate towards it?”
Robinson pointed to Super Rugby Pacific as an example of positive steps being taken with the ratings to prove it’s success.
“If you look at Super Rugby Pacific [in 2023], we saw significant improvements in key stats around tempo, ball in play and match duration, resulting in a huge uplift in broadcast viewership and streaming numbers.
“That’s a key starting point. We now have a SRP Joint Venture which we think can take that sort of collaboration, innovation and creativity to a whole new level in the years to come. That Super Rugby commission interim board is meeting next week to carry on some of the work in this space as well.”
The DNA of rugby in New Zealand is notoriously dynamic and expansive, so there’s plenty of extra incentive to speed up the game and uphold that character, but that’s not so much the case in other regions.
The northern hemisphere traditionally boasts a more methodical and conservative DNA, although the recent form of France and Ireland have challenged that notion, playing at the forefront of the game’s evolution with generational attacking skillsets.
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But the conservative attitude is felt more potently off the field, and Robinson acknowledged the potential challenge of getting the northern unions on board with the initiative.
“We’ve got work to do to elevate the fan consideration and the conversation about the game,” he said. “We’ve also got to consider player welfare as part of that, but we think when fans become frustrated about the game it’s often because certain things happen either to slow it down or mean continuity and tempo and opportunities to see exciting spectacles are impacted upon.
“We all want the game to grow. Anyone in leadership of rugby has a fundamental obligation to want it to grow. If that’s our starting point, what are some things that have to happen at the professional level? That’s greater tempo, greater spectacles, less interventions, and helping to simplify the game where we can.
“I’m sure World Rugby will be open to that conversation, and other national unions will feed back into those conversations. We just hope fan consideration is elevated a lot.”
Smoke and mirrors. The shareholders must be impressed.
European Rugby Champions Cup teams play the best players of multiple countries every year. best of the best, or shall we listen to NZRugby. Backwards and downwards.
The IRB has a 7’s rugby circuit where it can be fan-centred circus, dress ups allowed. Leave our game alone. You are not a key decision maker, you have no voice. World rugby makes their own evidence based decisions in discussion with Players, officials and key stakeholders. If you want to play to the crowd, Super, keep it in your super dupa backyard. We are not following you.
“elevate the fan consideration” oh dear what gobbledygook, jibber-jabber, Gibberish
I call BS. The emperor has no clothes on. Fan-centric what hogwash. I want high performance, I want competition between two teams. That’s what I want to see. I chose sport not entertainment. Go back to the board room this is our game.
Also lies, there were no fans in the stands at Super Rugby Pacific. There were more fans in Dublin, Limerick, Capetown, Treviso etc France top 14, URC, Gallagher Premiership. European Rugby Champions Cup and European Challenge Cup.
NZ sit down and shut up. You have little sway now, the gold Standard is Africa, Ireland, UK, France and Europe. What say they?
Fan -centric, oh before you score that try please do a triple reverse backflip. When you emerge out of a collapsed scrum or maul, remember to smile and wave to the crowd. When you break your leg, please crawl off the field as soon as you can and go directly to changing rooms do not talk to media.
Fan-centric like when the Gladiators were instructed to make it more exciting.
Oh excuse me Mr William Webb Ellis or who ever picked the ball up. Did you pick the ball up to score, have fun, physically test your opposition or did you do it for the dog on the sideline?
Do not have fun and enjoy the game, the challenge and focus on absolute high performance, your best game. Don’t forget to wave to the crowd. In fact at half time can you stay on the field and either do a dance performance or interact with the crowd.
Who cares if the fans are frustrated or not entertained.
In the 2000 movie Gladiator, Maximus says, "Are you not entertained? Are you not entertained?
Go to the movies for your entertainment. Go to Hollywood for your fan-centric. Marketing speak and too many “yes” people involved in that decision and press release I think.
If TMOs used so what, I don’t care if the game takes 4 hours I will love every second of it.
1- yellow card 10min off as is.
2- orange card 20min off (like the awake Super Rugby) for red offenses to be reviewed if minor mitigating factors
3- red card off full game eg obvious intent or lack of avoidance ie your an idiot ( eg Cane)
4-No stoppages (ie free kicks, penalties) for the constant, endless, trivial, & ‘academic only’ & ‘no advantage from the fault itself’ actions eg knock ons, forward passes, other(?), etc IF the balls forward movement is less than the balls length eg Savea’s RWC pre-Smith try knock on (ie a trivial knock on that had no advantage eg nothing to do with the try), but also in soooo & too many stoppages of every game.
4- YES TMO INVOLVEMENT but no longer needed for the endless stoppages for trivial & ‘academic only’ actions of the game of 4 above.
5- MORE TMO involvement in scrums especially where players fail to hold pressure eg the obvious (from 1000’s km away!) & intentional backing off of the French prop against De Groot in the RWC opener. These scrum ‘intentional’ acts are the dark arts of forward play but are often split second so it's reasonable that a ref would miss them & so need a video TMO … as long as that's done in 20 seconds of video availability.
6- public flogging & banning of the idiots that criticise any officials in any area outside of the officials game performance.
7- public flogging & banning of the idiots who say union’s boring &/or don't watch it anymore but still spend their time getting on these union comments lines to tell us all … union’s not for you, TV reality drama shows eg Love Island might be?
I’m pretty sure ball in play time is higher in the Gallagher Premiership is higher than it is in super rugby. Games in super rugby may take less time to complete because there was a clear edict for fewer TMO interventions this year whereas I sense in Europe they would rather reach the right decision with the help of the TMO even if that means games take a bit longer than they do down here in Australasia.
I say go back to all rules like they were in 1998. The game was a better product back then.
Get rid of the TMO's.
Watched the 1995 WC final between NZ and Boks again the other day.
The ball was in play much less than nowadays.
But it felt like the game was flowing and kept the fans glued to the screen.
The reason? No TMO interventions or repeated replays.
The onfield ref has all the say and does all the calls.
But we as fans must then understand that there might be wrong calls, like it was back in the day when I still played. It usually evens out for both teams in a match.