ITM Cup: 11 out of 14 want change
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Eleven out of fourteen provincial unions have appealed to the New Zealand Rugby Union to scrap midweek ITM Cup matches, according to Tasman CEO Andrew Flexman.
Flexman is leading a campaign against the current shortened structure of the National Provincial Championship which the majority of the smaller provinces believe is leading to poor crowd numbers.
Canterbury, Auckland and Wellington want to retain the current format but the remaining provinces have called on the NZRU to extended the competition by a fortnight to 12 weeks.
The smaller unions also argue that the abridged version of the season does not allow players to recover from injuries, meaning that teams with smaller budgets and less depth struggle to compete.
Flexman says adding an extra week at the start and end of the original schedule would eliminate the need for midweek games and believes the NZRU is prepared to listen to their concerns.
"It's a lost cause to get people to attend midweek games 'live'," Flexman told Fairfax NZ News.
"We have probably lost money hosting games. Either it changes or maybe the NZRU's grants need to be increased because we are a significant contributor to the broadcasting deal.
"We [the smaller unions] need to be staunch, collectively, on this one."
The majority of provinces are understood to be in favour of the premiership-championship structure and want play-offs retained.
Comments
rugby_rockstar says...
I sympathise with the smaller clubs and I'm pretty disgusted by Auckland Canterbury and Wellington's cheating attitude. Sport is about fair competition and they're just rubbing hands and smirking becasue they have the squads to accomodate 3 day turn around. I get enough of this bull in from the England's "Premiere" Rugby Limited. This is just another case of money spinning getting priority over the product on the pitch. Why are people so apathetic about the quality of our sport? Kiwis love their pies, well here's a turd pie for NZ$30.00. Must be value for money because the accountants at Auckland RFC say so. Are you going to buy it and then eat it? What sort of fan does that make you??? There's nothing wrong with having pride in your sport and telling the Product Providers that their product is a pile of cak. Tell them to extend the season to give the smaller squads a fair crack at it and call it positive feedback.
Posted 10:00 06th December 2012
StunTheMullet says...
Yep, we have officially reached divorce inducing rugby OD with S15, taking a break for June internationals, resuming for a bit, then ramming ITM cup into a few weeks while shoehorning it inbetween 4N matches then rolling into end of year tour.
Less is more.
Posted 09:02 06th December 2012