Welcome To Uruguay – The Decline Of NZ Rugby

Welcome To Uruguay – The Decline Of NZ Rugby

My old Dad was a sporting Nostradamus. Back in ninety five he foretold the shambles that is now All Black rugby.

I remember the occasion vividly. I was in the old man’s lounge-room, trying to see the TV through the smoke billowing from his pipe, when the TV One news reader reported that rugby was going professional.

“Well that’s it,” the octogenarian boomed from the Lazyboy. “We’re buggered.” He wasn’t an habitual swearer and this paraphrasing of his hero Peter Jones was something he reserved for moments of great import, so I listened carefully to the cryptic comment that followed. “Give us another thirty years,” he said, stabbing at the smoke with the sharp end of his pipe, “and New Zealand will be another Uruguay. No one will remember we were once the best footie players on the planet.”

I didn’t pursue the topic at the time, thinking the old man had got a tad confused by what Fitzie, Zinnie and the boys intended for his beloved game, but I remember driving home later promising myself that I would go to the library when I got a chance and find out about Uruguayan rugby. Which of course I didn’t.

It was years later, after the old man had passed on and the All Blacks had lost yet another World Cup, that I finally searched on the internet and confirmed what I’d suspected; Uruguayan rugby has a history as illustrious as New Zealand tobogganing.

But that wasn’t the full story. I read on and found that the old man had been right. Uruguay and New Zealand have some worrying commonalities.

To start with we are nations of similar size (them 3.6 million, us 4.3) and both economies are founded on agriculture. But more interestingly Uruguay like New Zealand, once bestrode the sporting world like Jonah Lomu trampling milk-skinned Englishmen.

You see, while New Zealand was establishing itself as the greatest rugby playing nation on earth, little Uruguay was dominating the round-ball game. Uruguay won the first ever Fifa World Cup when it hosted the event in 1930. (Now doesn’t that sound spookily familiar?) When they next competed in 1950 they went on to win their second title, upsetting hosts Brazil 2-1 in the final match.

But if that wasn’t enough, these footballing Liliputians also won Gold Medals at the Olympics twice, and were South American Champions no less than 11 times. While we were dominating the oval ball game throughout the 20th century, little Uruguay was winning more international soccer titles than any other country in the world. (19.) It was a habit that swelled a nations pride, prompting journalist Galeano to state that the Uruguayan sky-blue shirt “was proof of the existence of the nation: Uruguay was not a mistake. Soccer pulled this tiny country out of the shadows of universal anonymity.” They are words the late T.P. McLean could have penned about the black jersey’s place in Kiwi culture.

But that was then, and if my old Dad is correct New Zealand rugby is well on the way to joining Uruguay in their inglorious now.

Poor Uruguay has only made one of the last four World Cup tournaments and is unlikely to be sighted in South Africa next year. Most recently it has drawn with low-lights Venezuela and Chile but been hammered by Brazil. Meanwhile club football draws poor crowds and surveys document a steep plummet in public interest in the beautiful game. Sound familiar?

So why has once great Uruguay become a shadow of its former self and what might this fall portend for the All Blacks? The taxi drivers of Montevideo will tell you all manner of reasons for the demise of their heroes. They’ll denounce the modern players as soft, their supporters as hooligans and the coaches as rubbish. They’ll point the finger at the Argentinian pay TV company that has snaffled the TV rights. And then, invariably, they will identify the core evil. Money.

Uruguayan football is a victim of the sport’s professionalisation and the country’s economic decline. Quite simply, the tiny economy can’t compete with the modern juggernauts of the game. Long before former and potential All-Blacks began heading off to the fertile earning grounds of the northern hemisphere, the cream of Uruguayan football was chasing better paydays in Europe. These days more than 400 of the best are more-or-less permanently abroad, impoverishing the local game in quality - and financially. As the turnstiles at the grounds turn more and more slowly, many clubs teeter on the edge of bankruptcy. It is a state of affairs that my Dad (and Peter Jones) had a pithy phrase for.

New Zealand rugby is well on the way to joining Uruguay, just as my Dad predicted. Hundreds of our first or second tier players are plying their trade in Europe and Japan and even good young club players can now finance their OE by playing in the English lower divisions. Our club rugby is a shadow of its former self and the “product” that is top level rugby is expensive, over-hyped and losing it’s attraction. (Read the surveys.) Sure the rugby union will continue to re-package the Super twelve/fourteen/fifteen and shuffle the pack that is the financially-troubled NPC. They’ll continue to offer “sabbaticals” to top players so that they can earn some Euros or English pounds to bank alongside their low value NZ Dollars. But realistically, in an increasingly international footie marketplace, it would be a very brave tipster who bet that New Zealand’s slide will not continue.

In the meantime, let’s hope that like little Uruguay, we get to win a second World Cup before our rugby prowess is just a memory of old men.

ENDS

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