Why New Zealand Really Kicked Us Out

追加: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]New Zealand and Australia kicked South Africa out of Super Rugby in 2020.

[00:00:06]And now they're blaming us for their economic woes.

[00:00:11]And today you are going to get a front row seat to these fresh accusations.

[00:00:16]So on a recent podcast in New Zealand, the former chairman of their rugby union, Brent Impey, spilled the beans and inadvertently revealed the truth that we have known all along.

[00:00:31]Impey says we left them with no choice but to axe us.

[00:00:38]Firstly, that line right there confirms that they did indeed kick us out.

[00:00:43]You may know that for years now that the Kiwis and Aussies have been claiming that we left them.

[00:00:50]And no matter how much we tell them that they kicked us out, they just won't hear it.

[00:00:56]Let's look at Impey's quote, shall we?

[00:00:59]The South Africans made it completely uneconomic and had we gone ahead with that deal, New Zealand Rugby would have had to subsidize not only Australia and Argentina, which South Africa and us had done for years in a very free and open manner, to having to subsidize the lot. We simply couldn't afford that.

[00:01:20]Oh. So they didn't like what we were proposing and then decided to just go it alone without us.

[00:01:28]But how much merit is in that strategy?

[00:01:32]Let's look at what he said leading up to that quote.

[00:01:36]I don't think there was any choice.

[00:01:38]There were a combination of factors.

[00:01:40]First of all, there was COVID, which meant that we couldn't travel to South Africa or they couldn't travel here.

[00:01:47]There was that restriction which was significant and the cost of airfares meant that it became completely uneconomic and that unfortunately included the Jaguares out of Argentina.

[00:01:59]A second factor was that South always wanted to go north. They've wanted to go north for a long time.

[00:02:05]But thirdly, and the killer blow, and it's hardly ever been reported on despite many attempts to do so, is that from 1995 right through to 2020, all of Super Rugby and SANZAAR negotiations and television had been in US dollars. In 2020, SuperSport in South Africa changed it to the rand and in 1995, the New Zealand dollar was three to one for the rand. By 2020, it was 12 to one.

[00:02:34]I'm going to offer a fair analysis, I promise, for you on that currency argument in just a moment. But let's start at the top.

[00:02:42]In terms of COVID, Australia and New Zealand had some of the strictest protocols on Earth, [clears throat] if not the strictest. They were the ones who made it impractical for us to travel there and as it turns out, impossible for them to leave their countries.

[00:03:01]Cost of airfares is fair, but it's also absurd to think high airfares is prohibitive for a rugby nation like New Zealand. I don't buy that they can't afford flights.

[00:03:13]If Samoa, Fiji, Tonga, if they said, "Look guys, it was COVID, flights have gone up, they've become very expensive, we can't travel to South Africa." You would understand. Not the All Blacks, I'm sorry.

[00:03:24]By the way, it also implies that there was an option for them to come to South Africa and play here.

[00:03:30]As we know, that option was not seriously considered. I don't think it was ever a practical option in any event. Nevertheless, all of this then buys into what he is talking about since 1995.

[00:03:46]If we look at the history of SANZAAR, have you ever noticed how disadvantaged South African teams were? Now look, in Super 12, 14 and Rugby, there was not much you could do. You generally had to play four or five away games as a South African team on that side of the world.

[00:04:02]And talking about keeping airfares down, it made sense that our teams would have to just suck it up and go away for that length of time. Instead of going away for two weeks at a time, you just do four weeks in one go, get it over with and come back home.

[00:04:17]Perfectly sensible. On the flip side, New Zealand and Australian sides only had to come to us for two or three matches at a time.

[00:04:27]And as I've discussed several times before on this channel, it is a physiological fact that traveling east across time zones disorientates people.

[00:04:38]The more time zones you travel across, the worse it is. So for example, you're in South Africa, I'm currently in Qatar.

[00:04:45]If you come to visit me, there's a one-hour difference. If you normally go to bed at 10:00 at night, well when you look at the at your watch and you see it's 10:00, your body still thinks it's 9:00, but you could probably get away with that.

[00:04:59]But let me tell you something, the first time I was in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, now there's a two-hour difference between the UAE and South Africa. And I normally go to bed at about midnight, okay? So it was midnight and I got into bed and I just couldn't sleep. I wonder what's what's going on here? And I looked at the time, by then it was probably midnight 30, and I realized my body still thinks it's 10:30, right? Because that's the time in South Africa. Now multiply that by the time difference between South Africa and Australia and New Zealand and you can see just how worse it gets.

[00:05:34]Now, because it gets worse when you travel east, it means that New Zealand, Australia, the Pacific Island teams and even Japan have a massive advantage over everyone else.

[00:05:46]Now of course, you still have to be a decent rugby team to take advantage of that and so we saw in the old Tri Nations, approximately 75% of the time, the All Blacks started with two home fixtures or two of their first three games were at home with the third match being in Australia, which is hardly the most disrupting schedule.

[00:06:08]In contrast, approximately 75% of the time, the Springboks had to start with two away matches in Australia and New Zealand. It meant that most of the time, by the time our home games rolled around, the competition was either over or all but over.

[00:06:27]That's one side of it.

[00:06:28]But in terms of the TV money, South Africa contributes the lion's share of the television audience. So when you talk about advertising money, we are the ones who were effectively bankrolling Australian and New Zealand Rugby. Just look at the population size, guys. South Africa, and and these are just approximate numbers, South Africa, we've got about 60 million people. Australia is around 25 million. New Zealand is like five or six million, something like that, okay?

[00:06:55]Even if a smidgen of the population in South Africa is watching the rugby, we still outnumber whatever it is that Australia and New Zealand are contributing. And these are the people to whom you are selling advertising. So advertisers are selling to who exactly? Most of the time to us because we are the ones that are making up the bulk of the TV audience. The money is coming from us, which is one of the reasons that I'm so happy we're in the URC now. Let those Aussies and Kiwis, especially the ones who accused us falsely of leaving when they in fact kicked us out, let them fend for themselves, I say.

[00:07:36]And so I find it extremely ironic that Impey here is basically saying that by changing from US dollars to rands, New Zealand would be propping up South African Rugby.

[00:07:47]That magnificent All Blacks era in the 2010s where no one could stop them?

[00:07:52]Yeah, that was paid for by us.

[00:07:55]As I've said before, we are slow learners.

[00:07:59]We started Super 12 provinces when everyone else was playing with franchises.

[00:08:03]It took five years before someone finally put their foot down and we got to start the Tri Nations with two home games.

[00:08:10]But despite us being specialists in shooting ourselves in the foot, the boys in Plaat Klip do seem to finally have figured it all out.

[00:08:18]And that's bad news for the All Blacks and Wallabies and indeed everyone else.

[00:08:24]So let's talk about the US dollar allegation and recap what he is alleging. Brent Impey claims the killer blow that ended South Africa's time in Super Rugby wasn't just COVID or SA wanting to head north. According to him, it was SuperSport changing the television deal from US dollars to South African rand or rands, whichever you prefer. He says from 1995 all the way to 2020, every big SANZAAR broadcast negotiation was done in strong US dollars. That is correct. Then in 2020, SuperSport wanted to pay in rands instead. Impey points out that back in '95, one New Zealand dollar bought about three rand. By 2020, it was around 12 rand to the New Zealand dollar.

[00:09:08]>> [snorts] >> So the rand had taken a serious beating over the 25-year period. Funny enough, perhaps ironically, the rand has actually strengthened in the last while.

[00:09:17]Not massively, not massively, but it has strengthened. To be fair to the man, Impey that is, he's not making this up.

[00:09:25]Now listen, you guys know I want to badmouth the guy here, but we're going to be accurate, okay? And we're going to be fair. He's not making this up. The exchange rate numbers are real and in big multi-year sports TV contracts, the currency the deal is written in actually matters a lot.

[00:09:42]>> [snorts] >> It's not like sending your mate money on e-wallet or Wise where your bank just converts it and life goes on. If the contract [laughter] is fixed, and this is what's important, cuz usually these things are three years, five years, eight years, whatever, okay? But that number, in this case in US dollars or in rand, it's fixed.

[00:10:01]Okay? And if it's fixed in a currency that is heavily weakened, i.e. the rand, the real money the other unions receive after conversion shrinks sometimes dramatically.

[00:10:13]So SA is accepting the rand deal would have made things completely uneconomic for New Zealand. Which he may very well have a point, but if the rand strengthens as unlikely as it might be, but as it turns out it has actually done, then that actually helps them.

[00:10:29]He claims New Zealand rugby would have had to start subsidizing not just Australia and Argentina, but effectively the whole lot including South Africa.

[00:10:36]And they simply couldn't afford it.

[00:10:39]So as I said, credit where it's due, the maths checks out. But here's where Impey starts sounding a bit like the villain in the story. Instead of sitting down as long-time partners and negotiating a fair adjustment that reflected how much SuperSport money had helped keep Super Rugby alive for decades, he frames the South Africans as the ones who deliberately made the deal impossible.

[00:11:03]Really?

[00:11:05]South African SuperSport had been one of the financial engines of the competition for a long time.

[00:11:10]Now when SA wants to protect its own economy and pay in its own currency during, let's be honest, tough times, suddenly it's a deal breaker. And New Zealand has no choice but to cut the four franchises loose.

[00:11:26]It feels very convenient.

[00:11:29]SA had wanted to move north for years anyway, better time zones, better money, better calendar.

[00:11:35]COVID just sped everything up.

[00:11:37]But Impey leans hard on this currency technicality to play the victim, I believe, and justify walking away from the relationship.

[00:11:46]At the end of the day, it's classic rugby politics. Big unions looking after number one.

[00:11:54]New Zealand saw an opportunity to reshape things in their favor and they took it.

[00:11:58]But what do you think?

[00:12:00]Do you agree it feels like a bit of an easy way out? Or do you believe the rand switch was a genuine financial killer blow?

[00:12:09]Let me know in the comment section down below.

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[00:13:03]And since you're still here, I've got two videos to recommend for you.

[00:13:07]You may have heard of them, the Ndungane twins. Well, I had the privilege of interviewing both of them exclusively for this channel. My chat with Akona is on your screen over here and my one-on-one with Odwa is over here. Pick one, enjoy it, and I'll see you next time.