Could not agree with you more there...I'm astounded how rubbish the NZRL are at marketing themselves. This year they seem to have given themselves cool titles, high performance this, performance director extroidinare that...But read the line up and it's the same familiar, jobs-for-the-boys people there.
Bartercard failed, to a degree, through total lack of promotion. For ****s sake, I wanted to go along to the final Bulls game- Do you think I could find out ANYTHING about it?! No adverts for it, no price announcments...even going passed the RL ground in Chch I'd assumed it'd be at on the day gave no indication what was going on! Not even a sign or billboard on the fence! No wonder the comp flopped. You can't run a comp like that, how often do you see the NPC advertised, and drummed into you? And RL needs way more promoting than Union. The NZRL just seemed to think they could start the Bartercard up, then do nothing to push it, leave it on auto pilot. So it's not suprising what happened.
What about Promo DVDs? Even the Warriors DVD is an Aussie one! All the RL DVDs around are. I emailed the NZRL, and I know a few others did as well- Suggesting a Souvenior DVD of the 2005 Tri Series final should be released. No reply. I have the 2006 final on DVD, the official version- From Aussie again of Course. ALL my DVDs of NZ games and the '05 final are all bootlegs. The Rugby Union knows to cash in; the Cricket did with both Nathan Astles test double ton and Chappell Hadlee DVDs...where's the NZRLs thinking on this? They have a money spinner there, if they'd just think outside the square a little.
Thank God for the Mad Butcher, Bernie Wood, John Coffey & Richard Becht! Those guys have been great for providing RL books.
I still believe, if the NZRL management was cleaned out with all these mates, and some good managers and business heads were put in, RL in this country could really take off. And then the likes of TVNZ would have no choice but to cover it more, and cover it better!:crazy:
