1 week ago
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May 8, 2026 — 11:45am
Rugby Australia secured a few big wins in the past week.
The Anzac Day Test has become rugby’s worst-kept secret. Both sides have offered enough background information to give the concept air time without officially confirming it before all the details are ironed out.
This masthead understands they’ll both get at least $4 million, with the eventual height of the ceiling depending on a few commercial factors.
The second victory was the appointment of Steve Lancaster as New Zealand Rugby chief executive. Lancaster is an eminently likeable Kiwi rugby bloke who would be happiest having a yarn about the next No. 6 coming out of the Crusaders (yes, he’s another Crusaders man) rather than engaging in rugby politics.
His previous role within NZ Rugby involved dealing with their provincial unions, and as he recently told this masthead, those grassroots types have a way of humbling people.
RA’s ace card, though, is NZ Rugby chair David Kirk.
One of the challenges in the trans-Tasman relationship in recent years has been the enormous amount of ignorance between the two countries.
Australians wouldn’t know if Taranaki was on the South Island or North Island in New Zealand, let alone comprehend the enormous importance and power of the provincial unions. While Kiwis still can’t truly appreciate how Angus Crichton’s move to the Waratahs can move the needle towards rugby - even a little - in Sydney’s ultra-competitive sporting market.
Ironically, former NZ Rugby chief executive Mark Robinson now lives in Queensland and probably understands Australia’s challenges more deeply than ever, but Kirk is a genuine New Zealand-Australian. He has lived in Sydney for most of the last two decades.
Kirk won’t do RA’s bidding, but in his role as NZ Rugby chair - and several sources have told this masthead that board is a bit lightweight and run by Kirk - he has clearly advanced a new philosophy of mutual benefit between Australia and New Zealand, replacing the zero-sum game that characterised the tense years between Hamish McLennan and Robinson.
Aside from the multimillion-dollar payoff, this masthead has been told that one reason NZ Rugby backed the Anzac Day concept was to support RA’s desire for a new calendar event that would generate interest in the constant battle for attention against the NRL and AFL. That empathetic approach has Kirk written all over it.
This isn’t to say that personalities were the only factor dictating prior quarrels. During the COVID years, McLennan’s approach was bullish and NZ Rugby certainly felt he held a gun to their heads at times. But the context was that RA felt under existential threat and, in McLennan’s thinking, the means justified the ends.
Former Wallabies coach Dave Rennie’s unusual public display of anger when the All Blacks didn’t board a flight to Perth for a 2021 Bledisloe Test also reflected the stresses of that unusual and unhappy moment in time.
The landscape has even shifted positively since last year. RA is on much firmer footing after the British and Irish Lions tour, and has concrete figures to show NZ Rugby proof of how much money they could make from an Anzac Test.
Across the ditch, NZ Rugby was operating with three major unknowns when it initially rejected the Bledisloe Cup deal last year - the new broadcast deal with Sky was not in place, provincial union funding (about $33m a year) had not yet been agreed, and the collective agreement with the players (36.56 per cent of revenue) was yet to be signed.
Now, they are all done. Making big decisions is much easier with budget certainty.
The Anzac Day Bledisloe Cup Test itself invites a degree of ambivalence. It feels like a Coldplay stadium concert: it’ll make a lot of money, many people will go and have a good time, but musically it won’t push the boundaries.
However, it points to a closer relationship between Australia and New Zealand in an era of shared challenges.
The NRL is no longer just Australia’s problem - it has landed on New Zealand’s plate. And South Africa have left them both behind, on the field and in the competitions they play.
What the Anzac Day Bledisloe Test might really signify is that Australia and New Zealand have firmly decided they can’t live without each other.
