Of course —with Professional Rugby the sense of entitlement goes a terrible long way. The Dunedin City Council, cracked and broken, has been unfairly or dishonestly “short-changed” by Otago Rugby and big brother NZRU. So too is the community of South Auckland (history: Jokers Bars, Gambling money spent out of area on Otago Rugby and Racing). What a delightful experiential and lucrative background exists to the Otago Union.
Straight up and rational, in the course of a chairman’s work, it’s simply the case that there’s been no mandate to name the rugby sponges who misused millions of dollars of public funds; although Jeremy Curragh, former ORFU change manager, suffered a moment when he was forced to blurt that a lesser amount of charitable funds had been misused by the union in yet another of its darkest hours. [enter *curragh* in the search box at right]
Nor has prosecution of ‘the deserving’ been progressed (fact), but then NZRU and DIA are fully committed to ‘looking forward’ rather than back at their contentious and damning files that might be, suddenly(!), lost or misplaced, or smoothly sealed and suppressed. That’s the political climate, nefariously yet continuously supported by a line-up of senior government ministers along with NZ Police, IPCA, SFO, the Auditor-general, and yes, the Ombudsmen.
Doug Harvie will be glad he is now (personally) out of the spotlight.
Like it never happened. Not on his watch. Like it would not in future.
A clipped accounting English.
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### ODT Online Wed, 21 Jan 2015
Rugby: Harvie stepping down after getting tough job done
By Steve Hepburn
Doug Harvie will step down from the Otago Rugby Football Union’s board with the sport in a much better position than when he arrived. Harvie, a Dunedin chartered accountant, became chairman of the newly structured board in May, 2012. He was shoulder-tapped to stand and felt he could not say no.
Harvie (57), a former loose forward for the University and Dunedin clubs, said the new board did not want to look back on why it found itself in such a tough position. It was focused on getting the business of rugby back into a good shape in Otago.
Read more
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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr
*Image tweaked by whatifdunedin
What if? Dunedin... 
Doug Harvie talks of the struggle to get the ORFU back on its feet.
Big hours, a lot of work. Not one mention of how the ratepayers of Dunedin got them out of the knee deep shit , that those that went before him left the union within a cats whisker of it going into liquidation.
Now he is Chair of The Highlanders. Let us see how they will screw the ratepayers, and put the DCC a step closer to the cats whisker.
Doug will be able to spend most of the year in Singapore with the Abandonzers, formerly the Highlanders. I doubt Daaave will have an anchor tenant for the stadium for very long, not with Asian investment in the team and the very stunning Singapore Sports Hub coming into its own and truly needing to be filled more regularly with internationals than fubar. The rust at fubar never sleeps?!
Is Doug smarter and more parochial than we think – or, is RUGBY more important than Dunedin.
The ORFU are shameless when they roll out the rhetoric about grassroots and schoolboy rugby as their primary concern.
In 2005 Neville Frost (ORFU’s Business Development Manager) provided TTCF (the pokie trust) with a large list of all the clubs and entities that could apply for pokie funding from the Jokers bars. It even included the Waikato Rugby Club and some racing clubs so one could assume this was to be payment for professional player transfers.
The main benefactors of the funding were ORFU (Head office), the Centre of Excellence for Amateur Sport, Otago University Rugby and Waikato Rugby Union. The funding was mainly for high performance salaries, high performance equipment and ground maintenance. Nothing that grassroots or schoolboy rugby or their volunteers would have ever seen.
TTCF granted over $7 million in pokie funds to the ORFU between 2005-10 and some of the struggling Dunedin Rugby Clubs voiced their concerns about where this charitable pokie money was going.
Do the Dunedin clubs, volunteers and public still believe it went to grassroots rugby or do they now realise they are the warm fuzzy when the mainstream media contact officials at the ORFU.
Rugby is popular but so was the Roman arena. Glad none of my children played it. Thugby. And winner takes all by being bigger and stronger than all the rest – briefly. Doesn’t surprise me that the game’s ethos carries over into arrogance, a sense of entitlement and willingness to bully anyone to get money. Alpha male shit. See what happens to the majority of the players at all levels. http://www.spectator.co.uk/2014/11/what-schools-dont-want-you-to-know-about-rugby/
Diane, that Spectator article http://www.spectator.co.uk/2014/11/what-schools-dont-want-you-to-know-about-rugby/
is horrifying. We recoil in horror from reports of children whose limbs are broken, who suffer brain bleeds, are killed by family / household violence. Statistics are kept on them. We are urged to watch out and report child abuse, and yet this goes on – I don’t imagine it is any different in NZ.
“Our own small study in Scottish schools, the first UK study in 11 years, showed how dangerous rugby can be. We found that the average child player had a one-in-six risk of being injured in a season, many injuries were serious and more than two-thirds required more than three weeks away from play. In other studies, the risk of injury in a season varies from 10 per cent to 90 per cent, depending on the definition of ‘injury’. Injury reporting is another problem. Concussion is under-reported and often unrecognised but can account for more than 25 per cent of injuries in some studies, as can fractures….
…The injuries sustained during contact are not mild bruises: they are serious and include fractures, concussions, dislocated shoulders and ligamentous tears. It takes some force to wrench a child’s shoulder out of joint and to knock a boy out, smashing his brain, leaving it bruised and bleeding.”
Martin, you never let the truth get in the way of a good story. The ORFU if it handled the amount of $7 million between 2005-10 plus all the DCC handouts and subsidies – like free Carisbrook lighting towers plus operation of same – yet still managed to go broke, forcing the DCC again to buy it off the hook by purchasing Carisbrook for the grossly inflated $7.5 million, plus forgiving of over $700,000 of unpaid accounts then Doug Harvie has every right to be proud of the organisation he took over with nothing but a broken wing and no prayer. In fact the man is a diamond, just ask any of his fellow rogues who have mysteriously melted into the ether. It is now, as usual, all up to the DCC and its ratepayers to keep it going through the back door of the Forsyth Barr Stadium. At least its got the sum of $3.6 million for the resale of Carisbrook to come in on the never never.
Dave Canan on 39 Dunedin News tonight says ORFU announced some bad news today – see tomorrow’s ODT.
Still not balancing the books?
Does that mean DVML/DCC will want to provide MORE subsidies to Professional Rugby, again ????
HOW MANY MILLIONS HAVE BEEN STOLEN FROM DCC RATEPAYERS BY ORFU OVER THE YEARS. We hasten to add.
Meanwhile….
ODT Online Sat, 13 Feb 2016
Rugby: ORFU advertising jobs in coaching, management
By Steve Hepburn
The Otago Rugby Football Union is looking to add jobs to help its members and clubs but it says it is not a return to empire building of previous years. The union is advertising for a commercial manager, a clubs and schools liaison officer and two coach development officers.
Read more
█ The union will hold its annual meeting next month.
### ODT Online Tue, 15 Mar 2016
No Dunedin test, tough times send Otago rugby back into red
By Steve Hepburn
After three consecutive years of profit, the Otago Rugby Football Union recorded a loss of $162,000 last year, attributable, the union says, to declining gate sales, commercial revenue and not hosting an All Black test. ORFU general manager Richard Kinley said while a break-even result was signalled at the start of 2015, it had ‘‘not quite panned out like that”.
Read more
The article on page 3 ODT ‘Dementia link to rugby claim’ may give us an insight as to why the ORFU didn’t front up and pay for the black tie piss up. “We have no recollection of being there sir.”
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{Link: http://www.odt.co.nz/sport/rugby/376295/rugby-ex-lion-adamant-dementia-link -Eds}