All Blacks going on sabbaticals should not be coming back to New Zealand Rugby
These are hardly the first All Blacks sabbaticals, but they should definitely be the last.
Honestly, if being an elite All Black – because it’s only the better performers and earners who are afforded these paid holidays – is such a chore, then we ought to start car pooling. Yep, I’ll knock up a roster and we can all take turns driving our disaffected stars to the airport.
Not for another sabbatical, mind. No, if having to play rugby in New Zealand really is all too much for these blokes then they’re welcome to go for good.
As it stands, Sam Whitelock and Brodie Retallick are off playing in Japan. Beauden Barrett’s on some kind of extended annual leave, as he tends to be at the start of most seasons, but has also teed up a deal in Japan to be taken in the next year or two.
Whitelock, in an act of true selflessness, will return to New Zealand for the start of the test season when he’ll, presumably, be unveiled as All Blacks captain. No doubt he’ll talk about what an honour and privilege that is, as opposed to hardship that was captaining the Crusaders.
Let’s linger on Whitelock for a minute, who’s contracted to New Zealand Rugby (NZR) until the end of 2023. Should he hang around that long, he’ll attend a fourth Rugby World Cup.
He won’t be an old man, at 34, but will have put a huge amount of miles into the legs. Whitelock’s already played 115 tests and, to be absolutely honest, looked a little jaded by the end of last year’s World Cup.
His mental toughness is legendary but you do wonder about the wisdom of NZR signing him to such a lengthy deal.
Retallick will be back next year and, like Whitelock, is already an all-time All Blacks great. He’s said he considered going overseas for good and, frankly, once a guy’s talking like that, then maybe he should leave.
This idea that NZR have to go cap in hand to these blokes and say ‘pretty please with sugar on top, we’d love you to stay’ is actually kind of pathetic. They prefer to paint it as pragmatic and point to these stints as mechanisms by which guys can refresh, boost their bank accounts and still be a valuable commodity to the All Blacks.
Japanese clubs simply offer more money that NZR can and it’s a win for everyone, we’re told.
Thing is, none of us really begrudge these guys their dough. If they want to earn bigger bucks overseas then, as I said, we’re happy to give them a lift to the airport.
It’s just that when we’re battling away on a fifth, or with luck maybe a tenth, of what the best All Blacks are on, it’s hard to hear them cry poor and say they need a stint in Japan to boost the coffers.
You wonder, too, what some of their younger or less illustrious team-mates make of it.
One of the knocks on Hurricanes forward Vaea Fifita, for instance, was that he started acting like an All Black. Never mind that he actually was an All Black, he quickly found it wasn’t his place to question anything, make a show of his improved pay packet or to ask for some extra time off.
Fifita had got the wrong end of the stick you see. He’d seen other people behave that way and assumed that’s what All Blacks did. More fool him.
Equality and empowerment are among the great All Blacks myths. We’re told of the lengths the team go to to ensure everyone feels valued and able to express their opinions.
“There’s no such thing as a dumb question’’ is a staple of any All Blacks media day, as an experienced campaigner or coach talks about the ways in which they upskill the new boys.
All for one and one for all, etcetera, etcetera.
You wonder if that education includes the promise that, if you do well enough for long enough your reward will be a year off from having to play test and Super Rugby at all.
Unlike our Super franchises, the All Blacks aren’t a new-ish invention. They’ve been around a while now, with many a fine player representing the jersey with distinction.
It’s hard for any team in any sport to replace one good player with another, but year after year, decade after decade, the All Blacks have done that better than most. No matter how storied a player has been, sentiment has rarely been allowed to influence selection.
Sabbaticals are not what rugby in New Zealand is about. They take already well-compensated individuals and put them above the team and that’s not who we are.
We don’t just pride ourselves on playing 15-man rugby here because we think it looks nice, but because it’s about equality and about every person contributing to the success of the team. Of no-one being too dominant and no-one being overlooked.
If guys can’t buy into that anymore, then they’re welcome to go. Only not on sabbatical.
No, it’s time they left for good.
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Comments on RugbyPass
Bulls by 5. Plus another 50.
3 Go to commentsJohan Goosen avatar. Cute. Surely someone at RP knows how to do a google image search?
3 Go to commentsCan’t these games play a little earlier? Asking for a friend.
3 Go to commentsIt’s impressive that we can see huge stadiums with attendance in the 40 000 to 50 000 region. It shows how popular this competition is becoming. What is even more impressive is the massive growth in broadcast viewership. The URC is one of the two best leagues in the World, the other being the Top14.
7 Go to commentsChristie is not Sottish, like the majority of the Scotland team.
2 Go to commentsHold the phone, decline over-rated. Is it a one game, dead cat bounce or the real thing? Has the Penney dropped? Stay tuned.
45 Go to commentsTotally deserved win for the Crusaders Far smarter than the Chiefs who seem to be avoiding the basics when it matters Hotham showed them what was missing and Hannah seems a real find - a tad light but that can be fixed over time
8 Go to commentsGreat insight into the performance culture with Sarries and I predict Christie will be a fixture in the Scotland team now for some time to come. However, he is slightly missing his own point around Scotland “being soft” when he cites physicality examples in defence of that slight. The issue is much closer to the example he referenced around feeling off before a game but being told “it doesn’t matter, you can still play well” by Farrell. Until Scotland can get their psyche in that square, they will carry on folding under extreme pressure…
2 Go to comments> We are having to adapt, evolve and innovate more than when we were in Super Rugby where there was only really one style that everybody had to play to gain the most success. Have = able to? Interesting what that one style might be? I thought SA sides still had bad tours now, or at least bad schedule, months away? Those extra few hours flights have to be a killer though, no surprise to see their sides doing so badly at the start of the season each year. I wouldn’t enjoy that unfairness as a supporter.
7 Go to commentsThe problem for NZ, and Aus, is they ripped up the SR model and lost a massive chunk of revenue that hasn’t been replaced. Don’t forget SA clubs went North because they were left with no choice, Argy unceremoniously binned and Japan cast adrift. Now SR wasn’t perfect, far from it, but they’ve jumped into something without an effective plan, so far, to replace what they’ve lost. The biggest revenue potential now lies in Japan but it won’t be easy or quick to unlock, they are incredibly insular in culture as a nation. In the meantime, there is a serious time bomb sitting under SH rugby and if it happens then the current financial challenges will look like a picnic. IF the Boks follow their provincial teams and head north then it’s revenue meltdown. Not guaranteed to happen but the status quo is a very odd hybrid, with the Boks pointing one way and the clubs pointing the other way. And for as long as that remains then the threat is real.
45 Go to commentsI think Etene has had some good tuition, likely while at the Warriors to be a professional that helped his rugby jump, but he was certainly thrown in the deep end way too early. Should have arguably 20 less SR caps, and therefor a way better record that he does at his age, but his development would have been fast tracked by the need to satiate his signing away from league. Again, credit to him and others that he has done it so well. Easy to fall over under that pressure in the big leagues like that but he kept at it when I myself wasn’t sure he was good enough.
1 Go to commentsAwesome story. I wonder what a bigger American (SA) scene might have mean for Brex.
1 Go to comments“Johnny McNicholl and the Crusaders” save a Penney. Who has been in camp this week and showed them how to play?
8 Go to commentsSo, reports of the Crusaders’ demise / terminal decline are perhaps just - slightly - premature/exaggerated…? 🤔 Will we see a deep-dive into that by the estimable Rugbypass scribes, and maybe one or two mea culpas? Thought not.
8 Go to comments1. The Chiefs are rudderless without DMac, which enhances his AB chances 2. Chiefs pack are powderpuffs. The hard men arent there anymore 3. They had their golden title chance last yr and wont threaten this yr. Gone in second round of playoffs.
8 Go to commentsHonestly, why did you have to publish such a foolish article the day they play us? 😂
45 Go to comments> They are not standalone entities. They are linked to an amateur association which holds the FFR licence that allows the professional side to compete in the league. That’s a great rule. This looks like the chicken or egg professional scenario. How long is it going to be before the club can break even (if that is even a thing in French rugby)? If the locals aren’t into well it would be good to se them drop to amateur level (is it that far?). Hope they can reset from this level and be more practical, there will be a time when they can rebuild (if France has there setup right).
1 Go to commentsWhat about changing the ball? To something heavier and more pointed that bounces unpredictably. Not this almost round football used these days.
35 Go to commentsThis is the problem with conservative mindsets and phycology, and homogenous sports, everybody wants to be the same, use the i-win template. Athlete wise everyone has to have muscles and work at the gym to make themselves more likely to hold on that one tackle. Do those players even wonder if they are now more likely to be tackled by that player as a result of there “work”? Really though, too many questions, Jake. Is it better Jake? Yes, because you still have that rugby of ole that you talk about. Is it at the highest International level anymore? No, but you go to your club or checkout your representative side and still engage with that ‘beautiful game’. Could you also have a bit of that at the top if coaches encouraged there team to play and incentivized players like Damian McKenzie and Ange Capuozzo? Of course we could. Sadly Rugby doesn’t, or didn’t, really know what direction to go when professionalism came. Things like the state of northern pitches didn’t help. Over the last two or three decades I feel like I’ve been fortunate to have all that Jake wants. There was International quality Super Rugby to adore, then the next level below I could watch club mates, pulling 9 to 5s, take on the countries best in representative rugby. Rugby played with flair and not too much riding on the consequences. It was beautiful. That largely still exists today, but with the world of rugby not quite getting things right, the picture is now being painted in NZ that that level of rugby is not required in the “pathway” to Super Rugby or All Black rugby. You might wonder if NZR is right and the pathway shouldn’t include the ‘amateur’, but let me tell you, even though the NPC might be made up of people still having to pull 9-5s, we know these people still have dreams to get out of that, and aren’t likely to give them. They will be lost. That will put a real strain on the concept of whether “visceral thrill, derring-do and joyful abandon” type rugby will remain under the professional level here in NZ. I think at some point that can be eroded as well. If only wanting the best athlete’s at the top level wasn’t enough to lose that, shutting off the next group, or level, or rugby players from easy access to express and showcase themselves certainly will. That all comes back around to the same question of professionalism in rugby and whether it got things right, and rugby is better now. Maybe the answer is turning into a “no”?
35 Go to commentsWow, didn’t realise there was such apathy to URC in SA, or by Champions Cup teams. Just read Nick’s article on Crusaders, are Sharks a similar circumstance? I think SA rugby has been far more balanced than NZs, no?
4 Go to comments