Carlos Spencer fears for the future of the game in New Zealand

Carlos Spencer is currently living and coaching on the other side of the world at Terenure College RFC in Dublin, but through his son, Blues player Payton, he still has a keen interest in the game back home in New Zealand. And what he hears and reads worries him.

Born and raised in the small town of Levin, Spencer started running around with a rugby ball, like most Kiwi kids did back in the day, at a very young age. However, the mercurial former All Blacks fly-half, nicknamed ‘King Carlos’, reckons that the same love of rugby is not present amongst today’s youth in New Zealand.

“Grassroots is struggling big time in New Zealand at the moment,” he says in the latest issue of The Rugby Journal.

“A lot of clubs had eight or nine teams back in the day, now they struggle to get four out. Not a lot of kids are growing up playing rugby now, or wanting to play rugby; there’s other sports that are of more interest to them, like football and basketball.

“Go back twenty or thirty years, the fastest-growing sport was rugby. It’s not anymore, you know? It’s basketball, it’s football, rugby is probably about the third in New Zealand. The rise of Steven Adams (centre for Houston Rockets in the NBA), he’s the big draw card, he’s got big clinics in New Zealand right now. Some people are picking basketball over first fifteen rugby, that would have been unheard of in my time. There are other avenues in professional sport where they can make money now, right?”

“I don’t know if it can [get back to what it was], it’s not a quick fix. New Zealand Rugby have a few challenges ahead of them, but they’re not stupid, they know that. It’s no secret, but that’s the good thing about New Zealand, we’re such a small nation but we’ll always have natural gifted rugby players.”

Being one of the game’s greatest entertainers, Spencer would have inspired a fair few youngsters to have picked up an oval ball himself, during his time with the All Blacks, Blues and Auckland.

But after a career spanning 35 Tests and 291 points for New Zealand; four National Provincial Championships and 492 points for Auckland; and three Super Rugby titles and 620 points for Blues, his focus turned to coaching.

Spells at the Sharks and the Kings in South Africa were followed by two years in Japan with the Munakata Sanix Blues. In 2015, he returned to New Zealand where he took up assistant roles with the Hurricanes, Blues women and the Black Ferns XV, via a short American adventure with NOLA Gold in the MLR.

So how did he end up at a grassroots club in Ireland?

“It came through chatting with a business partner,” Spencer revealed. “I don’t know how we got onto it, but he mentioned something about coaching Terenure and I think we were just joking. And then I came back and had a conversation and thought, okay, if they can make a few things work, then that might be able to happen. Five months later, and we’re here.”

It was the draw of a head coach role that convinced the 50-year-old this was the job for him. “I’ve always been happy being an assistant coach, I just didn’t really feel like I wanted the stress of being a head coach,” he said. “The difference around this role is that it’s not as demanding as a professional environment, so I thought it would be good for me to get a bit more exposure to that role. I’ve been down the head coach route before [for a season with the Kings in South Africa, winning just one of his ten games], I know how challenging it is.

“I’m just really excited about the next few years, being back in grassroots again and just trying to put my stamp on the club.”