No CEO, no head coach, but the All Blacks can fire pot shots at Australia

Thank goodness New Zealand Rugby (NZR) is in such good heart.

No All Blacks coach, no chief executive, no chief financial officer, no chief commercial officer, no head of high performance, no worries.

You and I might want to have recruited those people by now. In the case of the chief executive particularly, there’s been months to get that done.

Rassie Erasmus dissects the Springboks ahead of the 2027 RWC

Rassie Erasmus dissects the Springboks ahead of the 2027 RWC

But, no. Because the good ship NZR is sailing along so smoothly, the priority this week has been to sledge Australia for scheduling a clash with Hong Kong China.

My memory fails me a bit these days. Things that happened yesterday draw a blank, while I can vividly remember being at a mate’s place to watch New Zealand play Italy in the opening match of the 1987 Rugby World Cup.

Don’t ask me who has kicked off all subsequent tournaments, because I have no idea.

That’s because it doesn’t really matter.

I can rattle you off all the finalists from 1987 in sequential order, but none of the opening matches I’m afraid.

Rightly or wrongly, I’m mostly looking forward to the knockout games at the 2027 Rugby World Cup. Quite eagerly, in actual fact.

On that score, I can’t say I feel cheated that Australia and Hong Kong China are playing the first game of the tournament, in Perth. Good luck to both of them.

I hope it’s a stunning spectacle and the host nation is good enough to win. There’d be egg on a few faces if the Wallabies weren’t.

Australia historically does these types of events so well. The way the wider public supported the 2003 Rugby World Cup was stunning and created a real festival atmosphere.

It genuinely felt, for instance, like all of Tasmania adopted one team or the other when Romania met Namibia in Launceston. Now, I imagine Hong Kong China won’t be the sentimental favourite when they play Australia, but their deeds will be cheered and celebrated nonetheless.

World Cups are ultimately about the victors, but it’s the smaller nations that help create the real feeling of it being a celebration of rugby. To me, booing the scheduling of Australia against Hong Kong China is kind of like booing Christmas.

And, as I say, no-one will care that it kicked off the tournament by the time we get to the final in Sydney.

Trans-Tasman banter has long been a staple of the New Zealand and Australian diet and something we all enjoy. It’s just that timing is everything in sport.

In this instance, the timing of the since-deleted post from the All Blacks’ Instagram account was off. The good folk at NZR simply aren’t in a position to be telling anyone how to handle their business right now.

I’d be looking to have hired a few key staff and won the actual tournament before I accused another nation of trying to duck a fight.

But maybe that’s just me.