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The All Blacks resting policy may actually work

By Hamish Bidwell
(Photo by Ross Land/Getty Images)

Instinctively, I’m against the resting of All Blacks.

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I want to see the best against the best as often as possible, rather than when the national coaching and training staffs allow, or the players deign to appear.

But what if it works?

The Six Nations is almost upon us and, as that competition wears on and Super Rugby splutters into life, I know which is going to appeal to me more.

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But how many Rugby World Cups have they won in the Northern Hemisphere? How are the insatiable appetites of club owners helping the nations in which they reside?

I truly want to say that wrapping athletes in cotton wool is anathema to success. That you only prepare to play by playing, that no amount of rest or training ever produced a winner.

Sport’s achievers are those who prove themselves in the furnace of competition, not those who push out PBs in the gym but shy away from actually competing on the paddock.

But I come back to this idea that what if managing workloads actually does win New Zealand the next Rugby World Cup?

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No-one’s going to forget 2007 in a hurry. We put faith in the plan of All Blacks coaches Graham Henry, Wayne Smith and Steve Hansen, that excusing players from matches and rotating the team holus-bolus would work.

History shows that world cup campaign was a spectacular failure, with those coaches exceedingly lucky to retain their jobs.

I’m still not convinced that method is any more valid now.

But look at the alternatives. It’s so long since anyone other than New Zealand and South Africa has won a Rugby World Cup it’s not funny.

Here’s an event that’s been going since 1987 and England are the only Northern Hemisphere team – in 2003 – to emerge victorious.

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When you look at it that way, how bad can our way of doing it actually be?

If the All Blacks don’t win this year’s world cup, it won’t be because we restricted players’ minutes in the months before the tournament. It’ll be because the team, as currently coached and constructed, isn’t that good.

Now, of course, there’s a separate argument to be made about Super Rugby and how we’ve butchered that and why it might never be a worthwhile competition again. Even if we can’t fix it, we do at least need to find a way to make it relevant.

The model we have now isn’t fit for purpose and never will be while we allow the All Blacks’ participation to be optional.

It’s funny how, increasingly, the money in professional teams’ sport is reserved for clubs and franchises, but how in rugby we seek to doggedly maintain the primacy of the international game.

Now give me test cricket over the Indian Premier League every day of the week. It’s just that the market says my opinion is wrong and, as Twenty20 competitions continue to proliferate, the days of watching our beloved Black Caps might be numbered – especially in the five-day format.

Rugby will surely go the same way eventually but, for now, we have New Zealand Rugby control and that means All Blacks only playing franchise and test football for the purpose of preparing for Rugby World Cups. No matter where we are in the cycle, it’s only that tournament that counts.

It’s a strange way of thinking and something you assume will be abandoned eventually but, for now, it’s what we have and it actually serves us better than the methods employed by our rivals.

I don’t like players not playing, but show me a model that has consistently worked better for Rugby World Cups.

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J
Jon 9 hours ago
Jake White: Are modern rugby players actually better?

This 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”?

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