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The recruitment of Burns is an admission of defeat for the nanny state model
I’m fully in favour of real professional rugby coming to New Zealand.
For us to pick our best players from wherever they may live in the world and welcoming elite overseas contractors to our competitions.
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New Zealand Rugby (NZR) favours a nanny state model, though, and that is their right. If you want to remain an All Black you must play here.
The domestic game is sacrosanct – at least in the sense it has to remain a vehicle by which to fairly select our national teams.
So what’s this Freddie Burns thing all about then? How is importing an English first five-eighth – nearer the end of his career than the start – consistent with maintaining Super Rugby’s status as the breeding ground for All Blacks?
Either we have genuinely professional competitions, or we have the nanny state. I don’t see how we can be doing both.
If nothing else, the recruitment of Burns is an admission of defeat. It says our pathways are broken and we need other people’s cast-offs.
Now, that might be an unfair way to characterise Burns and he might well make a telling impact at the Highlanders. But it doesn’t alter the fact that his signing is entirely inconsistent with our model.
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And what of our coaching?
Is hiring recently-retired players to do their coaching apprenticeship at the Super Rugby coalface dumbing our game down. Why can’t we make the players we actually have better, rather than recruit them from elsewhere?
I’m going to go off on a tangent here.
From Vaea Fifita’s club coach in Wellington, to those who looked after him at provincial, Super and All Blacks level, I’ve asked them all why they couldn’t make a rugby player out of that bloke.
I get that English wasn’t his first language and I understand that maybe he was slow or unable to understand what was required of him, but the man had every physical tool you could wish for in a forward.
And now he’s long gone.
We can wring our hands when seasoned All Blacks decide to cash in overseas at the end of their careers, but the current crisis is in the tier that Fifita occupied. It’s the absence of the good provincial and Super players – who go on to accumulate a few All Blacks caps – that is really hurting our game.
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But Fifita is also emblematic of something else.
It’s the athlete who relies on talent to succeed and then has nothing else to fall back on when that’s not sufficient.
Our game is full of them, for a variety of reasons.
The player pool doesn’t just get shallow at secondary schools’ level now. Kids are leaving the game at intermediate, because they simply aren’t robust enough to play safely.
The big kid and the fast kid remain and then progress from 1st XVs and into Super Rugby squads.
At no point do we adequately appear to coach them, because the same flaws in their game persist even up to All Blacks level.
The Burns signing is an admission of failure, from what I can see. It says we don’t have the players or the coaches to sustain our own – alleged – professional competition.
We have neglected the bottom and middle parts of the pyramid to the extent that we don’t have the ability, intellect or work ethic to prosper in the high-performance part of the game.
Which is fine, if you’re running a professional league. You just sign someone from France or Ireland or wherever and you plug the hole.
Only we’re not doing that in New Zealand. And yet Burns is coming to save everyone’s blushes, just the same.
It’s laughable.
It’s a sure sign of the Dunning-Kruger effect when someone starts criticising the intellect of others. NZ rugby has made its fair share of mistakes, but the these “everybody is stupid except me” type articles do little to advance the conversation around what those mistakes are and what the solutions might be. If Burns has been signed to help someone like Cam Miller develop, well OK then, but that’s not likely the real reason. Burns will get a lot of game time, especially if Mitch Hunt still has concussion issues. As for the central contracts debate, if this guy knew anything he would realise that it is precisely because we loosened the controls around contracts that some franchises are able to horde talent in certain positions.
Lord what nonsense..if you want to kill rugby as a pathway for local players just serve it up on a plate to big money. Northern rugby, a few local boys and imports. Is that what this guy wants for New Zealand? Pass on that.
I’m wondering where he thinks the money will come from for all these imports, Super rugby would drop to the standard of major league rugby in a heartbeat.
Odd article. I’m a Landers fan and have loved us scouting overseas players. Himeno was revelation and wished we could have kept him. He was our best 8 in years. Landers have struggled since Soponga left not having a consistent 10 to control the game. We need experience and Freddie can also help grow Millar who is a young talent coming through. I’m hoping Freddie bring a different northern hemisphere style that could prove an advantage for us.
I reckon it will be a great day when a Kiwi born Japanese player turns out for NZ. Have
I missed it? Ferns?
As an English rugby fan, I think this is an outstanding signing. They have signed an experienced, international class ten, who has a wealth of experience, who plays a different style of rugby and can help your tens develop a different way of playing. He has almost definitely taken a pay cut, many English, French and Japanese teams would love to have him on board. He has no major injury history, is not going to be called up for internationals, has spent a large part of his career as the second choice ten, so won't be too perturbed if he finds himself in that role. Indeed, last season he came off the bench in the English final, and made the winning contribution!!
Yeah. I think it's great. NZ rugby can include a few signings and keep what makes it NZ rugby: NZ players....
Another poorly thought through hatchet job from this author.
So one of our Super Rugby teams have brought in a foreign first five (at a time when Mitch Hunt is injured and there is a ton of young talent coming through in the position.) How many foreign first fives are regular first choice at French and English clubs?
So far eight out of nine Rugby World Cups have been won by countries with centralised models. Why on earth would we want to copy the serial underachievers?
Whole heartedly agree. Even the suggestion that he engaged in anything approaching thought is kind, just look at what Ireland have achieved by centralising their contracts