The Orange

The NZRFU has today unveiled its plan to win the World Cup here in New Zealand in 2011.

Following the outstanding success of the rotational policy and the commitment to ensuring players don’t burn out before the 2011 event, the following initiatives have been announced:
1. All current All Blacks who won’t have had the crap knocked out of them by 2011 will be rested immediately for all games (except social soccer games) until some time in 2010.
2. A number of players who are likely to be in the team in 2011 will be selected from various primary school teams and rotated – the selectors are confident that the experiment with Toeava shows that they can put anyone in the backline and still win. The fact that some of the players will be only 11 or 12 is a positive, says Teacher Ted, as it means the Boks won’t be able to reach low enough to knock the head off key AB players
3. The NZRFU has communicated this decision to News Corp (our understanding is that the email involved the words “yourselves”,”go”, and “f@#k”.

If I was her, I’d be hopping mad …

I’ve been a bit quiet on the blogging front the last few weeks – apologies to both my readers.

But an article by David Campese reported on Fox Sports has fired me up. The fact that it’s Friday afternoon and close to knocking off time also helps!

In short, Campo reckons there’s too many tests and the All Blacks are demeaning the status of tests by rotation and trying players.

To an extent, I think he’s right – Tests are no longer tests but games played in between the World Cup. Some tests are more competitive than others but the reality is that many “tests” would be called friendlies if they were played by the round ball code.

But Campo’s suggestion that the number of tests should be limited so that the best players always play is a like Campo’s tackling technique – it’s a joke.

In the professional era, the game is a product and product is needed by the TV channels who happen to pay the rugby unions who pay the players. I’m sure the All Blacks (and Wallabies) will be delighted to take pay cuts just so Campo is happy.

It also shows how some people can’t move on. In the professional era, the long tours of years gone by have disappeared. That’s where the development used to happen. Now, coaches like Teacher Ted have no choice but to do their development in tests (be they friendlies or not).

England did exactly this and what happened – their C team got absolutely hammered on a tour or NZ and Oz … and two years later, the Poms won a world cup.

New Zealand, on the other hand, is doing its development while winning.