All Black to snub 5-year deal
If it was a worry to see Ardie Savea and Jordie Barrett commit to New Zealand Rugby for only one more year this week, it will be positively alarming if Rieko Ioane soon makes the same short-term agreement.
There’s every chance Ioane, the best attacking weapon in world rugby, will turn down a five-year contract and instead say he’s prepared to sign only through to the end of the 2019 World Cup.
The problem is money and while in the early years of professionalism the public tendency was to brand a player mercenary if they held out for more, that is not the case with Ioane.
He won the 2017 World Rugby Breakthrough Player of the Year award but he probably should also have won the Player of the Year award for which he was short-listed.
He may only be 21 but Ioane sits in the top echelon of players. From an All Blacks perspective, they jot down Kieran Read, Ben Smith, Beauden Barrett and Ioane — then fill in the rest of the blanks.
Ioane’s expectation is that if NZR want to lock him in for a long time, they need to value him in line with the country’s best paid players.
That’s not thought to have happened yet, so Ioane has only given the Blues a verbal assurance he will be staying but hasn’t yet signed.
Talks will continue but if they can’t find a compromise value for a longer deal, Ioane will most likely sign a oneyear deal and look to reignite contract negotiations all over again at some stage next year.
No doubt, should Ioane only extend 12 months, NZR will send out the obligatory jubilant press release about retaining one of the world’s best emerging talents, just as they did when Barrett and Savea signed for that length of time.
But these short-term deals should not be celebrated, particularly if it becomes the case with Ioane.
This is the new landscape of test rugby: it’s ferociously fast and explosive, and in the outside backs, it is increasingly a young man’s game.
Ben Smith is the honourable exception but the realisation should be dawning that typically the prime years for many outside backs is between the ages of 20 and 25.
Look at Julian Savea, off to France at the age of 27. He looked more carthorse than race horse in Friday’s quarter-final when he tied up badly making his second long-range sprint in four minutes.
It’s also impossible to ignore the cultural changes that have arrived with the digital age of near instant gratification. The executive is heavily populated by an older generation, most of whom likely had to pay their dues to advance up the career ladder.
But Generation Y and Millennials don’t have that same sense of needing to be patient and nor do emerging young players necessarily assume they will devote their entire career to New Zealand.
That creates a dangerous situation. Ioane, Barrett and Savea, whatever they are thinking now, will almost certainly receive ridiculous offshore offers next year and will find themselves considering them seriously.