We’re good but we ought to be

Let’s be honest, I’d be digging myself a hole if I said New Zealand was not the best rugby nation in the world. But it’s nothing worth bragging about. The fact of the matter is we should be the best and it would be greatly concerning if we weren’t at least in the conversation.

We are one of only seven countries in the world who have been a member of World Rugby (formerly the International Rugby Board) from before 1950, along with England, Ireland, Scotland, Australia, South Africa and Wales.

This gave us a headstart in the sport of more than 30 years on most nations, who either joined the union around the time of the first World Cup in 1987 or when it became a professional sport in 1995.

Now, let’s look at player numbers in these seven nations. Just over three per cent of New Zealand’s population are registered rugby players, which is ours and Wales’ national sport.

This might not sound like a lot but, compared to Wales’ two per cent and Australia, England and South Africa all being below one per cent, our talent pool should be much richer.

Then there’s the funding. New Zealand Rugby announced it would be injecting $9 million into provincial rugby in their 2016 annual general meeting, while High Performance Sport New Zealand gave both the men’s and women’s sevens teams $1.2m for each of 2015 and 2016 ahead of the Rio Olympics.

A Dominion Post editorial from 2014 put it simply: ‘‘If the All Blacks, a lucrative, professional team, were competing at the games, it would seem strange to give them high-performance cash.

‘‘The rugby sevens teams, run by the cashed-up New Zealand Rugby Union, are getting support for their own Olympic bids. More’s the worry – the union should be taking care of them.’’

Seems logical, right? Too bad logic seems to have no place in this world.

Then you have outfits like the Black Sticks women’s team which received $1.3m from HPSNZ this year but, just months out from the Olympics, Sport NZ disclosed a $4 million cut to its lotteries grants in a big blow to the side. Because of this, players were asked to fund their own way to Rio by finding people to sponsor them.

This whole situation seemed bizarre because the Black Sticks women are a genuine medal chance.

Could you imagine this happening to a rugby team? I certainly can’t. I’d give you a hypothetical situation as to what would happen if the sevens sides lost their funding months out from Rio, but it would never happen so why bother?

With the amount of resources and attention given to rugby in this country, it would be mind-blowing if we weren’t any good at it.

We’re always going to be in the conversation for the best in the world when it comes to rugby because, quite frankly, we’re one of the only ones who seem to actually care about it.

‘‘We’re always going to be in the conversation for the best in the world when it comes to rugby because, quite frankly, we’re one of the only ones who seem to actually care about it.’’ Christopher Reive ‘‘New Zealand deserves the right to have a degree of arrogance in the ability of their rugby players.’’ Shaun Eade