ABs’ Hansen has too much power
OPINION: When it comes to rugby in New Zealand, Steve Hansen has too much control and power and it is becoming more and more detrimental to the game.
Picking 51 players for the end of the year tour is just ridiculous and in doing so Hansen and New Zealand Rugby have devalued the All Black jersey, the All Black brand and what it means to be an All Black.
Tyrel Lomax, Reuben O’Neill, Gareth Evans and Brett Cameron, while very good domestic rugby players are not genuine All Black quality and along with Atu Moli, Dillon Hunt, and Mitch Drummond who played for the All Blacks in their cash grab tour match against the French XV in 2017 don’t deserve to be All Blacks at this point in their careers.
Taking tests to places such as Japan in the name of money and putting second string All Black teams out on the park is an insult to those players who have previously worn the jersey and just adds insult to injury for unlucky players such as Duane Monkley who never wore the jersey but probably deserved to.
Hansen may be the greatest All Blacks coach of all time but the reality is, he should be, given that he rules NZ rugby and the resources available to him will never be rivalled.
We saw him wield his powers earlier in the year when he pulled players out of an already struggling Super Rugby competition to attend All Black camps while also insisting his All Blacks must each sit out two regular season games.
Hansen’s answer to the criticism at the time was …"Everyone has to make a sacrifice. We have to be flexible and adaptable to the world that we live in. We can get all Sulky Sally about it or we can get on with it, you know? It is just the way it is.’’
It would have been a plausible argument if it were the World Cup the All Blacks were preparing for in June, but it wasn’t. It was a tired, injurydepleted French team the Crusaders would have beaten in three tests.
The reality is Hansen demonstrated once again that he’ll do whatever it takes to win even if it means putting the basic foundations of New Zealand rugby at risk.
Case in point; did he practise what he preached when it came to Olympic Games sevens team in 2016? Did he make the same sacrifices for Sir Gordon Tietjens and his men as he expects other coaches and teams to make for his All Blacks? The answer: No.
While hastily arranged fixtures involving the All Blacks may fill the coffers of New Zealand Rugby in the short term, it will undoubtedly damage the All Black brand in the long term.
The All Blacks jersey is starting to become too common; too familiar, too accessible and the aura of being an All Black is slowly starting to diminish.
No longer do players have to be the best in their position to wear the jersey, they now just have to be amongst the top five. Those fringe players who become All Blacks under this new franchising model will know in time they were picked for commercial reasons and not for performance reasons.
When these fringe players watch the tape back they will see there was no Kieran Read, no Sam Whitelock or Beauden Barrett running alongside of them and they will realise they were duped.
If Steve Hansen and his All Black team can’t beat a woeful Australian team, international minnows Japan, England, Ireland and ‘‘powerhouse’’ Italy in the space of five weeks with a squad of 35 players, they should have ignored the money and not signed up for it.
Picking 51 players says Hansen has either lost confidence in himself as a coach or he has dumbed himself and his players down so much through his rest and rotation policies that they no longer believe they are capable of playing five tests in five consecutive weeks.
The irony is that to win next year’s Rugby World Cup they will have to win seven games in seven weeks with a squad of 31. This tour would have been the ideal dress rehearsal.
Win or lose next year’s World Cup, Hansen will go down as our greatest All Black coach.
However, it may be that the next generation of administrators and players will have to deal with the damage done. Mark ‘Watto’ Watson is a talkback radio host, sports commentator and former high performance athlete and coach