All Blacks won’t ‘roll over’ on quarantine schedule

A ball might not have even been kicked in anger under Sam Cane’s tenure yet, but you can bet a few other things have been.

The new All Blacks captain is still 11⁄

2 weeks away from leading his team on the field for the first time as fulltime skipper, but already his leadership has been put to the test, thanks to the Rugby Championship scheduling saga.

Speaking yesterday during the All Blacks camp in Hamilton, Cane said the team was ‘‘blindsided’’ by Sanzaar’s announcement of the fixtures last Thursday, which had New Zealand playing their final game of the tournament on December 12 and meant Christmas Day would be spent in quarantine.

New Zealand Rugby was of the understanding the tournament was going to be shortened to five weeks, with their final game on December 5, though there is debate around whether this was ever fully signed off, with all four Sanzaar countries having to agree on it.

‘‘Obviously we were a little bit blindsided by that,’’ Cane said. ‘‘Our expectation and understanding had been that we’d be out [of quarantine] on the 20th, or 21st [of December].

‘‘We were a little bit taken aback.’’ There isn’t exactly a chapter in the All

Blacks captain’s manual for handling situations like this. But Cane revealed how he went about trying to fix the mess for his team.

‘‘The first reaction was, ‘Hey, that’s not what my understanding was, where’s this come from?’

‘‘So I got on the phone to Fozzie [coach Ian Foster] pretty quickly, and he was in much the same boat, he’s going, ‘We didn’t see this coming, we’re working on it’.

‘‘And he’s got a pretty calm head, so we chatted about that, and we got on a chat with the leaders pretty quickly and just reconfirmed that, ‘Hey, this isn’t the plan, we’re not going to just roll over and accept this’.

‘‘All you can really do is try and reassure everyone that we’ll do our best to get it under control and get it on grounds that suit us, ideally.

‘‘We don’t consider it a big ask, considering what we’re going to be going over there and doing.’’

The most extreme answer to the issue is the All Blacks boycotting that final-round match at Sydney’s ANZ Stadium. Some have suggested a simple solution would be for Rugby Championship points to be awarded for one of the two Bledisloe Cup games being held in New Zealand then scrap the December 12 game. Or by then a trans-tasman travel bubble could have even opened and quarantine wouldn’t be an issue.