Rugby players are adults — and should be treated as such
The writing is on the wall for messages on wrist bands and headgear, writes Phil Gifford.
OPINION: Rugby players are encouraged to make big decisions on the field. The great run of the current All Blacks is largely based on systems introduced by Graham Henry and Steve Hansen to get individuals thinking for themselves.
So why are rugby players considered too dumb to decide what they’ll write on their wrist bands?
Will relationships with the United States really crash and burn if Kane Hames writes Standing Rock on his wrist strapping again? And what harm could possibly come from having childrens’ names, or the title of a Biblical verse, a glance away during a game?
For some season it seems to come as a surprise when players show they’re capable to considering more than lineout calls, and how many reps they should be doing on the heavy bar.
When the head of the New Zealand Professional Players’ Association, Rob Nichol, got angry you knew World Rugby, that tone deaf, monolithic organisation in Dublin, had gone a step too far trying to slip wrist band bans through in the fine print.
Nichol is a controlled, skilled, efficient, natural negotiator. No tantrums, no bad mouthing, no stomping of the feet.
So when he said a decision to forbid personal messages on wrist bands was ‘‘completely inappropriate’’ and that it ‘‘makes the game and themselves (World Rugby) look a bit stupid’’, then, trust me, that’s his equivalent of Michael Cheika raising the bar from mouthing swear words to dousing the coach’s box with petrol and setting it on fire.
World Rugby, arrogant enough to suggest it could slap $1000 fines on players for inking messages (Newsflash: they have no legal right to) has backed down, but the unpleasant memory lingers on.
Why has the issue over a few words on the wrist bugged Nichol and players so much?
I’d say because a number of personal freedoms are immediately lost when a player, especially an All Black, signs a professional contract, and forbidding something as intimate as family names feels like bullying for the sake of it.
In the short window of commercial opportunity during a player’s career, in most cases less than a decade, there are numerous restrictions.
They range from the reasonable, not being allowed to advertise companies that compete with official sponsors, to the bizarre, having to go through a demanding procedure to be allowed to wear an All Black jersey on your own book cover.
It’s also a reality that players are expected to be political eunuchs, especially when it comes to what they display on the field.
Back in 1995 hell was going to be paid when All Black flanker Josh Kronfeld was selected to tour France, after a stellar World Cup in South Africa. Playing for Otago he was twinking ‘‘No Nukes’’ PHOTOSPORT messages on his distinctive black headgear.
He planned to do the same in France, despite some dire warnings not to. In the end the issue was averted when injury PHOTOSPORT stopped him from playing on the tour.
It would have been a real test for the New Zealand Rugby Union if Kronfeld had run out carrying an anti-nuclear message, one that, 10 years after the Rainbow Warrior bombing, would have resonated with many Kiwis. Would the NZRU have dared to punish, or even ban, a hugely popular player carrying a popular message?
There are, Nichol says, already regulations in place forbidding ‘‘inappropriate’’ messages on the field, although just where the line from appropriate to wrong is drawn may one day lead to a fascinating showdown.
Would today’s officials be as restrained as the NZRU was, when, after a Court order stopped the All Blacks touring apartheid era South Africa in 1985, a rebel team, calling themselves the Cavaliers, went to Africa in 1986?
The Cavaliers, really the biggest political step ever taken by New Zealand players, were banned for two test matches. Little mentioned then, or now, is the fact that when the All Blacks beat France to win the first World Cup in ‘87, nine of the All Blacks who played the final were former Cavaliers. Inappropriate is something always going to be only in the eye of the beholder.