TOO FEW CHIEFS
Rugby: NZ Rugby has not done enough to keep Aaron Cruden and co
New Zealand Rugby and the government must go into partnership to keep our top Maori rugby players in this country.
In a way this has happened once before. The Maori All Blacks were set up back in 1910 to stop them taking the league dollar. Why can’t the government set up a fund specifically to keep current and future Maori All Blacks from leaking overseas?
Anybody who watched the match between the Stormers and the Chiefs last weekend should know that the current Chiefs are the most valuable rugby asset in this country. They are our Rainbow Nation. And do you know what? Some of the powers that be at the All Blacks are jealous of them. One of the reasons Dave Rennie is going to Glasgow is the lack of love and the nagging disrespect that he has been shown by the All Blacks leadership.
But for a moment let’s celebrate what the Chiefs did last weekend, even in defeat. They scored perhaps the greatest try that I have ever seen. It was a try of brotherhood. It was 24 seconds that showed this country the way to a brighter future. It was a score born out of Maoridom.
Damian McKenzie picked up the ball two metres from his line and switched with James Lowe. The Stormers 12 is now sprawling on the ground. Cheslin Kolbe reads the play but Lowe is strong and nimble enough to step out of the tackle.
But let’s pick up the pace here. Lowe is spoiled for support but gives the ball back to McKenzie, who flicks the ball back inside to Lowe just before he is hit into touch. Lowe angles to the right, then straightens, leaving the Stormers 10 on his backside.
Lowe passes to Anton LienertBrown who veers back to the inside and straightens again. He passes out of the tackle back to Lowe who hooks a basketball pass out to Liam Messam, back to Lowe, out to Messam and again and instantly flicked to Toni Pulu for the score.
But you just can’t do justice to all the moments of instinctive, beautiful subtlety, to Lowe’s shimmering footwork, to delayed passes, to McKenzie’s blaze of pace, and the angles of running, the changes in line, and the timing, and the support and the joy and the fraternity. The move had gone the length of the pitch and yet half the team were there at the end. Kane Hames, Tawera Kerr-Barlow and Hika Elliot beating his chest with joy while Rennie raised his arms in the coach’s box. ‘‘Shut the gates,’’ they cried in the commentator’s box.
Oh, if only, because the gates are wide open and it makes me angry. I feel cheated that I will not be able to see the like again next season. Lowe, at the age of 24 and such a gifted footballer, is going to Europe along with Kerr-Barlow and Aaron Cruden and Rennie.
And it’s not good enough. New Zealand Rugby brings out the chequebook for Kieran Read and Ben Smith and Beauden Barrett and Sam Whitelock. Israel Dagg, of Maori descent, has also been resigned but the group is nowhere near representative of the percentage ethnic diversity at rugby’s top level. Maori and Pacifica form the majority, but they also sadly appear to be over represented in the group that gets into trouble. So if we are to make progress maybe it is time for that horrible word ‘quota’. Maybe Steve Hansen needs to practise positive discrimination and sign a minimum of 50 per cent Maori and Pacifica to the very top level contracts.
You may ask, why bother? You may ask, why chuck even more of the taxpayer’s money at rugby? The answer is that over 50 per cent of our prison population is Maori and it’s an even more shocking proportion with the under-20s. The Corrections Department admits it hasn’t a clue what to do and yet, in government speak, we are losing a tremendous human resource to the overseas market. These brilliant young rugby players could help make a difference if we went about it in the right way.
At the moment it is too easy for the All Blacks to wash its hands of perceived trouble-makers. And yet so many of these kids are a force for good or they damn well could be. Cruden will soon be in exile. Elliot was cast out from the All Blacks because he is an awkward bugger. But did you notice that moment when he took the ball from the ballboy at Newlands, had a little chuckle and a quiet word, and left the boy beaming.
Did you hear Cruden at the end, in defeat mind you, also paying a tribute to the Stormers’ behindthe-back try and saying, ‘‘To be involved in an epic contest like that, that’s really what rugby’s all about.’’ And Rennie said: ‘‘It was a heck of a spectacle. They were stronger than us . . . in the end, they were too good tonight.’’
Rennie could have moaned about the bad touchline and TMO and time-keeping decisions that cost the Chiefs. It’s not their way. They emphasise the positive. They showed the other New Zealand franchises the way by building a team on character. Lowe has been a great force in the Waikato community. Rennie calls KerrBarlow ‘‘caring and competitive’’. Cruden is a leader.
Unfortunately the All Blacks leadership have taken several opportunities to criticise or patronise the Chiefs. When Bundee Aki left, Hansen said: ‘‘We need players with a bit more mental fortitude.’’
He had a pop at the Chiefs for flogging their players. Cruden couldn’t confine his playing to the rugby field so he was chucked on the scrapheap. And how patronising have Hansen and co been about McKenzie. He’s a ‘project’ for the All Blacks who have taken him away to work on his catch pass. Oh what a sly dig at the Chiefs coaching. Wayne Smith looks on from the side and you can see him wince at the barbs.
Rommel once said: ‘‘Give me a division of Maoris and I will conquer the world.’’
But here in New Zealand we lock them up or send them overseas. We need men like Lowe, who is just 24, and Kerr-Barlow, who is 26, and Cruden, who is 28, out in the communities. And they in turn need leadership from NZ Rugby who employ a woefully low ration of Maori in jobs outside coaching. Farah Palmer sits on the board, but she is too lone a voice. And young Maori men need kaumatua, they need their male role model. SBW, of Samoan and European heritage, did a great job giving them some leadership when he was at the Chiefs and they miss him. Doesn’t stop some at New Zealand Rugby for deriding Williams over his ‘‘conscientious objection’’ to wearing a banking logo, even though NZR does business with firms with hideously unethical past histories like AIG and adidas.
People couldn’t wait to give the Chiefs a kicking last year and it soured Rennie. Where was the acknowledgement of all the work they have done in the community?
But then that’s sometimes the story of Maori in this country. Hit them with the big moral stick and don’t praise them like we should. Who knows what happened against the Cheetahs overnight, but the Chiefs game is always one you never want to miss. These kids are good. And NZR and the government have a glorious opportunity to work together in partnership to keep men like KerrBarlow and Lowe and Cruden in this country. I am sure Steve Tew’s heart is in the right place.
Surely it’s worth a try because not much else is working. If you are prepared to start on your own two-metre line, you never know what wonderful thing might grow from it.