Let’s not pretend you have to play in New Zealand to be an All Black

Well in SA a number of world class players want to return and play for SA franchises 😏👌

The ability to earn GBP / Euros and play against the best intl players every week is good for the Springboks longer-term. Not fair to make players choose between a career/earnings and their country. I hope NZ continue to only select from domestic players but the truth is both RSA and NZ are small economies for teams with star players who should command 1m+ salaries (Finn, Etzie, Ardie)

30 caps then you can be selected from overseas, frees up resources, gives more opportunity for young players to come through, easy

The bots are predictable.

The reality is that there is rarely an overseas based players that would be selected for the ABs. Most who leave during their prime playing years have been overlooked for ABs selection. Over the past 10 years who would we have wanted to select for the ABs? Piutau, although as outside back in NZ there is always someone new to step up. No one for 8 years, now Mo’unga. Going back even further Nick Evans and Carly Hayman. I’m probably missing a few but I make it a grand total of 4 players over the past 16 years who would have still been selected for the ABs while playing overseas.

I would much rather have Savea away for 6 months on a sabbatical and miss very few ABs games, vs. sign a 2 year+ deal and play what could be the best years of his career for La Rochelle or Toulon.

This article ignores the fact that our U20 programme has been neglected and young guys coming through are 1) not as good as they used to be 2) definitely not as good as players coming through France, Ireland, and England U20s.

Hamish is onto something here (despite not showing any reasoning or examples for his points), NZ rugby might be better off if they went back to just forcing players to commit to SR and then force themselves to commit to the next generation when those players are no longer ready to commit to SR.

Right now, with the current crop/examples, I’m not sure having access to these players is worth it. Retallick was not worth signing back for most of his return, and I’m picking they will want him back again, but especially Beauden has not been worth trying to increase is longevity/availability, so far at least.

I’m wondering if it would not be better to go back to calling time on players early again. They considered McCaw and Carter success stories, and they were great comebacks, but maybe they were clouded to the performances they put out for the ABs try to stretch that far (McCaw is a legend and he probably never thought of leaving so fair deuce sticking with him, and Carter missed out on the big moment in 2011) and are trying to repeat?

Going back to a 4-8 year cycle of players at their peak might be what they should try for again. Best of both worlds, continual development of players, with less future stars leaving, and once finished Internationally they get more rich offshore contracts/years.

South Africa is a failed state with it's players very happy to take themselves anywhere but home.

Not really a compelling example for NZ rugby to need to follow.

Timezones are beneficial to SA players and viewership numbers with the European competition's.

Super rugby and NPC aren't perfect and need to change potentially into one comp rather than two.

The Allblacks coach should be allowed to pick players from overseas if they wish but only in an emergency through injuries.

Both Richie and Leicester are fantastic players and no reason why Razor shouldn't be allowed to call on them if injury strikes before a world cup where they’ve an insufficient window to develop a replacement.

Reality is that NZ players need to be very aware that they are severely unlikely to be called up if they've signed long term contracts to play offshore.

The current test rugby issues with it being stop/start, TMO addled rugby have been a massive windfall for the Boks. A game where you tackle, tackle, tackle but they still required amazing amounts of luck to score three points across three games in order to win RWC 2023.

It's an aberration that the winning side scored none of their own points, no tries and zero second half points against the Allblacks in the final. The clearly better side lost so no need to upend the NZ game simply because it's only made the semi’s and final in the last two campaign's.

We feared for SA rugby when they changed they the rule to selecting overseas based players. It had the opposite effect. SA rugby improved dramatically. Our players based at European clubs improved dramatically. Faf and Kolbe are examples of that. When they left for Europe they were also rans. Their skills and mindset improved to a large extent.

We feared that our provincial sides would be depleted and watered down. What happened was that huge numbers of talented young players got the opportunity to play for the Bulls etc, where they would not gave if the Bok stars were here. I.e Moodie, Libbock etc.

The depth of SA rugby has increased tremendously.

The overseas based Boks added more value to the Bok team having been exposed to different coaching and playing styles.

I think NZ rugby should open up and let the AB players play where the want to.

The benefits are huge

The all that we’ll ever see best ABs playing will be in the RWC as 1. the clubs wont release them for mid yr and EOY tours 2. The best players would be given massive bonuses not to play test rugby… .like half the best PI players.

Absolutely agree.

I think the All Blacks would be stronger for selecting France and Japan-based players.

Super Rugby will never again be stronger than the French leagues. NZ’s younger players need to learn from the pressure and grind of the Top14; and the older players would do well with the lighter workload of JRLO. The upshot of this is that NZR’s salary burden is lessened, allowing more investment in grassroots, provincial and Super rugby.

The collective knowledge and skills of players gathered from other leagues would be greater than that of players who are competing against 5 decent Super teams.