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

We already pick the All Blacks from overseas.

Sure, most of them deign to return from sabbaticals in order to gain re-selection in the side, but let’s not pretend you have to play all your rugby in New Zealand to be an All Black.

Sam Cane, the potentially-outgoing captain of the side, is the latest to wonder aloud if our eligibility criteria should change.

Cane cited South Africa, who successfully cobbles players together from Europe and Japan and churns out Rugby World Cup-winning teams, as an example of how that policy can work.

Our top players appear reluctant to play in New Zealand (NZR). Just look at all the fringe or former All Blacks headed overseas, or the star players off on sabbatical or who have sabbaticals in their NZR contracts.

It’s a stretch to say they all play here under sufferance, but not a big one.

You can talk about the lure of the black jersey all you like, but many of those who wear it seem content to do so on a part-time basis. They certainly don’t appear to have a huge appetite for Super Rugby.

I get this from a NZR and Sky Television point of view.

They need Super Rugby to be attracting eyeballs. They use stars to sell the game to viewers and the fewer the stars, the fewer the eyeballs.

So why all the sabbaticals, then? Why do we lose Beauden Barrett to Japan on a semi-annual basis? Why put a sabbatical in Ardie Savea’s contract? Why do the same for Jordie Barrett?

They’re either playing here or they’re not.

The old argument used to be that our domestic or franchise competitions were stronger than others around the world. That form elsewhere wasn’t a patch on performances here.

That doesn’t wash anymore, in part because we give so many players the opportunity to rest up and cash up in Japan during our Super Rugby season.

I’d have more sympathy for NZR – and their apologists, who insist the very fabric of our game would be ripped apart if we picked All Blacks from overseas – if we didn’t already do it in piecemeal fashion.

If the rule was hard and fast, then fine.

But it’s not.

It’s got loopholes everywhere.

Funding club rugby isn’t sending NZR broke. It’s not the cost of staging the Heartland Championship that forced NZR into a deal with private equity firm Silver Lake.

Trying to pay All Blacks their market value is by far the greatest drain on their resources.

That’s partly why they sweeten deals with lucrative sabbaticals.

I’ve argued many times that I have no philosophical objection to passing that financial burden onto overseas clubs on a full-time basis.

But I come back to the competition side of things.

There’s now better rugby for our All Blacks to be playing than what’s on offer here.

Test rugby, particularly of the type that wins World Cups, is best-prepared for in Europe. It’s not in romps over the Rebels or Moana Pasifika.

Our national team, in which the success of the whole NZR model depends, would be better for players being based in France, Ireland or England.

In doing so, perhaps the All Black careers of players such as Richie Mo’unga and Leicester Fainga’anuku, whose best Test footy is still in front of them, might be prolonged.

Don’t give me the argument that Super Rugby would suffer or that fans would stop watching. They’re not watching now, our governing body is battling to find a sustainable model for it and the All Blacks haven’t won a World Cup since 2015.

If that’s what fixed looks like, I’d hate to see broken.

So do one thing or the other. Make players be based in New Zealand for the entirety of the All Black careers or open the floodgates to overseas.

But don’t incentivise sabbaticals in Japan and tell me you have to be based here to be an All Black.