Chris Rattue: Class of '05 would kill heroes of yesteryear

Working out the no-hopers in the rugby world is dead easy. You just ring up Laurie Mains and ask for his list.

Ranking the greats of the game is a much tougher task however.

This was the topic that came to mind while watching recent replays of the 1983 series between the All Blacks and Lions.

It is difficult to make comparisons between different eras when evaluating the good (and the bad) in rugby. Different standards, different levels of opposition - it's a fun exercise but full of loopholes.

But Mains' assertion that it is "abundantly clear" that this is the worst Lions team to visit New Zealand "that I can remember" at least deserves challenging.

Maybe the former All Black coach - whose 1993 team scored a 2-1 victory over the Lions - was enhancing his legacy by diminishing the task facing the current team.

Yet as he pointed out, the 1966 and 1983 Lions lost here by 4-0. On the all-important test records alone, it's impossible to be worse than that.

And the 1966 team will always face special scorn because their captain had a double-barrelled surname. It will be very difficult for the 2005 Lions to stoop lower than that.

While agreeing with Mains that the All Blacks should win this series 3-0, any claim that the current tourists are worse than the 1983 team is open to dispute. That 1983 touring side was average to start off with and then suffered a long injury list which included their terrific Welsh halfback Terry Holmes.

In the manner of the day, nine of those 1983 Lions played against Canterbury just four days before the third test in Dunedin. Even if Sir Clive Woodward's side is only comparable in strength, it will surely be better prepared than that mob.

Yet how do you really compare teams and players across the ages?

If footy teams from this era played teams from previous eras, it would be a cricket score. You only have to look at the skinny legs poking out from the shorts in the 1983 series to know that test teams of today would crush, maim, kill their counterparts of 20 years ago.

In those days, our big No 8 was Murray Mexted, who at 95kg weighed less than a lot of test wingers do now. Hard-headed 1983 prop John Ashworth weighed about the same as Tana Umaga. Some of those yesteryear backs looked in need of a decent feed.

As for the standard of the games - they are not on the same planet as the quality of rugby we get from the modern day professionals who have the added advantage of better fields and better footballs.

But this in no way diminishes the great occasions and players - or anything else - from the past, and these legacies can actually grow in stature over time if they are properly nurtured.

This is the point where columnists get all misty eyed and - standing on the biggest soapbox they can find - call for the development of sports halls of fame. They are terrific ways of throwing up old stories and memories, and fuelling debates.

But you know it's never going to happen in any meaningful way in our fair land. New Zealand sport has never been any good in the memory lane department.

We're not bad at setting up sports halls of fame. It's the keeping them going, or keeping them interesting, where we fall down.

New Zealand rugby league is an example in this. In 1990, I attended a grand feast in Auckland where Mark Graham, Des White, Roger Bailey, Tom Baxter, Ron Ackland and Kevin Tamati were inducted into a new Hall of Fame.

If there's been any action on this front since, it's been covert.

Maybe the league is struggling to think of new entrants, but even that would be a story in American sport where they absolutely treasure the past. The truth is we all forgot about the league legends concept.

At the time of inception, it had so much promise. Looking back, it appears as just another excuse to get together for a graze. Rumour has it that league HoF prospects now get a letter stating: Dear Mr Jones, You would have been inducted into our Hall of Fame but we're not having it any more. Please destroy this letter.

Yours sincerely ...

There was an attempt to set up a rugby hall of fame in Auckland in the 1990s but the last people admitted were the receivers.

In rugby, we're left to measure how famous someone is by how long they keep turning up on TV advertisements.

Their fame is judged on the ability to sell sheep drench 30 years after hanging up the boots.

There's also a national sports Hall of Fame, but visitors have to sign the Official Secrets Act before going there. It's treated like a museum of relics rather than a living breathing part of the sports landscape as in America, where there are major scraps over who gets in.

There may be other sports halls of fame in Kiwi-land but, if so, they have one glaring weakness. They're not famous. And to be fair, they'd struggle to get much publicity anyway.

Rugby, the national obsession, is a different matter. It's a mystery why we've never figured out ways to not only honour our rugby legends, but do it in an interesting way. Maybe our supposedly egalitarian ways prohibit this hero worship.

And we're not alone here. Australian league great Darren Lockyer lamented the absence of an active hall of fame before this year's Anzac test, although Australian league does have a small band of immortals and Queensland paraded a team of champions before the first State of Origin.

Lockyer was embarrassed that no one seemed to know who the men were handing out the Australian jerseys.

"All the American sports have such a great history of their games ... These guys need to be shown to the public, even after they've gone," Lockyer said.

His words are relevant to New Zealand, where we drool over the All Black jersey but shy away when it comes to brazenly ranking, honouring and remembering the men who wore it.