Gregor Paul: New Zealand needs rugby more than ever

COMMENT:

New Zealand Rugby has no choice but to hurriedly find a way to strap-up the professional game and get it back into some sort of action.

If there are no games or even the prospect of games in the next month, Sky TV will collapse and the whole set-up as we know it will go with it.

That's simple enough for everyone to understand, accept and support. Covid-19 won't be forever and when it's gone and life has open borders and freedom again, there's a big part of the population who want rugby as we once knew it to still be how we once knew it.

It's not wrong or trivial to worry about the impact the next few months might have on the game and by extension, worry about the wider social impacts.

If we all thought it was important, integral to our way of life before Covid-19, then we shouldn't be ashamed to say that we hope it remains that way.

No one should feel guilty, even as Air New Zealand battles for survival and the wider tourism industry clings to a Government support package that will only delay not prevent the collapse of mum and dad hoteliers, that they are rooting for NZR to get rugby back in our lives.

Rugby is only a game but it is important. It doesn't spin the wheels of the economy as hard as other industries, but it shapes and partly defines New Zealand's way of life. It's a key thread in tightening the social fabric of the country: a communal point of discussion, a means to find shared passions and variant views that draw and connect us with other humans.

All Blacks players during the national anthems. Photo / Photosport

Half the country, maybe more, would say they are not rugby followers and yet if they are old enough, they will remember David Kirk slapping the ground at Eden Park when he scored what he knew was going to be the winning try in the 1987 World Cup final.

They will remember Joel Stransky's drop goal as clearly as they will recall Jonah Lomu trampling over Mike Catt in 1995.

The astonishing events in the second half of the 1999 World Cup semifinal can be recounted in some detail by an extraordinary number of people and a whole nation feels shame at the way coach John Hart was treated as a result.

Mention Stirling Mortlock and those who have virtually zero rugby knowledge recognise the name and know what he did in 2003.

And most powerful are the collective memories and emotions of hosting the 2011 tournament – adopting a visiting team, Eden Park rising as one to taunt George Gregan in the last minutes of the semifinal, the three-way handshake and Richie McCaw heroically winning the thing on his own with a broken foot.

Rugby has no sho-rtage of haters and yet that only enables it to pervade deeper into the country's psyche and create a history that intersects all points of the social spectrum and generate an overpowering sense of shared experience.

Yes it says something about New Zealand that muscular men who chase a ball around are idolised and revered, while the intelligentsia live in relative obscurity, admired and valued elsewhere but are almost totally without a voice in their own land.

It's nice to imagine a world where as much time is spent analysing, dissecting and idly chit-chatting about the finer points of classic Kiwi literature as there is time devoted to the intricacies of the All Blacks' work at the breakdown.

But now is not the time to judge, or see the Super Rugby hiatus as an opportunity to spark a cultural revolution where everyone is asked to dump Beauden Barrett and embrace Eleanor Catton. Now is the time to embrace the fact that the country has a point of connection, however futile it may be deemed.

All Blacks fans. Photo / Photosport

Rugby sits prominently in the lens through which New Zealand views itself which is why there is an urgent need to get some version of it up and running. How many new employees have barely said a word until they find a colleague is daft enough to also support the Blues?

We need a social lubricant that isn't alcohol and while rugby won't work for everyone, in this country at least, it works for plenty as a means to leap social barriers and demarcate serious from not so serious parts of our lives.

At times like this it feels almost compulsory to stay exclusively in serious mode but surely it can't be a good idea to do nothing but stare grimly at the infection rate counter ticking over, while calculating just how far the Kiwisaver account has fallen.

There's nothing more normalising than watching the footy on a Friday night and seeing Super Rugby break out in the next few weeks would go some way towards signalling that these weird but not wonderful times are losing just a little of their dystopian theme.

If rugby can be played, some will no doubt see it as reckless and dangerous to allow a contact sport to go ahead, but hopefully more will find it inspiring: proof that the human spirit always finds defiance in the face of an enemy.

The country needs a beacon of hope to signal there is light at the end of the coronavirus tunnel. We need pockets of normal life to break out for things that were once so familiar as to breed contempt, to suddenly re-emerge and reassure us.

Rugby can be that flag bearer and even those who normally run a mile from it, may suddenly find it quietly comforting that half the nation is parked back on the couch finding nothing else to worry about for 80 minutes other than whether their favoured group of muscly types can beat the other group of muscly types.

It might not make everyone proud that rugby holds such a commanding place in New Zealand's way of life, but throughout time it has been a unifying and galvanising force and that seems to be precisely what the country needs right now.