Phil Gifford: Covid-19 gifts New Zealand a massive rugby bonus

In a world that feels like it's spinning, rather than turning, Covid-19 may have gifted New Zealand a massive rugby bonus.

Much as the brutally demanding Super Rugby Aotoeroa competition has drawn fans back to the stadiums, making sell out crowds in Auckland and Christchurch no longer a misty eyed memory, we may see what amounts to a mini-World Cup here in November and December.

Like everything in a pandemic age, nothing can be guaranteed, but if the All Blacks, Australia, South Africa and Argentina are all hunkered down here, playing each other every weekend at a time when the weather should be warm, and the grounds should be dry, what lover of the game wouldn't be excited at the prospect?

Even the worst case scenario, an inflated Bledisloe Cup series, has appeal.

The Wallabies, divided and stumbling under Michael Cheika, now have in Dave Rennie one of the smartest coaches in the game. It was Rennie who turned the Chiefs from perpetual bridesmaids into winners.

Dave Rennie speaks during the 2020 Super Rugby Media Launch at Rugby Australia HQ on January 23, 2020 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Hanna Lassen/Getty Images)

As just one example of how astute Rennie is, row back to the two titles he coached the Chiefs to in 2012 and 2013. The Chiefs were the first to seize on the fact that, without actually changing the rules, the IRB had instructed referees to allow players without the ball to be knocked over if they were in the proximity of a breakdown.

A few years later Sam Cane, one of the dynamic loose forwards in those champion teams, told me, "In 2012 and 2013 our point of difference at the Chiefs was the clear out. The coaches we had were very smart, and we would do what we could to get an advantage. We had a simple philosophy. If there were less people on their feet there was more space to attack."

So while it's true the Australian Super Rugby teams look mediocre compared to the dynamism of the Crusaders and the Blues, being in camp for some weeks in New Zealand, with a coach who is innovative and inspiring, a Wallabies team should present a much greater challenge than they did under Cheika. You knew Cheika's teams had lost the plot when the most interest in a game that Australia played wasn't what might happen on the field but what level of hysterics Cheika might reach in the coaching box.

On the topic of Australia, let's give a hand to the NRL, and in particular Peter V'landys, who proved cynics like me wrong by bulldozing through a competition that has paved the way for a competition where teams travel to one area, and don't get to go home for weeks on end.

Sure, it felt weird at the start, with cardboard cutouts in the stands and fake crowd noise, and between sacking the coach and homesick players wanting to leave, the Warriors' sojourn has sailed far too close to sporting soap opera, but overall the NRL experiment has worked.

It's true that in rugby the relationship between Australia and New Zealand has had more rough patches than a Johnny Depp marriage.

The depths were probably plumbed in 2002, when the NZRU refused to allow what was then Super 12 to be expanded to Super 14, which would have given Australia a fourth team in the competition.

The combative Australian Rugby Union boss, John O'Neill, a man an Australian friend of mine described as someone who was "born outraged, and doesn't like being in any other state" was incandescent with rage at the NZRU.

"They've stuffed us," he said at the time. "They have effectively blocked the development of Australian rugby and they probably feel very, very happy with themselves, but it is an act of treachery. A joint venture involves give and take, and the NZRU has done all the taking and at the end of the day has given nothing."

No wonder that six weeks later in '02, when we lost the sub-hosting rights to the 2003 World Cup to Australia, it was easy for Kiwis to blame O'Neill. But he was actually right this week when he pointed out that the extensive Eichelbaum report commissioned by the NZRU itself sheeted home the blame for New Zealand missing out not on any dirty work by O'Neill but on bumbling by New Zealand officials.

And on the other hand, as recently as the start of May Australia joined us in attempting to elect Argentina's Agustin Pichot as the new head of World Rugby.

So should the Wallabies, in late spring and early summer, be the answer to our rugby programming needs, let's just be grateful if the cobbers across the ditch are prepared to quarantine, and echo what the Warriors have done by staying in a new country for the sake of playing sport.

************************

Some readers may be aware that for years I've been running a modest campaign suggesting the most intellectual power in a rugby team resides with prop forwards. A recent incident in Christchurch makes me believe that brainpower may fully extend to hookers too.

One of the broadcasting team with NewstalkZB's Brian Ashby at the Crusaders-Blues game at Orangetheory Stadium last Saturday was former Crusader and All Black hooker Corey Flynn.

Flynn arrived at the commentary bench with a backpack, from which he unpacked, and plugged in, a brilliant antidote to the freezing conditions. It is possible that Flynn is the first person in New Zealand, if not the world, to watch a rugby game cocooned in an electric blanket.