Ross Filipo: Overseas switch difficult

Jerome Kaino of the Blues looks on during the round nine Super Rugby match between the Blues and the Brumbies at Eden Park. Photo / Getty Images

Opinion

There have been players who have been able to transition from New Zealand rugby-to overseas-back to New Zealand Rugby.

Jerome Kaino has done it as have Sonny Bill Williams and Brad Thorn — albeit they left to play in the NRL.

Exceptional athletes all and no one should consider these guys as the norm. I know from my own experience, the first part of the journey was hard.

When I first arrived in France on the back of a Super Rugby campaign, I found myself playing openside flanker.

We were playing a left-right thing but it was a bit of a shock to me to find myself in that role.

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They told me I needed to put some weight on if I was going to be able to play lock.

I was about 113kg when they told me that and I have to say, the first six maybe eight months in France were hard.

I was running certain lines and seeing the game unfold as I was used to from playing in New Zealand. But pretty much the ball never ended up where I thought it would and it became frustrating. And not just for me — the coaches started to get frustrated, asking me why I was never near the ball.

By the end of my second year in France I had started to get to grips with it but when I moved to England, it was a case of starting all over again.

I had to learn a whole new way of doing things and to be honest, I was pretty relieved to get back to New Zealand. Coming back was the easier part for me because the game was still largely the same, it was just that the technical aspects had moved on.

I'd say, and this is a generalisation, that players who have been in New Zealand a long time, find it the hardest to play overseas.

They get so used to the way the game is here — so ingrained in the New Zealand way of doing things — that they can't cope with the different style and attitudes they find overseas.

Supporting that theory, I suppose, is that we have often seen New Zealanders who don't play that long here or get that much opportunity, head offshore and thrive.

A guy who heads off with an open mind, is willing to buy-in to what he finds over there and then gets the opportunity to play more ... boom ... rock star. That's more likely to be the case if they are an outside back where there is more space and time to exploit.

On the flip side, quite a few outside backs may struggle if they come back to New Zealand as there is no space to play here. They have so little time on the ball and it can take time to adapt to that.

I look at someone such as James Lowe at the Chiefs and he's so good at playing quickly — he knows he will have only a split second to do something with the ball.

Ben Smith is much the same — explosive, quick and capable of using the ball well with very little time to do so.

Those who go away and come back — that can be the hard part, getting used to the fact there is no space to move.