KEY POINTS:
It is doubtful if rugby has ever reached a state to match what will greet those who turn up in Christchurch on July 14 to witness the All Blacks playing the Springbok leftovers.
They, and those who turn on the TV, have been sold a giant dud involving a Springbok team not worthy of the name getting blasted into oblivion.
New Zealand rugby is failing to reap because it hasn't sown. What doesn't go around doesn't come around.
Considering that seven weeks separate the end of the Tri-Nations and the start of the World Cup, where New Zealand will initially face the frightening might of Italy and South Africa must garner every last ounce of energy to deal with Samoa, there will be some extremely well rested superstars heading to France. The tough part might be trying to wake them up.
No one should be entirely convinced, either, that all of these players are enamoured of this All Black coaching regime's dictates, that they actually wanted all the rest that has been imposed upon them or that we have been given a full and frank explanation for the policy.
The extent to which All Black coach Graham Henry wanted to remove players from the Super 14 goes way beyond a reconditioning programme. There can be little doubt he also wanted to keep prized players away from influences other than his own, and maybe reduce the injury rate.
The NZRU, at the behest of Henry, treated its Sanzar partners, the broadcasters and the public, with disdain in deleting this country's best players from the first half of the Super 14 this year.
Henry actually wanted to pull the players out of the entire competition, if reports at the time are to be believed, but was partially reined in by the chief executive, Chris Moller.
So South Africa have simply followed suit in leaving out 20 players from their travelling Tri-Nations squad. The team heading this way is an abomination, a travesty, a disgrace. The test in Christchurch is a sham.
Australia remains, for now, the only Sanzar partner to have committed to the international game this season, although they did impose early season training restraints on their top players.
Australia may have completed a rugby heist before the last World Cup when - aided by what turned out to be an ailing chief of the IRB - it deleted New Zealand as the sub-host.
But this time around, the horrors are being perpetrated by the likes of New Zealand and South Africa who are allowing their coaches to dictate the course of rugby history by riding roughshod over it. At the very least, if this must be the way for the modern game, the paying customer should be alerted before parting with cash.
Australia stands on the ever-shifting moral high ground for now.
Despite a veneer of quality players, or maybe because of it, the Australians alone have - at this point - been the honourable party within the vague and dysfunctional unit known as the Sanzar "family".
Furthermore, the Australian chairman, Peter McGrath, said this week that a public which had bought tickets in good faith for the Springboks test in Sydney had every right to feel betrayed. Well spoken.
Jock Hobbs, the New Zealand chairman, duly joined in although without McGrath's awareness of consumer rights. Hobbs did lob a few stones through a glasshouse, hopefully with a suitably red face.
Punters who have paid between $45 and $115 for a test ticket, some of whom may also be travelling at great expense, deserve better.
Rather than stand up for the beleaguered fan, the impression is that the NZRU is quite happy to leave unchallenged the myth that another stupendous battle against the old foe is in store.
As of yesterday, the NZRU's official ticket agency was still stating that "the outcome of this match will provide the answer to all those [World Cup] questions ... " and specifically related this to South Africa's threat to the All Blacks in the world tournament.
This echoes the early-season Super 14 television advertisements which flashed images of All Blacks across the screen, even though they had been withdrawn from the first eight weeks of the tournament. New-age rugby administrators love referring to their game as a product, yet they seem immune to the normal rules of advertising.
Some people in the rugby world had warnings six months ago that Springboks coach Jake White would leave the bulk of his World Cup squad behind for the Tri-Nations matches in Melbourne and Christchurch.
When did the NZRU first get wind of this?
At the very least, they would have known by June 16, when the Herald reported that the Waikato and former Irish coach Warren Gatland understood that both South Africa and Australia would rest their best players in latter Tri-Nations games.
They subsequently sought assurances from South Africa, yet they continued to sell this game to a reluctant public as a genuine test between the best. Or put it this way. The union made no attempt at all to alert the public otherwise. Silence is golden. They fudged the truth about the hopeless French tourists as well.
What we have here is akin to selling tickets to the Moscow Circus, and dishing up the Bungling Brothers instead. If this was any other "product" then surely it would be beholden upon the seller to warn the buyer about the true nature of what they might be purchasing.
The Consumer Guarantees and Fair Trading Acts may not strictly cover this situation. In terms of showbiz, the two acts offer no relief should a star performer have to be replaced by an understudy. That's showbiz. But if the fine details of the acts do not apply here, then the general tone should.
What of rugby's moral obligations? Where, you might ask, is the sort of diligence the NZRU displayed as it pilloried and hunted ticket scalpers, or when it tried to spread a trademark over just about anything black with a silver fern.
Relentless, they were, in those battles between good and evil.
The latter involved a trademark case, which the NZRU lost, in which its current chief executive-in-waiting Steve Tew claimed: "We know people that buy jerseys are mistaken into thinking they are buying a genuine article when they are not ... "
As of yesterday, a good few rugby fans had already spotted a fake. There are still 10,000 seats unsold at the 35,000 seat Jade Stadium.
It's a double blow for Canterbury, a union that has, at times, been on its own in raising the flag for New Zealand rugby. Having had their champion Crusaders stripped of players this season with all the effect that had on gate takings, it has likely seen its test match profits smashed.
And what of the 25,000 who have already parted with their money? Consumer guarantees or not, they deserve a full refund if they want it.
