KEY POINTS:
At the end of last year, I had a slightly bizarre audience with Jock Hobbs, chairman of the NZRU. Jock was going for it.
He was cross that the great New Zealand public had misunderstood the NZRU process - involving the selection of the All Black coach before having the wider World Cup 'rugby review', eventually released last week. He was angry over criticism that the coach had been appointed before the review of the issues that would surely affect that appointment.
Hobbs was so animated that he had a bit of the stabbing finger going on and he delivered a long and heartfelt monologue at one stage.
The bizarre bit was that, sitting next to us on a couch in a hotel lobby was none other than Eric Idle, one of the former members of the Monty Python troupe.
Idle's own prolonged Python monologue as Mr Smoketoomuch - who delivered a hilarious treatise on cheap holidays and the ugly Englishman abroad to a powerless travel agent - was one of the great comic moments, coming from an individual with a speech impediment that made him pronounce the letter C as the letter B. This meant he pronounced Kings College, Cambridge as Kings Bollege, Bambridge - all because, apparently, he was frightened as a boy by a Siamese bat.
Ah, a Siamese cat, you might think. No, said Idle, a Siamese bat, much more dangerous.
The skit continued with Mr Smoketoomuch very cleverly getting around censor's requirements by calling himself the infamous 'C' word but pronounced with a 'B'.
All highly silly and very funny and I could see, out the corner of my eye, Idle shifting forward in his seat at the hotel as Jock's monologue gathered pace; as if some good comic material can be gathered from real life situations, which I suppose it is.
Hobbs was defending the selection of Graham Henry, insisting that the NZRU had not got the cart before the horse by selecting the coach before holding the wider review of what went wrong at the World Cup. Hmmm.
He said the review would not seek to apportion blame; wouldn't be a 'witch hunt'; but would ask difficult questions and look at issues like whether we do put too much emphasis on the World Cup.
Not much blame was apportioned although the review did give Graham Henry's reconditioning programme a fair old rucking and, yes, we did put too much emphasis on the World Cup.
At this stage of the game, as big surprises go, that's like saying that you'll get wet if you get in the shower.
Once you sweat to the end of the 47-page analysis, there is one big question: Why? There is precious little in this review that hasn't already been diced and dismembered by rugby fans, talkback callers, journalists and the like.
All it does is set up the NZRU to be even more of a patsy than their critics already feel them to be. After reading it, I was reminded of the old student joke where university medical researchers, paid $10 million to investigate why a man has a knob on the end of his penis, came to the conclusion that it was to stop his hand from flying off.
What a missed opportunity to widen the narrow terms of reference of this review and to address the NZRU's constituency - players, sponsors, fans, media - on what it is actually doing re all the associated evils facing the New Zealand game right now; before it withers and dies.
New Zealand Rugby is in critical condition, poised as it is to drop into a big black hole unless we stop the All Blacks from disappearing overseas; if we don't solve the revenue issues; if we don't get rid of meaningless test matches played by meaningless selections and rules which confuse and bore people. And don't get me started on the coaching issues, on reconditioning, rotation, rehabilitation, etc, etc, etc, even though it is clear some elements of those tactics were valid and will be used moving forward.
But the issues facing rugby are urgent. We need to return to the days when test rugby had some anticipation about it, not repetition; not to mention re-jigging Super rugby and provincial rugby.
The review is fine, as far as it goes. But, seeing it has taken place a whole, yawn-inducing five months after the crime was committed, why not widen the whole thing and do it properly? Why not have the NZRU come out with a blueprint of what it is doing to save New Zealand rugby, including at our World Cup campaigns; something which might give the stakeholders in our game some confidence?
That is the imperative facing rugby now; not who gave who a message re a drop goal and the fact that rotation is not the ogre we have all painted it (really... ?).
So, with apologies to the NZRU, Eric Idle and Jock Hobbs - who is a decent man in a tough job - here's what Mr Smoketoomuch might say: If we don't fix this, we ban only assume there will be more bock-ups in New Zealand rugby; bock-ups and balamities as the fans vote with their feet on a game that disappoints and bonfuses the brap out of them.
