KEY POINTS:
Our national sport is getting a bad press right now. Hardly a day goes by without the media - admittedly a loose term when it comes to rugby - uncovering new evidence of a game in crisis and administering a few more lashes to that perennial whipping boy,
the New Zealand Rugby Union.
NZRU chief executive Steve Tew complained that listing the problems facing the game is easy; what's not so easy, and what critics generally fail to do, is to come up with solutions.
Those who questioned the wisdom of expanding the Air New Zealand Cup and the Tri-Nations and wrapping the All Blacks in cotton wool via reconditioning and rotation would have greeted Tew's challenge with a guffaw. Traditionally the NZRU's openness to advice has been as negligible as its capacity for self-criticism.
But as the Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver told white Americans, you're either part of the solution or part of the problem, so here's my twopence worth:
* Stop investing time, money and emotional energy in trying to stop players going overseas.
Even without the inducement of being able to earn a lot more for doing less, young Kiwis have been heading overseas for 100 years. OE is ingrained in the New Zealand psyche, a natural and logical consequence of growing up in the "last, loneliest, loveliest" outpost.
There's little point in getting into bidding wars with wealthy clubs if players are looking for a new experience as much as financial security. I understand the NZRU shook the money tree in a bid to retain Carl Hayman but he terminated negotiations by heaving his cellphone into a river.
* Face facts - the pull of the black jersey ain't what it used to be.
We may soon reach the point - if in fact we aren't already there - where some players aspire to become All Blacks primarily because it adds a zero or two to their market price.
Furthermore, the downside of being an All Black - loss of privacy and relentless critical scrutiny - is clearly one of the factors driving the exodus. The talk show hosts tell players to harden up and trot out the mantra that life in the fishbowl goes with the territory. Not in Europe and Japan it doesn't.
* Lift the bans.
Prohibition is an admission that you can't win the argument and generally leads to the exact outcome it was supposed to prevent. For reasons touched on above, the policy of not considering overseas-based players for the All Blacks is a waning disincentive.
From the European clubs' point of view, it actually makes Kiwis more attractive than their own stars because they're never called away for international duty.
There seems to be a mindset that once overseas-based players become eligible for the All Blacks, the team will be full of them. In fact traditional selection criteria - form, hunger, compatibility with the game plan - and practical considerations will ensure that not much changes.
Few players are so much more gifted and influential than the next-best that their contribution would outweigh the logistical difficulties and potential for disruption. The players might think they can have their hard currency cake and play for the All Blacks too but hard-headed selection would soon disabuse them of that notion.
But why deny the selectors the option of cherry-picking the odd special one? If we're deficient at tight-head prop, if Hayman actually wants to play for the All Blacks and if he's living up to his world-class reputation - three big ifs - why not pick him?
There's also the principle that test rugby should be the best versus the best. The dilution of that principle should concern the International Rugby Board but the NZRU has a responsibility to the All Black legacy.
The ban on overseas players playing for our Super 14 teams is similarly self-defeating. How good would the Chiefs be with a couple of Argentine tight forwards or the Hurricanes with an Argentine first-five? Surely one reason for the declining crowds is that long-suffering fans are increasingly disinclined to watch history repeat itself.
* Look at a map.
The Super 14 has a major flaw - the Indian Ocean. Is expanding its already enormous footprint to take in Japan and the US West Coast really the way forward? Or does the answer lie in a transtasman competition based on the hugely successful rugby league and Aussie Rules models?
* Scrap the Tri-Nations.
In barely a decade this ill-conceived competition has managed the remarkable feat of reducing rugby's greatest, most ferocious rivalry - All Blacks versus Springboks - to a yawn.
A playing programme that restores drama and meaning to the international game is the single greatest guarantee of New Zealand rugby's long-term health.
