So Daniel Carter is to take six months leave of absence, play his rugby in Europe and then come back to the All Blacks.
On the surface, it is a win-win situation. Carter gets paid some serious wedge (oh no, that's right it's never about the money) tocomplete his OE, and then returns to NZRU employment until the 2011 World Cup.
Carter is happy, the All Black coaches are ecstatic and the NZRU is relieved to have kept a stellar player in the midst of the exodus.
There is no question Carter is a special player, a first five-eighths who has produced some remarkable work in his 44-test career and as a 26-year-old should be building to a peak of his influence in the next four years.
Details of the impending deal with Toulon - or is it Biarritz? - will never be fully known but when the NZRU starts making exceptions like this, it will provoke conflict. There will be denials, players will be wheeled out as they were to support last year's conditioning programme, before the Carter Clause like the Cotton Wool Club, will start to irritate.
Where there is money, more money, different rewards and criteria, there will be some resentment. The NZRU have done well if they have been able to stitch together some deal but no matter the wording of the press release, when Carter's sabbatical is ratified, it means they have agreed to pick All Blacks from offshore.
Forget the player welfare angle because Carter will have been involved in rugby from January this year through to the end of 2009 with few breaks.
If he falls over somewhere and the interim All Black five-eighths are not much chop, will the NZRU give themselves some dispensation to ask Nick Evans if he would consider being bought out of his Harlequins contract? How many other All Blacks would like a similar break and following Carter's exemption, will feel they deserve the same treatment?
