KEY POINTS:
The Herald website has just reached an amazing threshold in debate in this country.
In the biggest forum thread ever in NZ's online history, our online Your Views debate about why the All Blacks failed in their 2007 World Cup rugby bid today passed 1000 pages in length
- probably the biggest rugby thread anywhere online.
That thread holds the crown as our website's most read ever story and is attracting views from rugby fans worldwide, including New Zealanders overseas, who are puzzling about what has happened to rugby since they left the country.
And that debate is wider than just the All Blacks' 2007 performance.
In the wake of other recent national sporting disappointments some are arguing the problem is deeper than rugby: there is a wider accompanying Your Views discussion about whether there is something fundamentally wrong with a sport that some say has become boring and needs to urgently change.
Today we have made it easier to debate the future of rugby on nzherald.co.nz by combining all the best writing on the problems facing New Zealand into one section.
Click here to read it.
You can join in the debate here.
Herald online communities editor Nigel Horrocks said the views in the 1000-page thread offer different views on what's wrong.
"Some are arguing that the country no longer encourages a will to succeed; that the All Blacks extravagant lifestyle is divorced from reality and had little emphasis on winning, leading to a breakdown of discipline and dedication.
"There are calls for a return to concentration on 'grassroots' rugby, instead of the emphasis on grooming superstar sportsmen who are paid well and treated to a 'rockstar-type lifestyle'."
This avalanche of concern among local rugby supporters poses a major PR dilemma for the New Zealand Rugby Union, key rugby sponsors and Sky TV.
Earlier in the year low gate sales and dropping TV ratings for national rugby games prompted a similar lengthy debate on the New Zealand Herald's website about why fans were turning off rugby.
At that time, fans blamed the union's policy of resting potential All Blacks from playing and a general feeling that rugby was not as exciting as it once was.
There were also complaints that admission prices to games were too expensive, the atmosphere had become too slick and over-produced and there were just too many games - causing people to feel over-saturated and turning off the TV rugby coverage.
Underneath these Your Views debates is a feeling that because something basic has gone wrong with rugby in our nation; it deserves a more detailed independent inquiry than just whether the All Blacks deserved to lose the quarter-final against France.
