KEY POINTS:
At recent World Cups there has been the secondary fun of spotting the reject Kiwi - the provincial player who was never up to much until he headed overseas, found some foreign heritage and ended up playing test football.
At the 2003 World Cup there were hours of
fun as there were 41 players, excluding the All Black squad, who had been born in New Zealand but were playing for other teams.
Kiwis were everywhere; there was Jeremy Paul in the Wallaby team, Tony Marsh playing for France, Scotland's brigade of Glen Metcalfe, Cameron Mather and Martin Leslie. Japan had a Kiwi contingent that included George Konia, Andy Miller, Adam Parker and Ruben Parkinson while the Italians had Rima Wakarau, Scott Palmer and Matt Phillips.
Almost half the teams at the 2003 tournament had a New Zealand-born player and then there were also a handful of expat coaches to keep an eye on.
Steve Hansen was in charge of Wales, John Boe was coaching the Samoans, John Kirwan the Italians, Mac McCallion the Fijians and Dave Waterston the Namibians.
Those who dug a little deeper in 2003 would have also unearthed reams of New Zealanders operating as assistant, specialist and fitness coaches.
Four years on the landscape has changed markedly.
The number of New Zealand-born players outside the All Blacks has dropped to 23 and Kirwan is the only New Zealand coach, this time managing Japan.
The reduced Kiwi influence is more severe than the overall stats suggest as 12 of the 22 New Zealand-born players not representing the All Blacks are in the Samoan squad.
In 2003, Samoa had 13 New Zealand-born players in their squad, understandable given the relationship between the two countries, which is mirrored in the make-up of the All Black squad which contains five Samoan-born players (as well as one Tongan and two Fijians).
So take out the Samoan influence and there are only 11 other New Zealand-born players in the tournament. There's Perry Freshwater, the former Wellington prop who now plays for England.
The USA have Hayden Mexted and the Japanese contingent is still strong with Hare Kamiri, former Taranaki player Bryce Robins and Luke Thompson.
Italy have Paul Griffen, Josh Sole and Kaine Robertson, Wales's Sonny Parker is back for another turn and former Waikato halfback-come-fullback Isaac Boss is in the Irish squad.
In a major departure from 2003, Tonga have only one New Zealand-born player in their 30-man squad. That's down from 12 at the last World Cup and Fiji also only have one, Nicky Little, in comparison with the three they had last time.
There is enough reason to believe the reduction in New Zealand's numbers is deliberate rather than coincidental. Since the last tournament, an influx of new coaches and administrators has imposed new policies around selection.
In 2003, there was an appetite among the Celtic nations to trawl the world, or the Southern Hemisphere, for players with either Scottish, Irish or Welsh ancestry.
All three nations took the view they would play anyone who was eligible and didn't really care too much about the message sent to the home-grown players who had battled their way through the system only to miss out to someone who might have found some nationality just as his All Black prospects disappeared.
The Celts are now actively trying to develop their own players and that policy has filtered through to the clubs who have cooled on buying overseas players whose eligibility has not already been captured.
Fiji has made considerable progress since the last World Cup developing its domestic competition. That has been accompanied by an active policy of looking to field home-based players in the national side.
The Italians and Japanese remain the biggest importers of New Zealand talent and that probably traces back to the fact that for much of the last 30 years, they have had large numbers of Kiwis in their domestic leagues.
Many of these players became naturalised, choose to stay long term in the region and, with both Japan and Italy ambitious to climb to the next level, they are happy to take all the help they can get.
