Take your head out of the sand New Zealand

RuckU By WILL CARLING - RugbyHeaven | Friday, 06 June 2008

I blame the pumpkin soup I endlessly consumed on England's eight week tour of New Zealand in 1993 for my unexplained lack of form.

Every hotel meal on that tour seemed to feature pumpkin soup.

There were also the All Blacks to blame for my acute irritable bowel.  But I feel that might be more based on speculation.

Onion soup I find very tasty - French Onion soup in particular.

I intend to offer Dan Carter some culinary advice when he arrives for his sabbatical from the overbearing reality of New Zealand rugby.  I ask you this: If New Zealand is such an inspiring place to live and play - then why does a player like Riki Flutey 'move' while Carter is granted a sabbatical?

Sabbatical.  It's the modern day catch cry for New Zealand rugby players.  But I don't think it's the great, all-conquering panacea that the NZRU would like to think it is.

For instance, take one of your new All Blacks.  What's to stop him requesting a sabbatical after starting a dozen test matches?  I don't buy this idea of a 'case by case' decision process because an employment court would most likely tear the NZRU to pieces for limiting the earning potential of a player it confesses by its own standard is both 'professional' and 'world class'.

Does Dan Carter wear a blacker shirt than the rest of the team?

Don't scoff.  Warren Gatland and now Robbie Deans have proven the 'drain' is not merely of players but also coaches.

For Deans it must be confusing.  After all the success his team has had, all the influence the Crusader players have had in the All Blacks and still no recognition of him by the NZRU?

Gatland is another who, rebuffed by the NZRU, then took Wales back to the forefront of European rugby, showing his class as a coach.  Neglect is worse than incompetence and the RFU can share the dunce hat with the NZRU for its lack of vision for Shaun Edwards as a coach.  Unsurprisingly, it took a rejected Kiwi to usher Edwards into the international rugby arena.

Here is a glimpse of a possible future for New Zealand rugby and its players.

New Zealand will identify and select wonderfully gifted young rugby players with sublime skill and almost freakish ability, who will then be developed and experienced in the New Zealand environment before a tour bus of English, French, Irish and Welsh rugby scouts arrives and signs the best of them that year.

They then serve their apprenticeship in Northern Hemisphere clubs and only after they are acknowledged as fully fledged professionals - achieved by making the starting line-up in a European Cup final or similar occasion - will they then be considered good enough to play for the All Blacks.  At which point the NZRU will negotiate a release with their professional club for international duties.

Can you say 'English Premier Football',  or even 'Brazilian national football team'? Because guess what New Zealand rugby fan....that's exactly what you are in for.

The financial engine of world rugby resides in England and France.  The parallels with English football are so close that Roy Keane is down there - probably by mistake.

It amazes me that New Zealand thinks just because it's New Zealand, home (for the time being) of the All Blacks, that professional rugby players will not go to the marketplace because they are in it for the honour!?  Feel free to stick your head in the sand, New Zealand.  The next time you pull it out you'll be the only one there and the light bulb will have been sold as well.

Come on, join in.  I mean why deny yourselves?  I hardly did, especially when it came to pumpkin soup.

Deans may one day decide to move North in search of fresh challenges, but until he learns etiquette, correct annunciation and proper arrogance - which may not be impossible for a Cantabrian - then there is simply no way he could ever coach England.

He simply will not fit in.