Jake White: Be warned All Blacks, you risk setting a dangerous precedent

Look away now if you’re squeamish, but I’d like to remind you about what sacrifices have been made in order to the wear the All Blacks jersey. Remember Richard ‘Red’ Conway who famously ordered doctors to amputate his finger in order to allow him to travel on the tour to South Africa in 1960.

Then there was Wayne ‘Buck’ Shelford, who in 1986 had his scrotum stitched up pitchside, before returning to the fray after a stray French boot raked his nether regions. Unsurprisingly the game had a brutal moniker, ‘The Battle of Nantes’.

And who can forget Sam Whitelock’s grandfather Nelson Dalzell, who after being injured by Japanese shrapnel in the Second World War, went on to play for the All Blacks with a piece of wood in place of his smithereened shin, that he taped up and rolled his sock over. These were tough, tough men and the trio have gone down in folklore for their bravery and there are many more stories like that. Individuals who would have given up anything to pull on the silver fern.

I mention this because Stephen Donald’s quotes about eligibility resonated with me. In summation, he said “Call me old school, call me whatever but there’s got to be an element of sacrifice. You get the guys at press conferences, saying, ‘oh, this black jersey means so much to me’. Well, at some point in your life, you got to prove it.”

After a thrilling Autumn Nations Series, once again, there is a lot of talk about eligibility and overseas players. I saw a bunch of stats circulating saying Scotland had the highest percentage of foreign-born players turning out for them in Tests this year, with Japan second. This is kind of ironic because I remember Eddie Jones was very annoyed so many foreigners were playing for Japan. He made a quip at a press conference saying, ‘maybe they should bring in a whole load of foreigners in if these Japanese boys don’t want to play’. And now look at the Japanese side. It’s packed with Islanders and Kiwis. Looking at that online list, only South Africa and Argentina had no foreigners playing for them, so I’ll leave you to your own conclusions.

I know it’s a different debate to playing overseas-based players, but I really think we need to consider that word ‘sacrifice’. Thirty years into professionalism, representing the All Blacks jersey is still the ultimate honour, which don’t forget as an institution is 133 years-old. It was only in 2012 that they bowed to commercial pressure and put a sponsor on the shirt because they didn’t want to cheapen the jersey, and it caused quite a stir at the time. Think of all those legends and how much money they could have made if they’d gone offshore at the peak of their careers.

Now I’m on record as saying I’m an admirer of New Zealand rugby and the values they stand for and I stand by it. The Haka, which was in the news again this autumn, has had several notable attempts to take it down, by the, ‘we don’t need it’, ‘it gives the All Blacks an unfair advantage’ brigade but I love it and see it in the same hallowed space the black jersey belongs. The moment they damage that mystique, and lose that aura they’ve built over generations, they will go backwards at a rate of knots. My point is, if you change the overseas rule for one player - Richie Mo’unga in this instance - you set a dangerous precedent.

Donald has every right to chip into the debate because he was the fifth choice fly-half, who won them their first World Cup in 16 years. He’s got runs on the board. Yes, the game is professional now, but it doesn’t mean you demean what it is to represent the All Blacks.

You can understand the soul-searching. Scott Robertson’s men would have been frustrated to have gone down to France by a point and how they really failed to put an obdurate Italy away after they put 96 points on them just over a year ago. I can understand them looking around and saying, ‘maybe we just bring the overseas guys in’, but I don’t think that’s the silver bullet to solve their desperation to retain the crown as the world’s best team.

Listen, rugby moves in cycles. I know other countries have looked at the Springboks depth chart with covetous glances, but I can tell you, it wasn’t always like that. We always used to look down there [New Zealand] and say, ‘Jeez, how have they produced yet another superstar wing who seems to have come from nowhere?’ They’ve had the luxury of picking from four countries for decades; New Zealand, Fiji, Samoa and Tonga.

I remember coaching South Africa and we played the Pacific Islanders in a Test match in 2004, and then later in the year, we played the All Blacks with the same Tongan No 8, Sione Lauaki. Remember at that stage there was no eligibility criteria like we have today. Once you’d played a Test, that was it. You were locked down to that country. That’s how envious we were of what they had.

That historical connection is handed down from generation to generation and nowhere is it stronger than New Zealand. I remember the Springboks went to train at these wonderful clubs in New Zealand, like Petone, which was Andy Leslie’s club. If you went into the clubhouse you’d look at the sepia-tinted photographs on the walls of fathers who have played this great game and their grandfathers before them. Without that connection the modern game becomes more meaningless. If a player goes to another club, because they pay a bit more and then suddenly, he’s not playing for his town, he’s not playing for the shirt, and he’s not playing for his family - he’s playing for a pay packet. Now on the Test stage you’re picking players who have no local connection over boys who have played their lives there. I’d say to the custodians of rugby in the Land of the Long White Cloud, be careful what you wish for in the hope of short-term gain because you could be in for long-term pain.

Sadly, I see Wales in the same bracket when it comes to a country that lives and breathes rugby, and having visited recently, it saddens me to see the great clubs like Ebbw Vale, Aberavon, Bridgend, Pontypridd shadows of their former selves. Those farmers and coalminers bred an incredible passion into playing for the Welsh jersey that saw them punching above their weight for so long. I’m sure fans who care about rugby are worrying about when the Welsh game will find a turning point, but the big worry is its direction of travel will be not be upwards, but downwards, and into irrelevance or at least the lower echelons of the Test game. Do they think the easy way out is to scour the globe and find a few South Africans, Kiwis and a few Pacific Islanders and throw them into the Welsh system? I’m not pointing fingers, but it is a relevant question to ask, where does it stop?

I know more than most that it’s a professional game, and that there is intense pressure to win. To use any resource you can and bend the rules to benefit your nation or club. I get all that, but I still think it’s a relevant debate.

The traditionalists – and I probably count myself as one - will always say, let’s keep the old values and customs of our forefathers and that’s because they don’t want lose the soul of what is a very special sport. If you’re out there in front of 80,000 people, belting out the national anthem, before expending blood, sweat and tears, it has to mean something and not just be a business transaction. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Finally, after a wonderful month, the Autumn Nations Series series wraps up with an intriguing tactical battle between two old mates, Joe Schmidt and Andy Farrell. I know the Wallabies lost to Scotland – who I thought played really well in crushing their Grand Slam dreams - but despite that setback, Schmidt has all the IP and intelligence on the Irish system because he laid the foundations from 2013 to 2019 of a wildly successful period. Both coaches have the added incentive of going toe-to-toe in six months for the Lions, so there will be so many tantalising match-ups and I’ll be watching closely and wondering if they keep a few tricks up their sleeve for the Lions Series. It should be a box-office encounter.