Mike Hosking: All Blacks have dug their own hole with off-field indiscretions

The "shagger's shame" is what the Daily Telegraph graphically, laconically, and perhaps amusingly called it.

Two All Blacks now caught up in business well off the field of play.

Now the issue here is whether this is an issue at all. And as it turns out, it's not an issue for me.

I don't subscribe to the businesses of seeing these people, whether they are athletes or people of any sort of profile, as anything other than what they are there to do.

In other words, I watch what an All Black does on the field, because that is the level of interest I have in them.

Part of that attitude has been brought about based on the idea that we seem to want to make these people into things they're not. We take a singular or specific skill, and because they possess it, we then want to add additional features to who they are, thus creating super heroes and humans.

We pretend they are what they aren't, and when they aren't, we get disappointed.

There are all sorts of riders on this. Publicly elected officials are different, people in jobs and roles of certain responsibility are expected to be different, because of reputation to a business or organisation or charity or government.

The All Blacks, and this is where NZ Rugby comes into it, have dug themselves a massive hole here, because they voluntarily - and with some vigour and gusto - have decided that All Blacks need to be more than rugby players, they need to be good men. Laudable, but fatally flawed.

They indeed have made much of this part of their operation. These are community leaders, people to be looked up to, they have promoted the concept - indeed run with it.

Now if you're going to enter into such a promotion, you must be aware and ready for the inevitable.

Just because you're an athlete, doesn't actually mean a lot else. And the larger the group of said people you gather together, means the greater the chance of the frailties outside of the athleticism being exposed.

When the large group of people you're dealing with are young men, the term "powder keg" is probably not inappropriate. As laudable as your efforts are, as hard as you may try to mould these young athletes into more holistic versions of what they came to you as, as sure as night follows day, you're going to find the cracks.

Jerome Kaino and Aaron Smith are your current examples. If you want to be a bit upbeat about it, you could argue given the ingredients and the lofty aims, they actually do awfully well. By and large, it works.

But to expect it to be perfect is madness, which is why I place little if any weight on the current "crisis". Not that it justifies their actions, but I wasn't interested in their actions in the first place, apart from on the field.