Phil Gifford: Why Jacinda Ardern should let the Wallabies into New Zealand

The opening Bledisloe Cup clashes remain in the air due to the Australian bubble being closed. Photo / Dean Purcell

Four talking points from rugby over the week.

Oi diggers! come over the ditch

"Come on the Wallabies" is not a phrase that springs easily to many Kiwis' lips, but right now we should all be hoping that the guys from the Great Sunburnt Land are winging their way to New Zealand as soon as possible.

With Covid-19 chaos in New South Wales and Victoria, we need Dave Rennie's team here as quick as a jet can carry them, just in case the encouragement from Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to present a special case wanes.

Fortunately, while there are already rumblings from the vociferous disgruntled, for whom Covid has offered a huge opportunity to find new items to add to their "Why The Country's Going To The Dogs Under This Government" list, this is a case where there's political benefit in making a special case for the Wallabies.

There obviously won't be any influx of Australian fans, but hotels, motels and bars will enjoy getting a swag of supporters from the rest of New Zealand coming to town to see a test against a traditional opponent.

More importantly, I believe that a government has a responsibility to do what it can to raise spirits at a time when they've taken a battering. Top-level rugby tests draw the biggest television audiences of all our sport. Join the dots and it's blindingly obvious that getting the Wallabies here to play the All Blacks is a winning idea.

Disgrace is the only word to use

As a teenage journalist in Auckland in 1965 I was told by a veteran city hall reporter at the New Zealand Herald that "nobody in the world is more short sighted than a NZ politician." He cited the harbour bridge, which was too small the day it opened in 1959, and the rejection of Dove-Myer Robinson's plans for a light rail system, laughed out of contention by the city council.

Now I'm a ratepayer in Christchurch I'm horrified at the same penny pinching lack of enlightened thinking by the Christchurch council. The multi-purpose stadium is not only years and years late, now it'll be too small as well.

A covered stadium, even at a measly 25,000 seats, is expensive. But so was refurbishing the iconic Town Hall. So was building a magnificent central library. There was a certain amount of moaning about whether money spent on the was the right thing to do as well.

But the council went ahead, and they were right to do so.

Why they have been, and are continuing to be, so churlish about the stadium is one of life's great mysteries. I do know that a couple of years after the tragic 2011 earthquake rugby officials I spoke to in the city were saying, off the record, that they feared pushing too hard to get work started on a new stadium because they felt a strong thread of anti-rugby feeling from some councillors.

I wasn't born in Christchurch. I didn't even (and this is the ultimate Christchurch outsider's sin) go to school here, but I've lived in the city on and off for 15 years, and I love the place. That a massive section of the population has been short-changed by their council is a disgrace.

Dramatic? Yes. exhilarating? Not unless you're a kicking coach

Well done to the Lions for winning the first test of what will be a Covid driven fan free series of three with the Springboks. To be trailing 12-3 at halftime in Cape Town and come back to win 22-17 was a tribute to how coach Warren Gatland can meld a team drawn from four countries that are keen rivals.

But in 80 minutes in Cape Town there were just two tries, one to each team. The rest of the 29 points all came from kicks. Even journalist Stephen Jones, lover of all dour things that New Zealanders hate about northern rugby, allowed that the test was "fierce but rather dishevelled."

Winning changes everything, but as Steve Hansen showed at the World Cup in 2015, it is possible to win while playing attacking, exciting rugby. It may be that the bash and crash with which England levelled Hansen's All Blacks in 2019 at the World Cup was the biggest backward step the worldwide game has taken this century.

Yep, should have gone to Specsavers

It may have happened in the past, but I can't find any record of a red card in a test match being overturned by the judiciary.

So the decision by a judicial panel of three New Zealanders that sending off Wallaby Marika Koroibete in the test against France in Brisbane was a mistake was genuinely startling.

Having, as no doubt the panel did, watched the replay of the tackle Koroibete made on French captain Anthony Jelonch numerous times, it was obvious that referee Ben O'Keeffe had to get it checked. When Korobete's shoulder hit Jelonch's torso, the impact was so hard the Frenchman's head whiplashed to the side.

In slow motion it was clear the impact wasn't on Jelonch's head. So, unless Jelonch's pathetic acting, when he grabbed the front of his face, which had been completely untouched, influenced the officials on the day, and I'd happily bet it didn't, the red card can only be seen as a bizarre moment of collective myopia.