Rugby: Teams look to bet on black

Mike Harris celebrates clinching victory for Australia against Wales. Photo / Getty Images

World rugby's fascination with all things New Zealand has reached unprecedented levels.

Kiwis have infiltrated almost every meaningful part of the sport - wielding the most enormous influence in the last few weeks in jerseys they never dreamed of playing in.

Dylan Hartley, the finest living example of how the boy can be taken out of Rotorua but not Rotorua out of the boy, captained England overnight against the Springboks. The 26-year-old left these shores as a 14-year-old, seemingly having swallowed a geyser that has been prone to erupting on occasion.

That a once bad-boy from the mean streets of Roto-Vegas is now captain of England is the most compelling evidence of just how far the Kiwi influence pervades. It wasn't that long ago that the blazers in the Rugby Football Union were unable to cope with Will Carling, a privately educated, upstanding Englishman, calling them "old farts".

Now the good chaps who roam Twickenham's corridors of power must contend with their captain being a colonial who mangles his vowels and who has committed the most heinous hair crimes in his past. All sins can be forgiven in this day and age because the appetite to have a strong New Zealand influence is insatiable.

Thomas Waldrom's elevation to the England bench last night supports that contention. Waldrom, an honest toiler who couldn't crack the Hurricanes, is now a test player for England. The instant it was discovered last year Waldrom was already eligible for England through a grandparent and not condemned to the three-year residency route, he leapfrogged a host of England loose forwards.

It's a stretch to believe he's genuinely better than a number of locally-raised candidates but England, like many other nations, hold this belief that New Zealanders possess innate rugby qualities that somehow make them invaluable.

Mike Harris, or Aussie Mike as he now is, landed a touchline penalty to beat Wales in the last minute of the second test. Such a spectacular act has ingrained him into Wallaby folklore and yet the point of interest in New Zealand was more focused on how he had made it into the test arena in the first place.

Wrongly rejected by the Blues, it was apparent Harris had Super Rugby potential. It was never apparent he would be an All Black and had he stayed, he'd still be some way off making the test side.

But there he was in Sydney, resplendent in gold, striking the killer blow that sank Wales and saved Robbie Deans from coming into the final test with a guillotine poised over his head.

Harris, it seems, has been promoted so quickly because even the Wallabies have this belief - not one they would necessarily share publicly - that a mediocre New Zealander will carry more threat than a good Australian.

Australian Super Rugby franchises have raided New Zealand aggressively in the last few years and the speed with which they swooped for Deans in 2007 is indicative of their growing inferiority complex. After the World Cup, Australia cleaned out the Wallabies backroom staff: an in-depth review told them they needed to be more like the All Blacks in terms of their coaching set-up and centralised philosophy.

Ireland have been bitten hard by the Kiwi bug, too. In the recent months they have hired three New Zealand coaches in key roles: Mark Anscombe to Ulster, Rob Penney to Munster and Greg Feek as a specialist scrum coach with the national side.

The influence of the 10-test All Blacks prop was marked in Christchurch - Ireland enjoying their best scrum performance in decades. The reaction of head coach Declan Kidney to Ireland's scrummaging ascendancy was as instructive as it was surprising. He barely acknowledged it had happened, such was his haste to lavish praise on the All Blacks. He as good as said it was an aberration.

"I have a good belief in our scrum. Some days, it can go horribly wrong for you and some days, when the fellas get their mojo together and everything is coordinated, then there is no reason why we can't do that again.

"But I'm sure New Zealand will have learned from it. They are too wise and wily not to have learned from it."

Ireland's respect for New Zealand has reached the point where 75 per cent of their professional players are coached by Kiwis (Joe Schmidt is the head coach of Leinster). And while that may seem like an enormously high percentage, it's not that much more than South Africa where three of the six (one has to be culled) Super Rugby sides are coached by Kiwis.

The newly formed Southern Kings have appointed Tasman Academy manager Matt Sexton as head coach: one of the most exciting and important South African posts to emerge in years.

With John Mitchell at the Lions - for now, at least - and John Plumtree at the Sharks, it would seem that every major playing nation is keen to have some kind of New Zealand rugby intelligence in the system.

Wales (Warren Gatland) and Australia have New Zealand head coaches: so, too, do emerging nations Georgia (Milton Haig) and Canada (Kieran Crowley), while a quarter of the 24 teams in this year's Heineken Cup have New Zealand head coaches.

But maybe the most indisputable evidence that the Kiwi love affair is getting out of hand came in the past week.

First, Newcastle appointed Peter Russell as head coach - a man who failed to have any impact with the Highlanders.

And London Wasps, desperate to rebuild after striking financial disaster, hired Shane Howarth as backs coach. Howarth was moved on by the Blues in 2010 for consecutive poor reviews.