Richie Mo'unga of the Crusaders looks on during the Round 1 Super Rugby match between the Crusaders and the Waratahs. Photo / Photosport.co.nz
Richie Mo'unga of the Crusaders looks on during the Round 1 Super Rugby match between the Crusaders and the Waratahs. Photo / Photosport.co.nz
It's no wonder so many New Zealand Super Rugby coaches scarper when they get the first sniff of an overseas offer. Many of them feel micro-managed as if their employer doesn't trust them - and a lack of trust is a killer.
And that lack of trust has been prominentin these early rounds of Super Rugby as New Zealand Rugby has enforced what seems to be a near arbitrary directive that those All Blacks who were at the World Cup play restricted minutes in the opening rounds and must also have two games off during the season.
The justification, as always, is that the national body says the All Blacks will be in trouble later in the year if their best players have been overworked.
But the flip side of this policy is that it dumps on Super Rugby, makes coaches feel that they aren't in control of their decisions and that the whole business of spending months plotting, planning and preparing to win the competition is of secondary importance to ensuring the national side has fresh players when they need them.
That Super Rugby has been mostly played in horribly empty stadiums so far is indicative of the fact that it is not just coaches who have had enough of NZR interference.
In the opening game, the Blues found themselves under siege after building a healthy lead. The contest was at peak ferocity and the Blues needed all their best cavalry on the field, but just before they reached the last quarter, off came captain Patrick Tuipulotu and star wing Rieko Ioane.
It robbed the contest of the integrity it needed, all so Blues coach Leon MacDonald could get his pat on the head for being compliant.
Blues winger Rieko Ioane scores his second try, during the Super Rugby match between the Blues and Chiefs, held at Eden Park, Auckland, New Zealand. Photo / Brett Phibbs.
He no doubt would have been raging at the silliness of having to remove his skipper from the fray, wondering not just what it was denying his team, but also what growth opportunities it was stealing from Tuipulotu.
The Blues suffer from a chronic lack of leadership – a skill that can only be learned in the heat of battle and Tuipulotu had to be dragged rather than experience what could have been a critical 20-minute period in his captaincy development.
It was infuriating, as it was when Aaron Smith had to leave the field against the Sharks mid-way through the second half in the Highlanders opening game.
The Highlanders had one chance of mounting a comeback against the Sharks and that one chance was playing everything off Smith.
The instant Smith trotted off to be replaced by Kayne Hammington was the instant the Highlanders lost all hope of winning and the few who had made their way to Forsyth Barr Stadium must have wondered why they had bothered.
NZR's militant desire to protect the All Blacks – to ask Super Rugby teams to damage their own hopes all to maybe give the national team a supposed better chance to beat Scotland in November – is not a fair or rational demand.
The risk is significantly higher than the reward and the policy of enforced game time management fails to accept that Super Rugby coaches also want their best players to be full of running for the duration of the competition and will manage them sensibly.
Super Rugby coaches don't want or need to follow an arbitrary game management protocol – they can work out for themselves when to rest their All Blacks and when to take them off the field.
And they can work it out on an individual rather than blanket basis which is another giant failing of the enforced system where every All Blacks is restricted to a maximum of 180 minutes in the first three rounds.
Blues winger Rieko Ioane scores his second try, during the Super Rugby match between the Blues and Chiefs, held at Eden Park. Photo / Brett Phibbs.
If NZR doubt this then they need only go back to 2016, which was the last time there was no enforced rest policy applied.
Having enjoyed a 14-week off-season due to the 2015 World Cup finishing in late October, every All Black was available for game one and coaches free to manage them how they saw best.
The Hurricanes won the competition that year, with the Highlanders, Crusaders and Chiefs all making the play-offs.
More importantly, the All Blacks played brilliant rugby from June through to November, losing just one test. They averaged almost six tries a game and enjoyed a clean sweep of the Rugby Championship where they picked up a maximum 30 points.
They looked tired in their final game of the year in Paris but they still played well and they still won and lo and behold a system where all coaches were entrusted to use their best judgement, delivered quality rugby from February through to November.
Super Rugby contests had integrity, no one felt ripped off in the stands and the respective coaching teams of the Blues, Chiefs, Hurricanes, Crusaders and Highlanders turned up to work feeling that their employer trusted them.
