KEY POINTS:
Jerry Collins is off and the search is on for the next All Blacks blindside flanker.
Collins will be missed - he's been a unique part of the rugby landscape with that luminous lid and piston-like charges into the fray. He wasn't a perfect No 6 but boy, on most days, you wanted him on your side.
Collins has opted out without immediately announcing a new home in what is a slightly mysterious departure. As to why a terrific All Black who is just 27 should have been sent into the distance so enthusiastically by the national coach, I'm at a loss. Jerome Kaino, Kieran Read and Adam Thomson are lining up for Collins' job, and they are hardly dead-set certs as test stars. What if they fail?
Graham Henry, the All Black coach, said it was the correct decision for Collins to retire because "he wouldn't have got in the All Blacks in the first selection anyway".
Henry agreed with the hardman's decision to seek a release from his NZRU contract a year before it expired in order to take a break from the game.
Once again you feel the chilly wind of the World Cup blowing through the game. Collins is unlikely to last until the tournament in 2011 and the selectors are probably looking for more dexterous players to advance the position by then, so they have lost interest in him. As good as Collins could be, he lacked a finesse that Jerome Kaino in particular has. And Collins went AWOL against the Crusaders in the Super 14 semifinal, although he was hardly outplayed by Kaino a week earlier as Henry suggests.
Whatever those judgments, why give up on the bloke now?
You can bank on Collins ending up in European financial splendour but it is still a strange day when an All Black coach appears to encourage a relatively young man out of the game here just because he has missed out on a test squad.
If all of this was absolutely kosher, then shouldn't Henry encourage the long-standing All Black to honour his commitment to the Hurricanes and have another crack at test selection?
Who knows - given the vagaries of form and injury - Collins might even be needed.
Thomson is the most interesting prospect among potential replacements. He's a big, rough bruiser who could be just the ticket in tests. As a Highlander he has been schooled in the hardest of knocks. The hot and cold Kaino, bred in a franchise where performance and reputation rarely coincide, will come and go, I suspect, although I've long heard he is a Henry favourite. And the lightweight Read is another Reuben Thorne - immaculate at Super 14 level but unlikely to make a massive impact above that.
This unconvincing collection has supposedly left the redoubtable Collins in the shade. We shall see.
