KEY POINTS:
The easy rugby of June is past and we look forward to the real tests of July, beginning next Saturday when the All Blacks face the Springboks.
But before the June frolics are forgotten entirely we should wonder why we let this nonsense dictate the shape of our rugby season.
The June tours from the northern unions are the price we apparently have to pay for the chance to send the All Blacks to Europe in November. Those two months, falling at the end of one northern rugby season and the beginning of the next, are the only opportunities available for annual fixtures between teams from each hemisphere.
November is probably even more unsatisfactory for the northern unions than June is for us. They have to assemble a team long before their Six Nations championship begins; at least the southern unions can use the June games as immediate preparation for the Tri-Nations series. But how worthwhile are they as preparation?
Neither side treats the June and November tours as seriously as their other contests. The All Black selectors often use the northern tour to introduce young players and try new combinations, but at least they present a respectable challenge to their hosts and they invariably win. The northern unions send teams depleted of players whose club commitments take precedence in the professional era. The weakness of the Irish and English visitors this month is typical of the standard the June tours produce.
They surely descended to some sort of nadir in the publicity attracted by the behaviour of some English players with young women in their hotel rooms the morning after their first heavy loss to the All Blacks.
The team were here without even their coach. Whatever may have prompted a complaint to the police, that performance off the field was more memorable than their rugby.
The tedium of the June internationals would be a trivial matter if they did not determine our whole seasonal programme. If the Rugby Union was not committed to hosting June tours, it would have more options for redesigning other elements of the season that are themselves becoming tedious.
It is the June tours that require the Super 14 to start far too early - in February, when sports fans are still watching or playing summer games. Were it not for the need to assemble international squads in June, the Sanzar unions might schedule their Tri-Nations series later, enabling strong provincial competitions in South Africa and New Zealand to move to centre stage for a month or two before the main events.
With crowds dwindling and popular support suffering from the re-appointment of the World Cup coaching panel, the NZRU possibly cannot afford to limit its options much longer.
It accepts the June obligation because, otherwise, it might not get the northern tours in November. And it believes New Zealand rugby followers want contact with the "home unions", as they used to be known, every season. That might not be so.
A Lions tour, once every five years or so, would probably be appreciated much more than these reciprocal visits with one or two European unions every year.
A full-scale tour by France every few years would be just as welcome. And in return, the All Blacks could tour the British Isles or France for a longer tour, as they used to do, on a schedule suitably removed from the World Cup.
The substandard June tours are doing nothing for the visitors or hosts. The depleted teams come here as a joyless duty for near-certain defeat. The All Blacks would do better to prepare against Fiji, Samoa and Tonga, where our greater obligations lie, and occasionally Argentina. They at least would make an effort.
