The All Blacks may have to do without Julian Savea and Beauden Barrett next season if they opt to play sevens. Photo / Getty Images
The All Blacks may have to do without Julian Savea and Beauden Barrett next season if they opt to play sevens. Photo / Getty Images
The quest for Olympic glory could leave the All Blacks vulnerable next season.
The great empires, without exception, collapsed when they extended their boundaries too far.
New Zealand, the recognised dominant force and rulers of sorts of world rugby, could see their position weaken next year as they chase glory on two fronts.
The full ramifications of sevens winning Olympic status are maybe only now being fully understood. That decision was made in 2009 but in the next few weeks it's going to dawn on New Zealanders just what a massive impact the Olympics are going to have on all forms of professional rugby.
Decision time is approaching for the likes of Julian Savea, Ben Smith, Beauden Barrett, Malakai Fekitoa and Victor Vito about whether they are willing to next year put their All Blacks careers on hold while they chase Olympic glory.
They were sounded out this year and have to make up their minds in early June. From an individual perspective, it's a difficult decision.
To even be a chance of making the final cut, they will have to skip chunks of Super Rugby next year. If they win selection for Rio, they won't be available for the All Blacks' June test series against Wales or the first two — maybe four — games of the Rugby Championship.
But the bigger risk sits with New Zealand Rugby. Brand All Blacks has taken more than a century to build but could be damaged in a fraction of that time. All Blacks coach Steve Hansen is publicly supportive of the players thinking about focusing on sevens but privately must be concerned about the prospect of not having Barrett, Smith, Williams, Messam, Savea, Fekitoa and Vito.
If he was venting behind the scenes, it would be understandable. The All Blacks could be badly compromised in the quest to win gold.
The All Blacks, the one sporting entity that unites the country and puts it on the world map more than any other, could be left picking good Super Rugby players while genuine internationals are playing the sevens tournament in Brazil.
Is the risk worth it? Have New Zealand Rugby, by publicly stating they want to win two gold medals and for the All Blacks to preserve their winning legacy, set the bar too high?
"We could be in danger of spreading ourselves too thin, particularly given the period of the cycle we are in," says NZRU chief executive Steve Tew. "And that is something that we will constantly weigh up and we had conversations on this as recently as yesterday.
"The structure we have put in place protects the broader interests of the game to a degree. We are not going to see three No 10s from the All Blacks play sevens.
"We are mindful that we haveset pretty audacious goals. To even say you are going to win two gold medals ... most countries wouldn't have done that.
"The reality for us is that we want to send two [sevens] teams to the Olympics that have the best possible chance of being on the podium — that's the ambition and we also want the All Blacks to continue to win and to win well in three tests against Wales and be very competitive in the Rugby Championship.
"Can we do all of those things? Well, that will be tested over time and we might have to make some judgements leading into that and there are some coming up."
What's coming up is the deadline for players to signal their interest in committing to the sevens programme. The Herald on Sunday understands that, while Messam and Williams are the only two to have given a firm commitment, the other targeted All Blacks are likely to follow suit. That won't lock them into a binding agreement.
Nor, say the New Zealand Rugby Union, is there any guarantee that All Blacks who commit to playing sevens will make the final 12-man Olympic squad. But while there are no guarantees, it is difficult to imagine, given the skills and qualities of the individuals concerned, that they will miss out.
So it might be that the All Blacks have to manage without any test-proven midfielders in their first squad next year.
There will be no Conrad Smith or Ma'a Nonu and possibly no Williams or Fekitoa. Aaron Cruden will most likely be the only experienced first-five and if Smith and Savea aren't available, the All Black back three will have vacancies.
The NZRU says the plan at the moment is to let players make up their minds based purely on their personal ambition.
"We have committed to the athletes to give them all the information we can and to make it a simple decision in terms of financial considerations and for them to determine what is in their best interests in terms of their long-term career ambitions as professional rugby players," Tew says.
"Some will say they are prepared to take a short-term risk to their 15s career because they want to be an Olympian. That is something few New Zealanders achieve and is an elite club.
"Others will say that they can see themselves playing a big part for the All Blacks in 2016 and that they want to be absolutely in the right place to take a once-in-12-years opportunity to play against the British and Irish Lions [in 2017]."
Guidelines have been put in place so there are quotas around how many All Blacks from each position can be picked to play sevens and also how many can be taken from each Super Rugby franchise.
No one disputes the process has been well planned and managed — certainly to this point — but the problem, for once, is going to be outcome. The problem is that Super Rugby sides are once again going to be asked to do without, for varying lengths, their best players.
The All Blacks are also going to be asked to do without players they desperately need and put their reputation at risk.
"Everything we do at a national team level has an impact on the levels below," says Tew.
"Depending on the timing of it, sometimes it is ITM Cup, sometimes it is Super Rugby, so, yes, that is true. But again we are having those conversations. They are up front and we are going to have to make some judgement calls on behalf of all those interested players.
"We are going to the Olympics and we will have a group of athletes who are incredibly excited about that, some of whom are playing sevens now and some of whom are not. It will have an impact on the teams they make themselves unavailable for and we will manage that impact."
Rio gold may be too dear
Ben Smith helped the New Zealand sevens team win Commonwealth Games gold in 2010 and could be keen to repeat the feat at the Rio Olympics. Photo / Getty Images
There's a fine line in any endeavour when ambition comes perilously close
Weighing up risk against reward is often a flawed process, as the natural inclination of the human spirit is to focus on the size of the reward and skim the bits where it could all go wrong.
It's also true there is no greater sin in the high performance sporting world than to not aim for the stars. It's understandable, then, that the New Zealand Rugby Union have set the goal of winning the World Cup this year and two Olympic gold medals the next.
They shouldn't be judged or condemned for having such grand ambition but there needs to be some acceptance that their aspiration has potential to blow up in their face.
Super Rugby enters a new phase next year — one which the organisers hope will connect with fans and bring them back to stadiums.
For too long, the best players have been allowed to drift into Super Rugby when it best suits them. One minute, the NZRU are talking about the credibility and integrity of the competition, the next, they are signing off on players returning late from Japan or pseudo-sabbatical clauses that enable All Blacks to take another month off.
Next year, every New Zealand franchise will be compromised to some extent by the sevens programme. The Chiefs are going to lose — for a few games at least — Sonny Bill Williams and Liam Messam, while the Highlanders might have to do without Malakai Fekitoa and Ben Smith for periods and that, based on previous evidence, may kill their campaign stone cold.
There's no point in the NZRU trying to spin the situation into some nonsense about the absence of frontline players creating an opportunity for unknowns — that's a tired, old line no one will buy.
The bigger risk, though, is the All Blacks. There will be the usual cleanout after the World Cup, with Dan Carter, Ma'a Nonu and Conrad Smith definitely leaving, and Richie McCaw, Keven Mealamu and possibly Tony Woodcock retiring.
That's the guts of the All Blacks leadership group who, among them, have almost 600 test caps.
Next year was already shaping as difficult and now coach Steve Hansen is going to have to manage about half the test programme without some serious weaponry. If Williams and Fekitoa both make the Olympics, it leaves a gaping hole in the All Blacks midfield. If Smith and Savea are also in Rio, the back three isn't such a force and, while the All Blacks have shown themselves to be surprisingly resilient in the past and able to handle mass player departures, this is maybe too big an ask. The All Blacks will be vulnerable in the June series and for much of the Rugby Championship.
Given the likely make-up of the sevens team in Rio, gold is a distinct probability. But it's what is being sacrificed to achieve that which may become the bigger story.
