KEY POINTS:
Whoever becomes the New All Black coach will face a considerable task. That much was clear when Luke McAlister walked into the Topaz Room at Edgeley Park yesterday, resplendent in the dark blue and white colours of Sale Sharks.
At 24, McAlister is the youngest and brightest of the stellar talents leaving New Zealand rugby for the fresh challenge and big bucks of the European club scene.
He is second only to Dan Carter as the most dazzling All Black to emerge in recent years.
And yet he will be out of reach to the man appointed as the head of All Black reconstruction.
The NZRU will consider only players based in New Zealand for national selection. That removes McAlister from the equation until the end of 2009. The former North Harbour and Blues player has signed a two-year contract with Sale.
"Making the decision to leave was hard," he said. "There's been a lot of time and investment spent on me. I've grown up in the system in New Zealand, learnt everything I know in that. But it was time for me to move, time for a change.
"I always wanted to explore the world and play different kinds of rugby and leaving now gives me a chance to do that. I'm probably one of the youngest guys to do it but I'm sure there are going to be a lot more coming in the next few years.
"The game's changing. You grow up wanting to be an All Black but now it's sort of 'look after yourself', rather than spend 10 years in New Zealand. It's only a short career. "I don't want to be one of these guys who gets to 31, 32 with nothing to show for it. I want to be able to look after my wife and my family." At salaries of £200,000 ($550,000) and upwards per man, McAlister and the other All Blacks pitching up in Europe - Chris Jack at Saracens, Carl Hayman at Newcastle, Aaron Mauger at Leicester, Doug Howlett at Munster, Byron Kelleher at Toulouse, Anton Oliver at Toulon - are doubling their earning power. At what cost to rugby union in New Zealand, though, remains to be seen.
"I think it's going to be hard for them to keep players because the offers over here are so lucrative," McAlister said.
Would it not make sense, then, to drop the bar on the selection of players based overseas? "It would be good for me personally if they did that," he said. "But for the good of New Zealand rugby I don't think they should. They'll lose a lot more young players if you can be an All Black while playing over here."
McAlister, of course, is young enough to earn a tidy crust in England's Northwest - in a Sale team determined to return to the highs of 2006, when they topped the Guinness Premiership and won the playoff final against Leicester at Twickenham - and return home in time to be part of the All Black World Cup team in 2011.
"Obviously, it's a goal to be back in the All Blacks," he said, "but you can't look too far into the future. Players are going to be stepping into my position and who knows where rugby is going to be in 2011."
In looking after the future of his family, McAlister is doing precisely what his father Charlie did in the 1980s, uprooting his family from New Zealand to England's Northwest because of the financial lure of rugby. He played league for Oldham, Castleford and Sheffield Eagles.
Luke lived at Middleton, near Rochdale, from the age of 4 to 13. His first sporting love was football and he played as a centre-forward for Lancashire Schools, attending Manchester United's school of excellence. According to his father, who accompanied him on his return yesterday, his love affair with football came to an end when he was verbally abused by a coach while struggling to get to grips with a frozen, rutted pitch at Royton.
McAlister won his first cap in July 2005. He won his latest cap - his 22nd - in that Cardiff quarter-final on October 7.
It was not an occasion he was keen to dwell upon. "I haven't even seen the game on video," McAlister said. "I don't really want to."
"I guess we gave it our best shot as players," he said. "There's no one who didn't give it their all. That's all you can ask of a team.
"I'm not one to blame the ref or anything but he did make a few shocking calls. That's rugby. You can't control what the ref does. You can only control what you do."
He believes Graham Henry and his coaching team are the right men to take the All Blacks forward.
"I don't know what he wants to do, but he's a great coach and the whole coaching staff was outstanding throughout the three years I've been a part of the All Blacks," he said.
"They're very knowledgeable and I don't think you can judge them on why we lost that quarterfinal. - it was more the players rather than the coaches."
- Independent / NZPA
