Rugby: Mid-tier player exodus hits Sanzar nations

All Black coach Graham Henry says players lured offshore take with them a wealth of knowledge and experience. Photo / Getty Images

The exodus of 'middle-management' is a problem affecting South Africa and Australia as much as it is New Zealand.

Just as New Zealand struggles to retain fringe test players with a few years experience, so too do their Sanzar allies who both say their respective contracting models leave this group vulnerable to overseas offers.

Experienced players with limited test exposure but who are unlikely to feature much in the future find their payment stagnates.

Not only do they miss out on All Black fees, they also find the national body puts the squeeze on their existing contract. For these players, the potential money on offer in Europe can be three times as much as they can earn at home.

Their test experience and relative youth make them attractive to European clubs.

"A lot of other guys who were putting pressure on the top players have gone," said All Black coach Graham Henry.

"They have decided they weren't going to be All Blacks and have gone overseas. You take all that depth away and it's a lot of intellectual property and intelligence in the game, which helps the younger guys develop, and that is a concern to me."

The situation is not much different in South Africa. Piet Heymans, who heads the Player Association in the Republic, says that without the Springbok payments, players there are just as vulnerable to European offers.

"Schalk Brits is a perfect example," says Heymans. "He played a few tests and then dropped out of favour. He could earn maybe three times as much by shifting to Saracens.

"We have that same problem in South Africa but are maybe fortunate that we have so many players coming through that our depth has not been exposed."

Neither Heymans nor his New Zealand counterpart Rob Nichol believe the solution is to cut payments made to younger players.

Any young player who cracks Super14 in New Zealand is guaranteed a minimum of $75,000 plus another minimum of $15,000 from their provincial contract. A guaranteed total of $90,000 is significant payment for unproven players who are often barely out of their teens.

But Nichol says younger players would be picked off by European clubs if they didn't pay those sums. The danger is that uncapped players could easily become eligible for another country by living there for three years.

Nichol says the best way to improve the likelihood of retaining this mid-tier of players is to keep improving the quality of the competition to entice more sponsors and better broadcast deals.