Dane Coles has turned down the All Blacks captaincy as he decides to concentrate on his comeback performance
COMMENT
There is consensus, or at least there seems to be, that what will emerge most prominently from the All Blacks test against Japan is a list of trivia questions.
It is indeed a strange scenario – the All Blacks split into two teams and the one staying behind in Japan possibly containing a number of players who may never again be involved in international rugby.
One of those players tipped for obscurity down the track is young prop Reuben O'Neill whose elevation to the All Blacks came before his first Super Rugby contract.
The All Blacks surprised with many of their 19 additional selections for the Japan test but O'Neill was the one that topped the list as his profile is so low that even ardent rugby followers weren't sure they had ever heard of him.
And so, given his relative lack of experience and previous lack of recognition, there is this underlying assumption that he will return to whence he came with the same haste with which he arrived.
No one is picking a long and memorable test career beckons for O'Neill and that this will be his one and only chance to suck in the rarefied air of an All Blacks test.
His destiny, should he suffer a permanent career descent, is to forever pop up in future conversations in the same breath as Pauliasi Manu whose fame is built on the World Cup medal he won in 2015 without ever playing a game or even making the bench and spending barely 48 hours with the squad.
But those determined to believe this week will be the peak of O'Neill's career, shouldn't be so hasty to condemn given the surprising and colourful history of prop selections in the last 15 years.
Taranaki's Reuben O'Neill. Photo / Photosport
Mostly these days the All Blacks seem to get their selections just about right all the time. They rarely pick a dud.
There are players who maybe don't develop as everyone thought they would but rarely is there an out-and-out horror show of a selection that the coaches have to look the other way about and hope the reputational damage isn't too severe.
It's rare for there to be a total misread, but it does happen and it seems to be exclusive to just one position – prop.
That's seemingly a 50:50 equation where for every Karl Tu'inukuafe who polishes into a diamond, there is a Clarke Dermody lump of coal.
Knowing whether a front-rower is ready for test football appears to be a hit and miss business like no other and it is the one position where the pathways to the national team have tracked in the most interesting directions.
There was the rapid elevation of Saimone Taumoepeau in 2004. He started the NPC that season doing shifts at a freezing works and three months later made a try-scoring test debut.
He wasn't really seen again after that 2004 All Blacks tour. Much like John Schwalger who played a couple of tests in 2007 when no one had him on the selection radar, or anywhere near it.
Former Crusaders prop Campbell Johnstone was another to leap into the All Blacks and straight back out to leave the impression the selectors had taken a wild punt on him only to discover they shouldn't have.
At the moment, it's a fair guess that most are expecting O'Neill to fall into the category of failed experiment – a spin the wheel sort of selection where he'll come up red when everything has been gambled on him being black.
Kane Hames, Karl Tu'inukuafe and Joe Moody. Photos / Photosport
But then most observers probably thought that about Joe Moody when he came into the All Blacks in 2014 having barely played for the Crusaders.
He's now a world class operator well on his way towards winning his 50th cap.
Kane Hames was much the same. He won a cap in 2016 when he didn't even have a Super Rugby contract.
The five Super Rugby clubs didn't want him but the All Blacks did and Hames repaid that faith, scrummaging every bit as well as the national team believed he could.
And then of course there is Tu'inukuafe. The man who almost no one had heard of this time last year – even eight months ago – and who this week was nominated as World Rugby breakthrough player of the year.
Selecting props is not an easy science to master. It's not really a science at all in fact – more a process of educated guessing and even then it has all the accuracy of reading tea leaves.
O'Neill, then, deserves a future free of assumption. No one can say with any conviction that his fate is a return to obscurity any more than it is to be the greatest prop in the history of the All Blacks.
He could be a great All Black, he could never be seen in the national team again after this week, both those paths are open to him not just the latter.
