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About 60 of New Zealand's elite professional rugby players, including 10 World Cup All Blacks, will be vulnerable to lucrative overseas offers this year.
Seven All Blacks quit for contracts in Europe last year after the World Cup defeat in Cardiff and lock Keith Robinson retired because of injury. Another bunch of that squad, including five-eighths Daniel Carter and Nick Evans, are off contract at the end of this year.
Former skipper Reuben Thorne is a confirmed departure for Japan and it is understood that others such as Chris Masoe, Greg Somerville, Andrew Hore, Joe Rokocoko, Conrad Smith and Piri Weepu have not signed on beyond this season.
Other prominent Super 14 players such as Troy Flavell, Isa Nacewa and Daniel Braid are being linked to offers in Japan and Europe in trends the New Zealand Rugby Union accepts as a clear career move.
"The threats of the Northern Hemisphere and Japan are bigger than ever," Players Association boss Rob Nichol said.
"We always think about a third of our members come off contract every year, so that would be about 60 of the 175 players in the Super 14 squads and wider training groups," he said.
There were multiple reasons for players deciding to take their rugby talents north. It was often a case of them looking for a change, deciding they could combine the sort of OE most young New Zealand men pursued with their sporting careers.
That shift could also secure their financial futures. They only had a short shelf-life as professional rugby players and needed to cash in on that opportunity and other commercial spin-offs from their work.
Many decided they did not want to endure the combined pressure of the Super 14 and All Black environments, the travel and time away from home when those schedules were hugely reduced when they played in Europe.
"Then there are those who go for their rugby development, a new experience, new competitions, family and cultural reasons. It broadens their horizons and you'd have to ask whether you'd turn that down," Nichol said.
The Rugby Union's weapons against the exodus were falling away. The lure of the All Black jersey was nowhere near as powerful as it was 20 years ago.
"Ten years ago the challenge came from rugby league, now it is alternative pro rugby deals. The best still stay here for some time but eventually, like Doug Howlett, they go.
"For Carter and Evans it might be a classic case of all the above, it might be their time for a move."
Nichol thought a reduced All Black programme combined with an expanded professional series where New Zealanders might play for franchises in Cape Town, Shanghai, Sydney or Los Angeles might help to alter the drift abroad. He also liked the concept of a Five Nations test programme with the Pacific Islands and Argentina, but said private equity and ownership had to be introduced to the Super rugby series.
