Q9139

Should New Zealand Rugby Players Be Eligible to Play for New Zealand If they Play Their Club Rugby Overseas

Should New Zealand rugby players be allowed to play their rugby overseas and still be eligible to play for the All Blacks? Some people say they should and some people say they should not. But of course they should not be allowed to, if all New Zealand’s best rugby players head overseas to earn some big money what is going to happen to our provincial competition? Should the NZRU be paying bigger money or should we just let them play overseas and still play for the All Blacks?

Dan Carter, Richie McCaw, Sonny-Bill Williams and Ma’a Nonu have all gone overseas but are all still eligible to play for New Zealand and Conrad Smith, Kieran Reid, Cory Jane and Tony Woodcock will go. They are earning great money and still get to play for New Zealand. What good is left in New Zealand? Well there is still provincial rugby but who wants to watch that when there is no All Blacks playing? If the All Blacks all go overseas and still play for New Zealand it is going to leave the provincial competition in tatters and therefore what money is the NZRU getting? The crowds are not turning up and the moneys not going into the NZRU pocket. If this happens New Zealand will have no world class stadiums for the All Blacks to play in, we won’t be able to pay for decent coaches and therefore we will not be winning games.

Dan Carter gets a 4 million dollar contract and gets to choose when he wants time off, he even gets to go on a sabbatical and play for an English rugby team. But what is the point in giving him all that money? Yes, he is a great rugby player, but we are paying him millions of dollars for him to play his rugby in New Zealand, we are not paying him for time off and to go and play rugby over in England. Then there is Sonny-Bill Williams he is earning close to 1 million dollar’s a year and he is also aloud to take on a semi-pro boxing career. What’s going to happen if he gets injured in the ring and can’t play in the world cup? Hes here to play rugby isn’t he, so will he still get paid, of course he will but what price could the NZRU pay?

It’s a large talking point in New Zealand at the moment. Should we be letting our top players go and play there rugby over in other countries and still be aloud to play for the All Blacks? Of course they should not be aloud to, if all our best rugby players go over and play in England then our great running style game that New Zealand is so well known for will be thrown out the window, and the only style of rugby will be  the boring sort of rugby like non stop rucks and mauls and the game will revolve around the set piece play which nobody likes to watch, if we can keep all of our players in New Zealand we can keep that fast flowing game style going and New Zealand will always be one of the stronger nations in world rugby.

New Zealand rugby players should not be allowed to play rugby for New Zealand if they play overseas because it will destroy our provincial rugby competition, our game style will change to that boring style of rugby which the English love so much and if all our top flight players go overseas the crowds wont turn up to the games and the NZRU will lose money and would the All Blacks keep winning?