All black New Zealanders face an ominous prospect: retirement

But New Zealand has changed. While rugby continues to fascinate many, the number of men playing it is dwindling as interest in other sports grows. (Le rugby féminin, en revanche, connaît une croissance rapide.) En 2018, par exemple, le nombre de jeunes adultes jouant au basket dans leur école a dépassé le rugby pour la première fois, selon School Sport New Zealand, les coorne sports In high school. in the country. A separate government agency tasked with promoting the sport, Sport New Zealand, found in 2021 that only 7% of young New Zealanders play rugby regularly.

And for those remaining players, the modern school competition is dominated by a handful of elite schools that have positioned themselves as the only path to a professional career. Due to the lack of competition, rugby programs in many other schools have been neglected or closed. Some see the shrinking of the energy system as the root of the problem.

Prestigious Super Rugby teams often select players directly from this small group of elite high schools, skipping the club-wide rugby game that once built players’ resilience and exposes them to diverse playing styles. Instead, critics said, players are being groomed and developed to fit a model that has become an ultra-professional model favored by a small subset of teams.

“When you design your system to circumvent the natural progression that has worked in New Zealand for so many years, it will have consequences,” Stephenson said.

Likewise, the All Blacks’ centralization in New Zealand rugby could backfire. According to Cleaver, the focus on producing players who fit into a team “led to consistency across the system.” He said that because they couldn’t regularly test themselves against different playing styles, the best players lost their flexibility and flexibility. “Because we’re playing the same game all over the country, we’re not very good at adapting very quickly,” Cleaver said.

These difficulties were most evident in mid-July, when the team lost to Ireland in their third home game. Until then, there was magic on the pitch, proof that the All Blacks are, according to Cleaver, “the most talented group of players in the world when they have the ball.”