Aisle be Back: What Goes On Tour

• By Kevin McCarthy

If you don’t understand the fuss over the All Blacks ending a 30-year touring drought, you are certainly in a minority, or under 30.

Perhaps it would be useful to do this little thought experiment. How much do you remember about the Bledisloe in 2014, or the Rugby Championship in 2017.  I’d wager very little.

How much will you remember next year about the debut of the inter-hemisphere crossover this year. I have trouble remembering the name.

Outside four-yearly World Cups, and a Lions tour every 12 years, and the Six Nations, the rest of test rugby is a blink and its gone moment. It doesn’t mean there isn’t any exciting rugby and great moments in that, but they are unanchored. They’re not part of any wider flow, any tradition.

Into that vacuum comes psychodramas about coaches, when they are going to be sacked, and endless, endless analysis. All very entertaining, but also on the treadmill of tedium.

But a tour? Well, I was 10, and my dad would stick the overnight All Blacks results on my bedroom door to see when I woke. Llanelli 9, NZ 3, in 1972.  Watching the All Blacks achieve the Grand Slam in 1978 (although strictly it was nearly invisible in the Murrayfield murk). The 24 match trek through South Africa in 1976, and the inbound Lions tours, like 1977 (and the infamous cold showers welcome from my home province).

Tours just build stories. There’s the broad rugby one – who will win the test series. What players can force their way into contention. Will a province topple the visitors and burnish their names into poems and plays, where everyone claims they saw the match in person.

There’s usually some off-field  drama (Keith Murdoch anyone – that still echoes down the ages). There’s usually some history on the line, as anyone who lived through the closing minute of the 1996 second test against South Africa can attest.

If you were lucky enough to actually follow a tour (I did in France in 1986) then it was made in heaven. Rugby, foreign culture and backpacking.

They even used to write books about tours. Actual books.

Everyone’s tour memories will be different of course. But that tours have been allowed to wither as some historic afterthought just shows you the damage that chasing the dollar brings.

Now, I’m not going to get too rose-tinted about Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry (trademark!). It still has to make a buck, meaning the weird excursion to Baltimore at the end. But I reckon it is going to generate some great memories.

If the penny drops, and possibly it has, then maybe we’ll see more of the same in years to come.

That would be good, I think. I hope you agree.

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The NPC may struggle for oxygen while the Great Trek is on, but it won’t be for want of trying by Du Plessis Kirifi.

Wellington away to Auckland should always attract some eyeballs, but with the career No 7 suddenly starting in the 12 jersey, there’s considerable intrigue about the latest hybrid experiment. Who doesn’t want to watch how that goes.

Leicester Faingaʻanuku has prospered going in the opposite direction – though injury means we don’t know if it would have helped him get a plane ride to South Africa.

And Dupes doesn’t see this as a future shift. But still, we’ll be watching.

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Five Wellington players in first game

Five current Wellington players will line up for the All Blacks in their opening fixture against a Stormers XV in Cape Town.

Peter Lakai (Petone) an Billy Proctor (Marist St Pat’s) are in the starting XV, while Asafo Aumua (Avalon), Kyle Preston (OBU) and Siale Lauaki (Northern United) are on the bench.

Lauaki is on All Blacks debut.

Additionally, starting fullback Josh Moorby (Upper Hutt Rams) and starting tighthead Pasilio Tosi (Paremata-Plimmerton) can call upon their experience playing club rugby in Wellington.

All Blacks match-day 23 (Test caps and non-Test games in brackets; * indicates first All Blacks appearance):

1.   George Bower (26, 0)
2. Samisoni Taukei’aho (44, 0)
3.   Pasilio Tosi (17, 0)
4.   Fabian Holland (12, 0)
5. Patrick Tuipulotu (57, 2) (Captain)
6.   Simon Parker (8, 0)
7.   Peter Lakai (10, 0)
8.   Wallace Sititi (21, 0)
9.   Cortez Ratima (24, 0)
10.  Beauden Barrett (144, 1)
11.  Rieko Ioane (88, 0)
12. Anton Lienert-Brown (90, 1)
13.  Billy Proctor (13, 0)
14. Leroy Carter (7, 0)
15. Josh Moorby (2, 0)

16.  Asafo Aumua (22, 2)
17.  Ollie Norris (3, 0)
18. Siale Lauaki *
19.  Sam Darry (10, 0)
20.  Ethan Blackadder (14, 0)
21.  Kyle Preston (1, 0)
22.  Josh Jacomb *
23.  Caleb Clarke (35, 0)