Holiday Nightmares

Clubs Around The World are Willing To Pay extraordinary Sums For new Zealand’s Best Players And Yet So Few Have Ever excelled Offshore And Infact, Quite Often, Things Go Horribly Wrong.

The sales brochure always makes a compelling case. Foreign rugby clubs certainly know how to sell themselves to New Zealanders.

They grab the attention with the salary, which is usually astronomical and then they sell this vision of them being a caring club with family values and state of the art training facilities.

In many cases the sales pitch is mostly an accurate reflection of what the new Kiwi signing will encounter when he arrives. or at least it is mostly an accurate reflection of what the club believes the new Kiwi signing will encounter when he arrives.

But the vision and the reality often veer off course once the player is settled at his new club and the overseas experience doesn’t always turn out to be all it is cracked up to be for New Zealand’s leading players.

And likewise, as a result, New Zealand’s leading players don’t often turn out to be all they are cracked up to be when they arrive at their new club.

There’s no doubt that some New Zealanders have thrived offshore in a way they didn’t when they were based in New Zealand.

Nick Evans, who was an All Blacks understudy to Daniel Carter between 2004 and 2007, took his game to a higher level when he joined Harlequins in 2008.

He’d be considered, and not just by fans of the Quins, to be one of the best Kiwi imports of the professional age.

The Irish would say Isa Nacewa, who was at Leinster between 2008 and 2013 and then again between 2015 and 2018 when he came out of retirement, is the most influential New Zealand signing ever made in European rugby.

Daniel Carter had a big impact on Racing 92 when he was there between 2015 and 2018 – guiding them to their first championship in 26 years and Edinburgh Rugby say Todd Blackadder was the man who fixed their culture of accepting underperformance.