It's a new twist on the old theme. Knock, knock, who's there, anyone going to the Bledisloe Cup test? It's not a scenario the New Zealand or Australian Rugby unions envisaged when they shipped the Bledisloe Cup offshore two years ago. The unions took that test to Hong Kong as part of a rugby promotion carnival, an evangelical crusade for the sport in Asia as well as a lucrative broadcasting and sponsorship boost for their struggling coffers. It also gave the All Blacks and Wallabies a useful hit-out on their way to their annual tours of the Northern hemisphere. The concept was deemed a success by most, except for All Black hooker Andrew Hore, who damaged an ankle and was invalided out of the tour.
Administrators shifted the experiment to Tokyo last season, worryingly without any great impact, and decided to return the match this year to Hong Kong. They also chose to turn over much of the promotional and planning to the local authorities. Reasonable idea but not such a great outcome. Ticket sales have been slow, marketing mixed, the interest lukewarm.
If Australia and New Zealand were as fervent as their noble public utterances about developing the game in Asia, they might have driven the international more purposefully. Only a couple of years ago, NZRU chief executive Steve Tew was hammering the message about how the commercial growth of the sport was linked to the Asia-Pacific region. He was optimistic those connections would be strong and purposeful in the future.
Global financial pressures have had an impact while New Zealand eyes, at least, may have been more focused on the World Cup, which is returning once again after the 1987 birth of the tournament. Some of the trans-Tasman zeal for tests in Asia seems to have diminished and officials could argue that those who should be driving and encouraging the growth of rugby in the region are the ones who wear the International Rugby Board blazers.
Perhaps so, but the Tasman cousins did pump up their own importance and that of the Hong Kong and Tokyo contests as long as they could see a substantial guaranteed income. Some of that evangelical zeal appears to have drifted and late efforts to pump some oxygen into the Hong Kong test have struggled.
Enthusiasm about the three-year experiment in Asia appears to have morphed into a more pragmatic view about the reality of rugby in the region. Were a composite Asian XV or Hong Kong playing a New Zealand or Australian side, or involved in a curtain raiser to this Bledisloe Cup, interest may have been greater. Or not.