The case for calling up Mo’unga, a specialist No 10, is that the All Blacks are already well-served in the midfield, and that there is no compelling contender outside the incumbent group.

The best like-for-like replacement would have been David Havili, who is 32 and leaving for Toshiba in a few months.

Hence the speculation it would be Mo’unga, who All Blacks coach Dave Rennie wanted to initially select for the Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry tour and who has been identified as a strong World Cup contender having won 56 caps and played at two tournaments previously.

Mo’unga, unlike Havili, has committed to New Zealand Rugby (NZR) and so, despite there being four first five-eighths on the tour already, the logic stacks up to bring in a player who will almost certainly be joining the squad for the Bledisloe Cup tests in October.

Former All Blacks coach Sir Steve Hansen said on the Rugby Unity podcast that a call-up for Mo’unga would be a smart long-term play.

“They [All Blacks] will say ‘Righto, this gives us an opportunity to bring one of our more seasoned players in who doesn’t know me, doesn’t know us, doesn’t know how we want to play, so we get a free shot, we get four weeks to give him an introduction’.”

That Mo’unga was not on the tour already remains a great saga within a greater saga. He was ineligible despite being contracted and needed an exemption from the NZR board to be called up – one that would likely only be granted if the All Blacks lose a first five-eighths (or fullback).

Still, Rennie could make the case – on the grounds already outlined – and when he was asked by NZ Herald rugby correspondent Liam Napier if the likely replacement for Proctor was Mo’unga, Rennie laughed, and said: “Well, we’ll work through that process.”

The whole business of Mo’unga being off limits to the All Blacks is anathema to the Springboks, as head coach Rassie Erasmus has no restrictions on who he can pick, other than them qualifying as South African.

New Zealand would be reckless to follow suit – it would see a player exodus and kill Super Rugby Pacific – but the issue of eligibility is not absolute in the way the national body often tries to present it.

It is possible to open the eligibility valve to a limited extent and not face catastrophic consequences for doing so. It would seem that NZR may at least now be prepared to accept that it needs to have a grown-up conversation about whether the system is best serving the national team when a player of Mo’unga’s quality is playing NPC and not involved in Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry.

The Mo’unga saga will, therefore, have a silver lining of sorts, as it is expected to serve as a catalyst for probable change. A major review of talent pathways, retention strategies and eligibility is expected to take place as part of NZR’s high-performance reset which has seen former All Black Conrad Smith, former Chiefs prop Michael Collins and former Black Sox coach Don Tricker appointed to new positions.

All three will be in their roles before the end of the year and it is expected that they will evaluate whether the sabbatical programme is still working and whether the qualification to be afforded one could be changed from having won 70 test caps earned to years of loyalty instead.

It’s likely that the new high-performance team will look at whether the eligibility settings need to be tweaked to allow a small number of overseas-based players to be available to the All Blacks and under what conditions, and a simplification of the return-to-play protocol could be on the cards to prevent confusing situations like Mo’unga’s developing, where he’s contracted but not available.

“That would make it easier,” Rennie said when he was asked if he was in favour of changing the rules so that anyone who signs a contract with NZR is immediately available.

“But what they wanted was for Richie to sign a two-year deal, and he committed for 18 months.

“If he had signed for two years, he would have been eligible from the start.

“All policies will be looked at over the next wee while. Don [Tricker] and I have had conversations about what things should look like long term and the possibility of picking players from overseas.

“But that will be a long process and it will need to go through board approval.”

One of NZR’s arguments for not fast-tracking Mo’unga’s eligibility is that the likes of Damian McKenzie, Beauden Barrett and Ruben Love all made long-term commitments based on the current settings.

To fast-track Mo’unga would be a variation in the rules and if NZR is going to make any permanent changes, it would like to have the new framework in place by 2028 so players can make career decisions in the next World Cup cycle knowing what the new – if there is one – landscape looks like.

Rennie’s case for Retallick

Rennie will be relieved to have a support team building a researched picture of what is working and what is not as it pertains to retention and eligibility, as he has had no success in getting NZR’s board to budge from their non-negotiable position of having zero interest in changing any of the current settings.

He is understood to have made the case to the board when he got the job that he would like the option of being able to call in overseas-based players if there was an injury crisis in certain positions.

He pitched the example of Brodie Retallick, who is playing in Japan and by Rennie’s estimation – he has coached him for the last three seasons at Kobe – the 109-cap All Blacks lock is in world-class form.

But Retallick earns money NZR could not get remotely close to matching and he has little interest in returning to a life with the All Blacks where it’s 180 days a year in hotels and long-haul travel.

Rennie’s hypothetical was that Retallick could remain with Kobe next year and be available for the Rugby Championship and the World Cup – giving the All Blacks a world-class option at lock.

Having coached in Japan for the past three years, Rennie believes the quality of the top three or four clubs is on a par with Super Rugby Pacific and that an experienced player like Retallick would be able to adjust to test rugby relatively quickly.

The poster boy for All Blacks eligibility change

Mo’unga, without ever giving his consent or participating in any campaign, has become the inadvertent poster boy for All Blacks eligibility change – a topic that refuses to go away, because the previous and current coach have both advocated for change without any success.

Former All Blacks coach Scott Robertson tried in 2024 to persuade Mo’unga to quit his three-year deal with Toshiba Brave Lupus early and when that didn’t work, he then publicly lobbied for an undefined change in the eligibility rules to get access to him in 2025, even if he was still in Japan.

Robertson also famously told the media a story in September 2024 about a surfing excursion he’d had with Andrew Johns and how the former NRL legend had asked when Mo’unga was coming back.

It was a story that the Herald understands led to a senior figure in the New Zealand professional rugby scene asking then chief executive Mark Robinson to have a word with Robertson to tell him to stop talking publicly about Mo’unga.

It was undermining and unsettling incumbent first fives Damian McKenzie and Beauden Barrett to hear the coach seemingly pine for a player in Japan.

Robinson, it is believed, never did speak with Robertson, but it is understood that when it was revealed in early 2024 that attempts had been made to lure Mo’unga home early, the 56-cap first five rang both Barrett and McKenzie to say he was not driving the move nor agitating to get out of his contract.

The new coach has also lobbied NZR – in his case to fast-track Mo’unga’s eligibility. Rennie was appointed in March this year, by which stage Mo’unga had already signed a contract to return to New Zealand in June and stay until the 2027 World Cup.

But because he had not signed a longer deal, NZR would not fast-track his eligibility to be available for Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry – and Rennie campaigned for that to be overturned.

His case was rejected, with Rennie revealing in May: “The thinking would be Richie would be in the group, include him in the squad to Africa and probably play him against the Stormers first game and let him earn the right to fight for a test spot.

“But obviously the criteria means he can’t do that. We’re still hoping to get him in so he can get his head around things.”

The flies on Rennie’s walls

New Zealand Rugby has spent the better part of $30 million – possibly more – on driving a content strategy designed to win new fans and that expenditure has been in full force in South Africa.

The All Blacks have four dedicated camera operators with them, filming every aspect of life with the team.

Everywhere the All Blacks go now, there is a camera in tow and there were even signs up at DHL Stadium in Cape Town at the turnstiles telling fans that NZR was filming.

It is an enormous and relentless exercise in capturing content – most of which is being cut into social-media clips, but some will also be used for two documentaries that are likely to be on the small screen next year.

One of those – if it is confirmed – will be on Netflix and the exact nature of the storyline is to be determined. The other, which has been signed off, is called The Greatest Rivalry and will be on TVNZ.

The Greatest Rivalry is being produced by Pango Productions, the content house owned by former NZR director Bailey Mackey.

Pango has been given $990,000 of NZ on Air funding to make four, 45-minute episodes about the tour that will show on TVNZ+ in April next year.

NZR is being paid nothing for The Greatest Rivalry and it is believed any project agreed with Netflix will cover editing and production costs but won’t come with a licensing fee.

To have two documentaries in production seems that it could be overwhelming for the All Blacks, but they have made a strong decision to provide neither project with any direct access to the team.

Instead, all the content for The Greatest Rivalry is being captured by NZR’s in-house team and then vetted by commercial manager Megan Compain before being sent to Pango.

There are several reasons why it is being done like this, but mostly it’s about controlling what viewers get to see, keeping external camera crews out of the team environment and protecting the All Blacks’ intellectual property.

The All Blacks’ embedded content team – led by creative director Franz Roache-Liuaana – have built trust with the players and management over the last two years.

They also work within a framework of understanding of what and where they can and can’t film, with a traffic-light system that says green areas are okay all the time, amber areas need to be checked with the team manager week-to-week and red areas are off limits.

That desire to be protective stems, perhaps ironically, from the first major content project the All Blacks agreed to, which was a documentary with Amazon called All or Nothing that was filmed in 2017 and released in 2018.

It was a six-part series and other major sports brands such as the Los Angeles Rams and Manchester City had also signed up to the franchised concept. The irony is that it was Pango Productions that was commissioned by Amazon to film, direct and produce All or Nothing and the project caused intense internal disruption that left the All Blacks coaching and management teams reluctant to ever do another documentary.

“We felt we were burned pretty badly by the Amazon series,” one source told the Herald recently.

The coaches say they felt they had to coach differently with cameras around and that they were fearful of intellectual property being given away. They also say that while they were consulted about the project, it was made clear to them that it was happening regardless.

The Herald also understands that while Amazon paid $3m to NZR, the actual figure they banked in the end was less than $1m because of, it is believed, unforeseen production costs.

Different levels of access?

The Greatest Rivalry is, intriguingly, a joint project in that there will be a similar, behind-the-scenes look at the Springboks.

This content will be melded together with what comes out of the All Blacks camp and the story spliced together. The Boks have collaborated like this before – with the British and Irish Lions when they toured South Africa in 2021.

What will be intriguing to see is whether the two teams give different levels of access to the cameras and what aspects of team life the South Africans are prepared to show to the world compared with the All Blacks.

The Boks will be operating in a similar production set-up to the All Blacks: they too have an embedded camera and everything that is shot will be vetted by South African Rugby’s general manager of corporate affairs Andy Colquhoun and Springboks head coach Rassie Erasmus before it is passed to their chosen production company, T&W.

The South Africans have produced several documentaries in recent years about their back-to-back World Cup triumphs in which they have lifted the lid on selection meetings, team talks and special moves they created.

Their two projects called Chasing the Sun that followed their respective 2019 and 2023 World Cup campaigns offer an incredible insight into the team’s dynamics and the relationship between the players and management.

Erasmus was happy to be filmed addressing the team before games, during halftime of the final and revealing tactical secrets while using expletive language.

If he’s willing to do that again for The Greatest Rivalry, it will highlight the cultural differences between the two teams – with All Blacks head coach Dave Rennie unlikely to feature much on camera and when he does, it will illustrate the calm, methodical and undramatic way the New Zealanders go about their business.

In stark contrast to the Springboks, the All Blacks won’t be showing anything that they consider to be within their inner sanctum because the leakage of intellectual property (IP) – be it intelligence about selection meetings, training methods or personalities – has long been something they have fought to protect.

They believe that showing the world too much of life inside the team will demystify the All Blacks and ultimately lessen the fear factor some opponents have about playing them.

As former captain Kieran Read said in the book Black Gold: “I don’t think you want to be selling your IP.

“The IP of who we are, it is shown in the way teams play against us, that if you don’t quite have that fear factor, then it is an advantage you have lost.”

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Gregor Paul is one of New Zealand’s most respected rugby writers and columnists. He has won multiple awards for journalism and written several books about sport.