Are we becoming Aotearoa or just getting back on a colonial track?

Opinion: I was struck by a recent article on the governance and management of rugby in this country. A great deal of it I agreed with and may comment on further sometime. The short version is that there is a serious and increasing problem of poor direction and spending at the top and too little focus on base levels of the game. The All Blacks are a product of the game, a wonderful product. But they are not the game.
My more immediate interest was in the comment that rugby is “entwined in the social fabric of the country – a defining element to encapsulate how New Zealand’s modern history has been forged on hard work, unity and notions of egalitarianism”. This expresses one of the core colonial myths – one which is today being shaken much more widely than in rugby.