How good was the rugby this weekend?

That’s not just because they were both great games. But more really because of how many people turned up to each venue.  It just showed how determined we are to throw ourselves at getting back to normal.

I’d bet there were plenty of people at both games who weren’t really there for the rugby, but more because they wanted to be part of the celebration of all the hard work we’d put into making that lockdown work.

And the world noticed that.

By the looks of things, the games went to TVs and screens in parts of the world where people wouldn’t’ normally be interested.

The USA had the games live on two ESPN channels. The UAE watched it on rugbypass.com. France, Africa, Switzerland, Nepal. The games were available all around the world.

And the world was fascinated by the fact that we watched those games in the stadia, shoulder to shoulder, sharing beers even noted one article. 

Right now, we are a smoking hot global brand.  The New Zealand story of beating Covid is potentially very lucrative to us, judging by the intense global fascination.

 So what I’d like to encourage the government to do is to think very quickly about how we can capitalise on this.  We have a unique selling point in that we have a Covid free country.  There is a big hint in what to do with that in the phrase ‘unique selling point’, and that is the word ‘selling’

We should be selling this. Whether it be by holding large sporting events for a global audience, allowing industries reliant on person-to-person interaction to set up here, giving the green light to high net worth individuals to come here and invest their cash.

It’s not as starry-eyed as it might seem. Look at the haste with which the Avatar crew flew back to get into a safe place to do their work.  And while that upset some people, the government did the right thing letting them in.

But I realise the government will likely be worried about the political consequences of being seen to ‘sell’ NZ.  Especially when they are the government that banned foreign buyers.  There’d be a bit of political explaining to do.  That probably explains why the PM so quickly shot down Troy Bowker’s idea of allowing in high net worth individuals ready to invest $50 million each.

But now’s the time to take risks and make that expensive lockdown pay for itself as much as it can. And if the global fascination in rugby is anything to go by, the world is interested.