Does Anyone Really Know - Or Care - What's Happening in the All Blacks Bugging Saga?

Like any headline with the slightest mention of the All Blacks, the bells were ringing loud and clear from the highest clock towers in New Zealand this morning.

The ABs-anchored news story detailed one of the team's main security contractors Adrian Gard – who has previously protected ex-President Bill Clinton, talk show host Oprah Winfrey and rock legend Sir Mick Jagger – and his denial of involvement in the ongoing Sydney hotel bugging scandal, despite being charged overnight.

The bugging scandal, the New Zealand Herald noted, has "rocked world rugby."

Obviously New Zealand takes rugby too seriously, but those three words are hyperbolic even for Godzone. Three more appropriate ones may be 'confused world rugby.'

A One News story on the charging of All Blacks security consultant Adrian Gard for "public mischief" due to the bugging scandal. Source: Youtube.

The bugging story has simmered away since it broke on the morning of the Bledisloe Cup test in Sydney on August 20 last year.

A listening device had been found in a hotel room of one of the All Blacks staff. Before long, there were insinuations that Australia Rugby was involved in potentially receiving recordings.

It's a narrative that fits that of any Kiwi sporting fan – "those bloody cheating Aussies" – and made the 42-8 walloping of the Wallabies later that day maybe even sweeter.

But what really happened to get that bug into the hotel room, and who was standing to gain anything from it?

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Nearly six months after the story broke, those answers still haven't been provided – leaving rugby fans with an ongoing irritiance rather than any degree of relevance in how rugby management or game prep goes down. Word rugby rocked? Come on.

The most recent news is that Gard – who attended a Guns N' Roses concert as a security professional in New Zealand last week with three All Blacks - will appear in court in Sydney on March 21, accused of providing police with false information.

The charge carries a 12-month maximum sentence, though you'd imagine, with New Zealand Rugby's considerable resources, the chances of that are remote.

Talking to the Daily Telegraph yesterday, Gard – who supposedly found the bug – said he had nothing to do with planting it.

A clip from Guns N' Roses recent New Zealand tour, during which ABs security consultant Adrian Gard was working - and hanging with three Kiwi rugby players. Source: Youtube.

"I don't know anything about this stupid bloody bug," the 51-year-old, who has worked for the All Blacks for a decade, said.

"The bug was news to me. I literally had no idea about it, until I was told about it. I'm really annoyed about the whole thing, to tell you the truth. I'm just going to ride the next few months out – the truth will come out in the end."

Straight away, the Australian Rugby Union used Gard's charge - which All Blacks coach Steve Hansen called "frankly bizarre and unbelievable" - as an opportunity to show it had nothing to do with the bug from the beginning.

"The aspect that still leaves a bitter taste out of this whole affair is that the discovery of the device was reported publicly on game day when it is understood that the alleged discovery of the device occurred much earlier in the week leading up to the test match," ARU chief executive Bill Pulver said.

"Clearly, the media attention that resulted from it was a distraction that neither team needed on the morning of a very important test match."

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Pulver's comments will be drowned out by the world's smallest violins by those in the media fraternity, or people who just like to be informed. The fact that a bug was found is clearly a story - and a big one to break on the morning of a test; team build-ups be damned.

Yet the lack of consequential context by media, both rugby unions and pundits has left fans and the rugby community at-large bored to death.

But again: what is the truth? And, at this point, does anyone really care anymore?

What is known is that the Australia-New Zealand rugby relationship is as bad as it has ever been. Both sides clearly don't trust, or even flat out, detest each other – though the bug scandal is hardly the smoking gun.

There's been years of micro-aggressions leading up to the current state of affairs; Kiwi Robbie Deans bumbling Wallabies tenure and Cheika's refusal to call New Zealand the 'All Blacks' before the recent World Cup; the list goes on.

A Fox Sports report on Gard's charging. Source: Youtube.

And yet: "the whole Spygate incident has created so much ill-feeling in both camps that it is hard, nearly impossible, to see how the Bledisloe series this year is going to be played in anything other than an acerbic and nasty atmosphere," Gregor Paul, of the NZ Herald, wrote yesterday.

"Too much has happened for … any legitimate prospect of a kiss and make-up and no hard feelings. Ill feelings will now pervade all aspects of the two rugby fraternities – at the executive level, through the respective coaching and management teams and even down to the players.

"All respect has gone. The rivalry is now founded on nothing but animosity and a lack of trust and the build up to the first test this year could be sensationally volatile."

As much as Kiwi rugby fans would be loathe to admit it, New Zealand are the bully boys in the trans-Tasman rugby relationship.

They are well supported, well-funded and well-resourced, while rugby sits at the back of the bus in Aussie sporting interest with little chance of that changing any time soon.

New Zealand has smoked the Aussies time and time again over the last decade, and, time and time again, shown themselves to be bad winners in the process. The NZ Herald's crowing clown cartoon of Wallabies coach Michael Cheika seemed a case in point.

All this too, while New Zealand rugby has undergone a horror year. Beyond the All Blacks on-field dominance, there's the significant matter of a code in social turmoil - beset by very real - and ongoing - misogynistic scandals. Remember these low moments:

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There'll be no apologies from the Kiwis though, as the Sydney Morning Herald's rugby columnist Peter Fitzsimmons has asked for, but surely most will see they've been riding rough shot over their neighbours for a while now.

New Zealand's Sunday Star-Times sports editor Paul Cully puts it best perhaps, reflecting back on the initial discovery of the bug: "put yourself in Australian shoes. Your code is battling – under siege from the NRL, AFL and football – it's the morning of your showpiece event of the year."

Highlights of the Bledisloe Cup game between New Zealand and Australia in Sydney played the evening the bug story broke last August. Source: Youtube.

"You're hoping for a memorable day, and ideally a Wallabies win," Cully continued.

"What you get is the NSW Police sniffing around the opposition team's hotel and dark whispers of bugging, and six months later it turns out a security consultant employed by the All Blacks has been charged.

"This I know about Australia; they will take the annual beatings by the All Blacks, grudgingly. They will heap praise on the All Blacks' players, grudgingly. But offend their sense of a fair go – and you are in different territory.

"Now, all we are left with is confusion."

Amen to that.