Gregor Paul in Durban

Kudos to Ma’a Nonu for still having the desire and ability to play top level professional rugby at the age of 44.

Most of us are happy to be able to get in and out of a low-slung chair at that age, and here he is,

Gregor Paul in Durban

Kudos to Ma’a Nonu for still having the desire and ability to play top level professional rugby at the age of 44.

Most of us are happy to be able to get in and out of a low-slung chair at that age, and here he is, 11 years after he won a World Cup with the All Blacks at the age of 33 and retired from the international game, about to face the team he played for 103 times.

It’s a mad story, inspirational and potentially unrepeatable as Nonu apparently has a unique physical composition that has enabled him to defy the ageing process or at least slow it to a glacial pace.

His presence at King’s Park on Tuesday night (Wednesday morning, NZT) will persuade many that the Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry (RGR) series has taken itself to the next level in terms of hype and entertainment.

Nonu will become the oldest man to play against the All Blacks and join a select crew who have both played for and against the national team. His presence will add drama – a frisson of tension and intrigue that will be undeniable.

But there is also a sense that this is a manufactured sideshow – a gimmick to create a diversion.

This isn’t evidence that RGR is the game’s hottest ticket, but in fact confirmation that it is four likely-to-be epic tests and four other games packaged around them to give the whole thing the veneer of nostalgic legitimacy.

The club games have been problematic as they have fallen in the players’ off-season, and between that, the non-availability of Springboks and inflated pricing, sales have been challenged.

There’s irrefutable high-performance legitimacy underpinning RGR, but so too has it been conjured with an eye to making a buck and becoming an established part of the calendar – which may be hard to achieve if the “old-fashioned” element of brutal and compelling midweek games is shown to have been a victim of professionalism and beyond resuscitation.

It is believed that a late drop in ticket prices enabled the crowd at DHL Stadium to get up to 47,000, while a combination of an heroic performance from the Stormers and an off-key night by the All Blacks gave the game a competitive edge that it probably should never have had.

The prospect of a competitive repeat at King’s Park in Durban is considerably less, as there is an unfortunate divergence of this being the game in which the All Blacks are likely to play their strongest team ahead of the first test, and the Sharks being the weakest of the four South African clubs.

The Sharks had a poor URC campaign in which they finished 10th after shifting head coach John Plumtree (the former All Blacks assistant who was let go in 2022) to a mentoring role in December, only to cut him entirely in March this year.

He carried the can, but the club had a flawed recruitment strategy and by all accounts the owners are more focused on the off-field brand and the commercial opportunities that come with it, than they are the high-performance operation.

And here lies the scepticism about the real reasons why Nonu has been named on the bench. When Nonu was signed last month, Sharks coach JP Pietersen said it was to offer high-performance mentorship. The great man was coming to guide the next generation of Sharks players.

But now he’s taking a bench spot in a game that is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and that doesn’t feel like mentorship. The training ground is the place for Nonu to espouse his wisdom and shape the Sharks youth of tomorrow.

He, not by his volition, is taking a spot from a younger player with a longer future at the Sharks. The high-performance rationale for playing a 44-year-old former All Black is a fig leaf trying to cover the naked truth that it is really a selection with a crass, commercial intention.

Nonu’s selection has made headlines, heightened anticipation and created the invaluable prospect that he might, as the three New Zealanders playing for Munster against the All Blacks in 2008 did – respond to the haka with a haka.

And if he does, it will be social media gold: a clip shown around the world and potentially a “piece of content” that may sell the game as a huge success rather than the one-sided bloodbath it is likely to be.

Maybe it’s needlessly sceptical to fear opportunistic marketing could hijack the event, and best to just sit back and enjoy the theatre and revel in the warm glow of a feel-good story.

But the scepticism feels necessary as the career of one of the game’s absolute legends is being played with by forces beyond his control and all to drive a few extra bodies through the turnstiles.

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.