THE WORLD CUP year may be seven and a half months old, but the international season in which it will culminate clanks into gear this weekend.

Granted, it is set up to be a soft opening. Yet as the southern hemisphere heavyweights get strapped up for action, even the punches they are holding back will provide telling traits and a touch of intrigue for the big dance in Japan.

The countdown clock is down to 62 days.

Click Here: Spain soccer tracksuit

The All Blacks celebrate with the Webb Ellis trophy in Twickenham. Source: Billy Stickland/INPHO

With that tick-tock on their ear-drums, both New Zealand and South Africa have taken the quite understandable decision to take a host of front-liners out the opening weekend’s equation.

The quartet of teams clashing in the Rugby Championship are the 2015 quarter-finalists, they know there are bigger days ahead.

New Zealand expect bigger days than anyone, of course, and it has been curious to scan this week’s Kiwi press and find it ambling along without the All Blacks continually pinned front and centre. The heartbreak of the Cricket World Cup final instead dominated the early portion of the week, with even the rugby shows lamenting events in Lord’s until Ali Williams ruefully shrugged it off with a ‘the Poms can have this one as long as we get the next one.’

The low-key build-up in New Zealand is partly Steve Hansen’s doing as he flagged from a long way out that tomorrow’s Test in Buenos Aires would be an experimental line-up. The reigning world champion coach must be quietly delighted to keep a relatively stealthy presence in the press, however, as the fast-tracked redemption of Sevu Reece has raised an array of questions over the mass-marketed All Black ethos.

Reece has been a sensation in Super Rugby this season after a case of domestic abuse against him was dropped. The almost-Connacht wing was awarded a place in ABs setup exactly a year and a day after being arrested and charged with assault after an incident with his girlfriend on a night out in Hamilton.

“Reece yelled at his partner to ‘shut up, in much more colourful language than that’, and chased her down the street, dragging her to the ground,” reported the New Zealand Herald’s Natalie Akoorie, “she suffered bruising to the side of her face and waist and bleeding to her knee.”

The Hamilton District court ultimately discharged the explosive rugby player without conviction. Reece was fined NZ$750 (€450) last October, with Judge Denise Clark saying: 

“It does appear to me the victim has forgiven you. You have acknowledged you have a problem with alcohol and have been sober for three months.”

File photo: Reece scoring for the Crusaders this season. Source: John Davidson/INPHO

Beauden Barrett’s new contract and big switch from the Hurricanes to the Blues last week was also a helpful distraction that moved the media conversation away from Hansen’s clumsy handling of the Reece incident. The All Black head coach presented his experience as a police officer to state that domestic violence is not a gendered issue. He subsequently apologised in a better thought-out and more considered statement.

“Over the last few days it has become clear that my comments have come across to some people as being unsympathetic or minimising how poisonous and harmful domestic violence is for women,” he said.

In the eyes of the rugby men wearing silver ferns, that’s the matter closed then. And so Reece will make his international rugby debut this evening against Argentina in a New Zealand back-line that features both Beauden and Jordie Barrett – the younger brother deployed on the wing. With eight of the Super Rugby-winning Crusaders side rested, four more uncapped players are on the bench for a Test which offers the Pumas hope of a first-ever win over the All Blacks.

Super Rugby runners-up, the Jaguares, provide the core of Argentina’s starting line-up and only number 10 Nicolas Sanchez and prop Juan Figallo force their way into the starters from European clubs.

Along with New Zealand, the Springboks are likely opponents for Ireland when the World Cup quarter-finals roll around on 19 October, but before either side have to face Joe Schmidt, they must face off against one another in a tantalising clash in Yokohama on the tournament’s opening weekend.

This week’s selections show that the seismic 21 September fixture – a pool meeting for the first time in this tournament – casts a long shadow and Rassie Erasmus has shown his intent on laying down a marker by sending 15 players ahead to New Zealand while he presides over tomorrow’s opening Test against the Wallabies.

Erasmus brushed off any notion of disrespect to Michael Cheika’s embattled green and gold – insisting it was merely horses for courses and a matter of scheduling – and the Australia coach agreed.