The final test in the series is now scheduled to play in Baltimore this September.
The news of this match scheduling dropped between two awful deaths in Minnesota. Renée Good and Alex Pretti were both shot and killed by United States Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) agents. Their deaths add to the growing list of lives lost in ICE custody. All of this has contributed to a rise in tensions across America, which has people now questioning whether the USA is a suitable place to host sporting events.
Earlier this year, World Athletics had athletes’ visas denied for the World Cross Country Championship, bringing the credibility of this event into question. The men’s football World Cup is set to kick off in June and just this week, the former Fifa president Sepp Blatter became the latest voice calling for a boycott. He advised fans not to travel to his sport’s marquee event.
There are similar rumblings to be heard around the 2028 Summer Olympic Games. It is at a point where Los Angeles City Council members are now discussing the need for plan B to limit financial losses.
Back home, travel advice was last updated in May 2025. The level wasn’t raised then but cautions were. New Zealanders were warned of the increased risk of detainment, deportation or banning for a failure to comply with strict border requirements.
In December, these requirements were reported to soon become stricter still. Travellers have been warned they are likely to be expected to hand over five years of social media history, every email address used in the past decade, more details on family members and more biometric data to boot.
The All Blacks line up for the haka ahead of their test against Ireland, in Chicago, in November. Photo / SmartFrame
Baltimore was reportedly the preferred venue for the South Africans and New Zealand Rugby (NZR) has gone along with them.
It seems bizarre then that our own largest sporting organisation has looked around the world and agreed that America is the best backdrop for one of the biggest tests of 2026. Rugby is forever in pursuit of that elusive US market, but the question now has to be at what cost? In the wider build-up to the World Cups in 2031 and 2033, the strategy makes sense, but the politics now are unavoidable.
Players need to ask serious questions of their management of how they will be keeping them safe through contact with an immigration policy that appears to be targeting black and brown people. Fans are being encouraged to pre-register for tickets, but should also be pre-warned about their own travel risks.
The old phrase goes: “I’m not into politics but politics are into me.” Politics are aggressively into sport right now so sport needs to decide how it will react. NZR chair David Kirk knows this terrain better than most. He was one of the players to opt out of the Cavaliers tour to South Africa in 1985. In 2011, he told Stuff that he was “agnostic on the moral question” of the 1981 Springboks tour, “but in practical terms, I did think nothing was worth this violence”.
That’s the pragmatic question NZR and the wider sporting world now needs to answer: is playing sports in the USA right now worth the threat of violence?
Alice Soper is a sports columnist for the Herald on Sunday. A former provincial rugby player and current club coach, she has a particular interest in telling stories of the emerging world of women’s sports.