I couldn't be bothered to comment until now because it's been a dull long argument; but for obvious reasons the NZRU will never select overseas players, because it will never be in their interest to do so.
The NZRU's job is to look after the interest of rugby in New Zealand, on every level.
The NZRU will never be able to compete 100% with the wages of private clubs who can offer millions per season (at least not without additional sponsorship deals which go to a handful of players). The reason is that the money the have has to be funneled through every level of rugby.
Now people who don't understand the point go "well, why not follow South Africa and allow Top 14 clubs to look carry the financial burden of top players, while still selecting them". Well it's simple. Say hypothetically half the All Blacks play in France:
1. The NZRU and by extension the All Blacks lose half their ability to manage the welfare of their team.
2. The players no longer develop under the worlds best development setup (which make no mistake - is the best rugby setup on the planet bar none).
3. Selection becomes more difficult to make comparisons.
With all due respect - once players go overseas -there is no control of the NZRU to keep them world class. Frankly many go up North and don't come back half the players they were. Any dip in results creates a dip in massive sponsorship deals.
But then you have the next tier of rugby which suffers dramatically;
4. Super Rugby teams no longer have access to their All Blacks
5. The next tier of rugby players see that you can make the All Blacks by playing overseas (and on better wages), and so have no incentive to stay (and continue to develop)
6. Fans of Super Rugby see that the best players are no longer available to NZ franchises, and so don't bother forking out for sky subscriptions or live games.
7. The NPC which generally runs at a loss anyway, can no longer be subsidized by higher tier rugby. So you potentially lose one of the most important development competitions.
8. The **** show that NZ rugby has become means it faces larger competition from other sports.
Etc, etc, etc.
These are all points I made prior to South Africa opening their development policy; and now here is a list of just the number of players flooding out of South Africa just this season:
http://lastwordonsports.com/2016/07/12/south-african-rugby-players-migrating-to-the-north/. What's even worse was that HM was selecting guys who left and were in their late 30s for the last World Cup, giving you guys absolutely no reason to stay.
South Africa may be in a hard position economically but they should have bitten the bullet and ditched their overseas going players, just to try and mitigate the massive player drain. But they are a poorly run union.
Australia's selection policy is a bit better; but frankly the depth of NZ rugby that we maintain by keeping our policy as it is, means we can simply bring in great players to replace great, older, departing players. It would never be in the NZRUs interest to compromise this. And it's been tested. We entered a World Cup final with Stephen Donald over Nick Evans. We went without the best TH prop in the world in Carl Hayman, for some of his best years, instead having guys like Tialata. Because even hypothetically if every single player in the current All Blacks squad took a deal overseas, we have the depth to still be competitive without compromising our entire rugby setup.
