All Black soldiers of fortune have left their homeland exposed to tourists

Martin Johnson will announce his first England squad on Tuesday, to visit New Zealand in June, and while the tourists will be as near as dammit at full strength for matches which now count towards World Cup seedings, their hosts will have an unfamiliar look because so much of their top talent is playing in Europe. Given that England published an advertisement for an attack coach only two days ago, and Johnson himself will miss the trip to be with his pregnant wife, the two nations are united in a state of disarray.

Dan Carter should be at fly-half for New Zealand, and they will be led by the flanker Richie McCaw, but the signing by Harlequins of Nick Evans, the high-quality understudy to Carter, continued the trend of players leaving the Land of the Long White Cloud. Evans is coming for three years and a reported £1 million. If the All Blacks drop him as a result, he will be at Quins – a club he described as having "a rich history" – on 1 July.

England will travel without Jonny Wilkinson, who is having a shoulder operation, and possibly one or two more injured parties. New Zealand have lost 12 top-notch All Blacks to Eur-ope in the past year alone, with the tide rising alarmingly in recent years in proportion to European clubs' spending power. The players cite the claustrophobic nature of being an All Black, and the 180 days a year they spend away from their families; this way, they get to be with their families all the time, but in Manchester or Munster or wherever.

Hamish Riach, the chief executive of the Super 14's top-ranked Crusaders, the Christchurch side of McCaw and Carter, points out the Catch-22 in the rule obligingEvans and the rest to forfeit their right to play for the All Blacks when they go. Remove this sanction, Riach says, and "the exodus would become an absolute flood. There are so many clubs and chequebooks up there, and only so many All Blacks". Keep it in place, and Evans, Carl Hayman, Luke McAlister and other far-from-past-it stars are off for two or three years at a stretch.

In a last desperate bid to keep their prized assets around for at least some of the time, the New Zealand Rugby Union are considering tailor-made contracts to allow players to skip overseas – in Carter's case to Toulon in France – and collect mega-bucks in short bursts of a few months. It was an arrangement pioneered by Tana Umaga, who commuted between Toulon and Wellington last season. "They are flexible contracts which would make it easier for guys to have their cake and eat it," said Riach.

But as Evans is moving into Harlequins, so the London side's England Saxons fly-half Adrian Jarvis is moving on, to Bristol. "How concerned are the RFU that their clubs aren't bringing through enough players?" asked Riach. "We get on fine with the English clubs, but we look at their salary cap and it's a tiger with no particular teeth.

"As for the IRB, they are spending resources on nurturing the global game in non-traditional places but they should be very, very worried if traditional powerhouses are decimated. For every positive impact in one place [in Europe], there's a negative in the place they leave."

Carter and South Africa's Bryan Habana are "marquee players" who might have pitched their tents in Europe already were it not for lucrative domestic endorsements. The Steers hamburger chain pay Schalk Burger, the blond Springbok flanker, to stay in South Africa and flip beef patties through the ceiling in their TV adverts.

In the past, more than 30 Boks might have been on Test contracts together, but this year only 12 deals were offered, and the scrum-half Fourie du Preez turned his down to keep his Euro-pean options open. Frans Steyn, linked with Bath, is on a Springbok contract to 31 December, so any interested party would have to buy out both his province and the South African Rugby Union.

Other World Cup-winning Boks not on a national contract, including Danie Rossouw and Wikus van Heerden, will instead be paid pro rata for Tests against Wales, Italy, Australia and New Zealand this summer, while remaining free to talk turkey with European suitors.

The NZRU have reserves of NZ$78.9m (£31.25m), but say they need that to support their financially strapped provinces and upgrade stadiums for the World Cup in 2011. Riach's home stadium in Christchurch will be at a reduced 25,500 capacity for the England Test on 21 June.

Ironically, the fans will be better informed on the visitors than ever. "We had Newcastle against Sale shown on the rugby channel last week," said Riach. "People are tuning in to seehow Carl Hayman and Luke McAlister are getting on."