A sea of green
ABs face 'home' team in vibrant form, while the Black Caps prepare for potential orange-peel game (and a bit of other stuff).
While watching Ireland make a joke of the idea that Scotland had a chance to cause an upset, thoughts automatically projected a week forward.
In particular, two questions started taxing me.
Q: Can this All Blacks team beat this Ireland team?
A: Of course they can.
Q: Okay then, how?
A: Good question, I’m glad it’s not my job to figure that out?
It is unlikely to be through mind games, no matter how hard Ian Foster tries to push that button.
“This is their moment. If they’re ever going to win a World Cup, it’s now,” Foster said of World No 1-side Ireland.
It’s an unsubtle dig at both Ireland’s favouritism and their horrendous record at world cups and while it feels fair enough to play this card - it’s straight out of the Steve Hansen/ Eddie Jones playbook - modern rugby is so heavily weighted towards planning and execution that emotion feels like an afterthought.
In charge of Ireland’s planning and execution is Andy Farrell. He also does a nice line in pop psychology, hiding his shot in a shower of praise and reverse psychology (the emphasis is mine):
“New Zealand is a fantastic side, and for little old Ireland1 to be talked about in the same bracket as the All Blacks shows how far we’ve come as a rugby-playing nation,” he said. “The respect we’ve got for New Zealand is through the roof.
“The form they’ve got at this moment in time is top drawer and I’m sure that they will be relishing this fixture to try to put a few things right. It’s tough, it’s as tough as it gets.”
You suspect this is not the last time we’ll hear this sort of messaging and all kinds of pontificating over the next five days, but the result of this match could be as simple as this formula: can the All Blacks, with ball in hand, find a way behind Irish lines?
While the efficiency and complexity of Ireland’s strike moves early against Scotland won plaudits and, more importantly, five pointers, their Celtic brethren had enough ball in the right parts of the field to land some punches, but they could not make a dent in that defensive screen.
There is an old phrase about defending your line that says, “bend, don’t break,” but Ireland take this a step further. They don’t bend. They just tackle and tackle, stopping to grin only when they either get over the ball at the breakdown and win a penalty, or force you to kick off the back foot, often aimlessly.
Strike moves aside, there’s nothing particularly complicated about what they do and there can be long periods of unloveliness as play tends to funnel into the middle of the field, but if you were a fan of this team why wouldn’t you be loving the ride.
That much is obvious every time the cameras pan to the crowd and you’d swear the match was being played in Dublin.
“When you look around and see the sea of green it’s incredibly uplifting and motivational,” said Tadhg Beirne, the Irish lock. “It gives us such a lift to know the support we have. That’s what we’re doing this for: we want to inspire everyone back home.”
Patrick McKendry on 1news.co.nz says it will require a strong ref to withstand the ‘hometown’ pressure that will be brought to bear by Ireland and France
The selection of the officials for the first weekend of knockout matches will be highly anticipated because Englishman Karl Dickson appeared to struggle under the spotlight in the France v Italy match…
Englishman Wayne Barnes and New Zealander Ben O’Keeffe appear to be the referees in the best form at this tournament.
O’Keeffe will automatically be disqualified from officiating an All Blacks match but Barnes is in the frame, and, 16 years after he was booed off the pitch by New Zealand fans after their team’s quarter-final defeat to France in Cardiff, many will hope that Barnes is given the job on Sunday. He is calm with a good feel for the game and has a natural rapport with the players.
There’ll be far more to come on this match-up as the week progresses, but in the meantime, here’s a nice little piece in the Irish Times, headlined, “Bluffer’s Guide: How to talk the talk after Ireland’s 36-14 win over Scotland.”
You know what this means, right? It means that for the next week at least and hopefully beyond, people are going to be talking rugby at you. They will not be doing this because they are bad people. They will not be doing it in order to make you feel small. They will be doing it because they are excited, as well they should be. This could be an exciting few weeks. It could also be a monumental let-down. All doors remain open.
There is a specific section on how to talk about the All Blacks:
It is, of course, entirely unprecedented that Ireland would be going into any World Cup match against New Zealand as favourites, however marginal. The teams have met twice in World Cups, both at the quarter-final stage, and neither time was pretty. The All Blacks won 43-19 in Johannesburg in 1995 and 46-14 in Tokyo in 2019. This has not historically been a fixture New Zealand have had to worry about.
The big issue this week is that we won’t know how good this iteration of the All Blacks are until the game starts. After losing to France on opening night, their tournament since has been a series of turkey shoots against Namibia, Italy and Uruguay. They look to have found their stride but it could all be smoke and mirrors. It’s going to be a nervy week.
Do say: “Joe Schmidt is on their coaching staff – if anyone knows the Irish weaknesses, Joe knows.”
Don’t say: “Aren’t our Kiwis better than their Kiwis?”
Touché.
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All four quarter-finals are set. Here’s the NZ Herald’s top-line take on them.
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Clearly it would be different if you were on the ground in France, but from a distance, bar three or four matches, pool play simply failed to ignite.
In fact, judging by the law of Fiji’s diminishing returns, Pool C might well be the worst pool in World Cup history. And if you think that’s hyperbole, then Pool D might not be far behind.
While this morning’s 24-23 win against Fiji was a huge moment for Portuguese rugby - not a sentence I thought I would ever write - for 65 minutes this was an awful advertisement for the sport.
All the romance of their qualification aside, Fiji’s win against Georgia last week was little better and it is worth reflecting on just how bad Australia had to be to fail to emerge intact from this pool. Certainly, Sir Clive Woodward has been reflecting on it.
There’s something about being an ex-rugby coach that gives you the certitude to speak as if you never screwed things up yourself. Woodward may walk among that number, but in this interview with the Sydney Morning Herald (metered $), he talks a lot of sense.
For example, when talking about Eddie Jones’ contention that he is building a Wallabies team for the Lions tour in 2025 and the home World Cup in 2027, he says:
“When you become an international coach, it is about today, it’s not four years. It’s a good job if you can get it, going around persuading people it’s not about today.
“You are coaching the team and if you get beaten by 50 points, that’s where you are today. I think it is a cop-out. The moment you talk about a development team, you’re not going to win, so why are you even in the tournament? You should be competing, so you should be sending the best team you have today. If you start saying you’re developing for the future, it’s the wrong thing to do and it’s the wrong thing for the country.
“When I picked a team, almost without exception I could say to everyone this is the strongest team to play for England this weekend. And the players loved that. There was no development, leave that to schoolboy teams and under-21 teams and the ‘A’ teams. That’s your job.
“The problem is administrators come in and they get hoodwinked by all this stuff. They don’t really understand the sport, they come in with a business background and are successful people and they get hoodwinked by people like Eddie Jones, who start talking about the Lions tour and 2027.
“The moment you do that, you not only lose it with the public, you lose it with the team. Because you can’t talk about a development team. It’s not about that.”
Tonight’s Cricket World Cup match in Hyderabad doesn’t so much loom as a banana-skin game but, in keeping with the vibrancy of the Netherlands’ uniforms, an orange-peel game.
As far as I can tell, two humans have died after slipping on a banana skin compared to just the one on an orange peel, so while the danger might not be as acute, it is still real.
To save you falling down this rabbit hole, let me save you time and tell you that the orange-peel incident happened in New Zealand. The poor victim was American Bobby Leach, who ‘successfully’ navigated the Niagara Falls in a barrel, but came a cropper on Queen St and is interred at Hillsborough Cemetery overlooking the Manukau Harbour.
It’s quite a story (and in the interests of accuracy the discarded peel was just one factor in his demise), told here.
Back to the cricket. All indications are that Kane Williamson will sit tonight’s match out, which is disappointing but sensible. Tim Southee and Lockie Ferguson are likely available, so it will be interesting to see if Gary Stead reconfigures the attack or whether he sticks with the three specialist bowlers routine.
There will be another BYC special covering this match off tomorrow.
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The highly anticipated India-Australia clash didn’t provide the spark tournament organisers hoped for, though it was a fascinating match.
India are playing their nine round-robin matches at nine different venues, which is just as well because not too many teams will beat them in Chennai, where their three specialist spinners - Ravindra Jadeja, Ravi Ashwin and Kuldeep Yadav - were getting the ball to grip and rip through the surface.
It speaks to the quality of Australia’s seam attack that they would have had an amazing chance to defend 199 if Virat Kohli (85) hadn’t been dropped by Mitchell Marsh on 12. As it was, India recovered from 3 for 2 - Kohli’s dismissal would have made it 20 for 4 - to win by six wickets with more than eight overs to spare.
The table is largely meaningless after one round, but hey, why not.
It wasn’t a great Bathurst 1000. Even NooztorqueZB’s D’Arcy Waldegrave might have struggled to watch all 161 laps without a little nap somewhere between a brake-pad change and Mark Skaife trying to talk up an “intriguing” battle between Red Bull and Erebus (note: “intriguing” is the most common commentator/ pundit euphemism for boring).
Nevertheless, you can’t complain about an all-Kiwi victory, with Shane van Gisbergen and his co-driver, Richie Stanaway putting together a flawless performance around Mount Panorama despite only qualifying on the third row of the grid.
It was especially pleasing for the talented Stanaway, whose career looked finished a few years ago after he suffered a crisis of confidence.
“The confidence was pretty low after 2018 and 2019. I felt like I’d forgotten how to drive basically.”
Taking low-key to its extremes, there was a very ‘New Zealand’ interview moment in the immediate aftermath, with Stanaway saying: I can’t describe the feeling right now, I couldn’t be happier,” while looking about as delighted as someone who has popped down to New World and discovered his favourite brand of granola was on special.
There are still two rounds of the Supercars championship remaining but it shapes as a critical off-season as the owners and administrators try to inject more panel-to-panel racing back into the class.
Last week came news of Fifa’s most ambitious project yet, which is to take the tried-and-tested formula for a World Cup which, alongside the Olympiad, is the greatest single sporting event on the calendar, and turn it into something ridiculous.
Here’s the BBC trying to make sense of it all.
As just one example of the potential difficulty:
The change of hemispheres means some teams could find themselves in the bizarre scenario of playing in two different seasons at the same World Cup.
Those who will feature in one of the opening three matches in South America before resuming the rest of their tournament in Europe or north Africa would switch from winter to summer in a matter of days.
In June, Uruguay experiences cool average temperatures of between 8C and 15C in winter, while at the same time the temperature in Morocco could be above 30C.
The latest sneaker battleground ($) might not be as lucrative as the basketball court, but it is even more fascinating on a high-performance front.
From the UK-based Telegraph:
Nike have hit back in the war of the athletics ‘super shoe’ after Kenya’s Kelvin Kiptum shattered his compatriot Eliud Kipchoge’s world marathon record in the company’s latest prototype of carbon-plated trainers.
Kipchoge held the marathon record for more than five years, most recently with his 2h 1m 09s run in Berlin last year, but 23-year-old Kiptum produced a stunning finish in Chicago on Sunday to lower that mark to 2:0.35.
It is the second world marathon record in just two weeks after Tigsit Assefa set a new women’s best in a pair of the £400 new super-light Adidas Adizero Adios Pro Evo 1, which are recommended for optimal use in only one marathon. Despite the price and questions over their long-term durability, the Adidas trainers sold out within hours of going on general sale.
Kipchoge broke two hours for the marathon in a prototype show under controlled conditions, but it appears an inevitability that the mark will be broken in a race.
Of equal importance to marketers, will it be in Nike or Adidas, or will a third manufacturer enter the high-priced race?
THIS WEEK
What’s it like when a campaign ends prematurely. Former NZ Rugby communications manager Brian Finn gives us a peak behind the veil and takes us back to 2007. Full story this week (for $ subscribers).
In the lead-up, a small team of us had brainstormed as many of the potential scenarios we might face at the tournament that we could think of – literally, what happens when the shit hits the fan. Everything from a terrorist incident to losing a couple of pool games and getting knocked out, to a player going missing or behaving badly.
Each of these was then turned into a short, sharp document intended to be the mini-action plan that would get us started on responding and dealing with the situation.
Even if I say so myself, it was a good piece of work and a template that I understand NZR still uses today. It was also VERY well used in 2007.
While the combined population of Ireland and Northern Ireland (7 million) is significantly higher than New Zealand, we have 28,000 registered adult rugby players compared to 21,000, so technically Farrell is kind of right.
Can we just choose a song we can get behind....
https://youtu.be/h3fkVo5DkMc
Dyls, your thoughts on Smith at half against Ireland? I get nervous against the best defensive teams when he's largely retired from triathlons nowadays to concentrate on biathlons.