Waving goodbye (or good riddance) to a rugby season like no other
Sunday Special morphed into a Monday Mailbag as ABs loss stirs up emotions
The sprockets and cogs on my text and email machines whirred and clicked all afternoon yesterday as rugby-loving New Zealanders responded to Sunday Special and contemplated the idea that the All Blacks were not just fallible, but failing.
While there were no messages that I would say were firmly in support of the current leadership, there were some that offered mitigation, including one I almost overlooked from last week.
While Baden’s missive was penned post-Ireland as opposed to post-France, the sentiments here (edited for clarity) are worth considering.
“True creativity is best [found] at Ian Foster’s bach in the offseason or by the talent spotters looking for the next best thing - it’s when they try to nut out how the game can be elevated; how it can be played with a new dynamism. I reckon the strength of the All Blacks’ brand has been partially built on our ability to do that. It’s when we learn to play it better than everyone else. In my lifetime, Laurie Mains took the game to a new level with John Hart making more incremental improvement, and then Henry took it to a new level followed by Hansen with the more modest improvements. This largely kept us ahead of the rest… until maybe now. We’re at the stage of the cycle where Foster needs to find the next big jump. Is he the man for the job? Don’t know, but one thing for sure: I find the whole calling for his head to be tiresome, short sighted and lacking creativity from the scribe side of the fence.”
David, too, offered this: “Need to have a bit of perspective around the losses. Fourteen weeks away from home is a bloody long time.”
He went on to mention that you couldn’t compare it to a World Cup campaign because every team was in the same boat then, but here a tired and probably mentally beaten-down All Black team was ripe to be picked off by teams at home waiting to pounce.
Both those points have merit. I would say, however, that I’ve read most of the stories written about the All Blacks in Europe and without being overly defensive of the industry, nearly every article has diligently mentioned the season’s unusual and trying circumstances.
For example, Richard Knowler included this paragraph in his story on Stuff today, which is linked to further down: “Twelve weeks on tour during a pandemic, 10 tests and around 40 players to manage. Young men away from wives, partners and children and, quite possibly, sick to death of shifting from hotel to hotel and not having their own space.”
David is right, however, in that you cannot ignore the circumstances in which these losses are occurring but, while it might account for individual players being off their games, it doesn’t account for repeated flaws in game plans.
Casey, another subscriber, wrote in consecutive breaths that “the only straw I can grasp is that the last time we lost three tests in a year was 2009 and we went on to win the 2011 World Cup”, before adding, “do you think New Zealand Rugby have the balls to make a coaching change after just renewing Ian Foster’s contract?”
There were several other messages along the lines of Casey’s second point, but let’s address the first idea.
I remember well the last time New Zealand lost three tests in a calendar year and I’m pretty sure I was at Waikato Stadium for what appears from the safety of 12 years to be a thrilling 29-32 loss to the Springboks, but was in fact 77 minutes of landfill enlivened by a crazy final few minutes.
The Boks’ points came from three Francois Steyn penalties from inside his half, a Morne Steyn drop goal and a couple of close-range penalties, a Fourie du Preez try from his own bomb that wasn’t defused and a Jean de Villiers intercept.
The All Blacks kept heaving stuff at South Africa and kept getting repelled, until a couple of late tries. They had a chance to draw with a drop goal from a handy position but Dan Carter instead crosskicked for a wing and a prayer - and lost.
There might be rose-tinting of memories going on here but I don’t recall the same sense of panic because the All Blacks were getting outpointed rather than outplayed and the following World Cup was going to be played in home comforts.
(They also redeemed a poor Tri Nations by winning all their tests in Europe, including against France and England.)
That for me is the biggest difference: it doesn’t matter whether your aesthetic leans more towards the northern or southern style of rugby, Ireland and France just straight up played better footy than the All Blacks.
On to the second point and what might be the most fascinating aspect of the rugby summer. What changes, if any, will NZR and/ or Foster make?
Both Stuff and the New Zealand Herald again second-guessed NZR’s decision to extend Foster’s contract before the tough tests of the year were played. Knowler at the former doesn’t take a strong position but says the move requires scrutiny, while Chris Rattue ($) has never hidden from the fact he thought it was a calamitous mistake that spoke to institutional arrogance.
“That poor decision was the product of a sport which ignores its audience and appears out of touch with the people and the trends of the game. It is an empire which has gone soft. And it is coming back to haunt them big time. Tactics and motivation are being exposed. Foster is being completely out-coached, and his team out-muscled.”
Meanwhile, also at the Herald, Phil Gifford outlines why Foster will still be in charge come next season.
“In the amateur era All Blacks went on tours overseas that lasted for as long as four months, but they were travelling when the world was open, and diversions ranging from grouse shooting in Scotland to visiting the Folies Bergere in Paris gave them the sort of essential mental break never available to the current team in this time of plague.
“Is it any surprise that the worst All Blacks performances this year have been at the tail end of a crazy 15-test season, in which, count ’em, 10 have been out of New Zealand? Dip your toe in the vicious cesspit of social media, and Foster has to go. But take a deep breath, consider the circumstances, and if NZR moved to drop him it’d amount to a breach of trust.”
I’m not certain Gifford’s case for the defence is watertight, but I’m equally certain it will hold.
It is not the NZR way to respond to public pressure but it is also not beyond the realms of possibility that Foster will be asked to supercharge his coaching staff with a new recruit, particularly if the current panel receives poor reviews from a significant chunk of the playing group.
Then it becomes a question of who? Scott Robertson is not going to join as an assistant when he wants the top job and Tony Brown said “no” two years ago. On SENZ’s Bleeding Black podcast, I’m pretty sure I heard the name Joe Schmidt mentioned, which is probably about as tantalising a prospect as you get.
Former All Blacks Steve Devine also used the same platform to lament the All Blacks lack of progress, while adding his own unflattering observations of Foster from his playing days.
In faraway lands, others are far more pleased to see the New Zealand rugby machine taken down a peg. Given the amount of times we question the merit of June tests, this trolling is at least mildly amusing.
This trawl through the mailbag and the news sites has dragged me further down an All Black path than originally intended, but it really is the end of a season like no other. A season that Dane Coles concedes has had a baffling, unsatisfactory conclusion, and which Jamie Wall at Radio New Zealand says leaves both the All Blacks and the Black Ferns in a desperate land.
Ah yes, the Black Ferns, who succumbed to their fourth loss from four on their hapless northern tour. How Foster must sometimes wish for the relative anonymity of Glenn Moore.
There are big issues for the Ferns ahead of next year’s World Cup, most pointedly that women’s rugby appears to have moved to a new level, particularly around the set piece, and New Zealand hasn’t moved with it.
They’re not playing the same game anymore as France and England.
Stuff’s Joseph Pearson has covered the tour exhaustively. This is his take on the undisciplined 29-7 loss to France in Castres, and here are Aaron Goile’s player ratings for the test. All raters have slightly different “settings” but generally speaking the 0-2 range is only used for early red cards or truly calamitous displays, so it was a bit jarring to see three “2s” handed out to starting players.
THAT’S A RUGBY WRAP
The Super Rugby squads were named today. I’m not going to trawl them until February at the earliest, but they’re all here if you desperately need them.
Well done Waikato, Bunnings Cup Premiership winners, and Taranaki, hands down the best Bunnings Cup team in the country and Championship winners. It would take a lack of imagination and gumption if those two teams are still playing for different trophies in 2022.
OLE’S NO LONGER AT THE WHEEL
In English football, or professional football in general, a contract extension is no obstacle to a sacking, as we saw when Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was removed from what’s fast becoming one of football’s poisoned chalices - Manchester United manager.
It might be the richest football club in England - with revenue that trails only Barcelona, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich on the global stage - and the most successful club in terms of domestic titles, but since Sir Alex Ferguson left it’s been a bit of a cluster.
David Moyes, managing brilliantly at West Ham now, Jose Mourinho, whining with Roma in the Serie A, Louis van Gaal, leading the Netherlands to Qatar next year, and Solskjaer have all tried and failed to near identical standards. In fact, Solskjaer’s 1.80 point per game is behind only Mourinho (1.89 ppg) among that quartet.
The Red Devils were humbled 4-1 by lowly Watford at the weekend, the straw that broke club owners the Glazer family’s back.
When you consider the pedigree of the managers that have come and gone, is there something more fundamentally wrong at the club than who picks the team at the weekend? Jonathan Liew at the Guardian thinks so, as does Martin Samuel at the Daily Mail. James Ducker at the Daily Telegraph says “the extraordinary thing about Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s reign as Manchester United manager is that it lasted as long as it did”.
“Having prematurely placed their trust in the ‘stop gap with option value’, as the Norwegian was originally viewed, they kept on doubling down on Solskjaer when more attractive alternatives presented themselves and have now ended up in a situation where they have backed themselves into a corner with a team in freefall and any legacy beyond an expensively, if incoherently, assembled squad hard to determine.”
Ouch, that has to sting.
One of the things that makes the EPL and other professional football leagues so dynamic is the constant threat of change. Players are bought and sold like cattle; owners view managers with the same sort of permanence that Henry VIII viewed wives.
Already this season Dean Smith has left Aston Villa, Steve Bruce has left Newcastle, Daniel Farke has left Norwich (to be replaced by Smith), Nuno Espirito Santo has left Tottenham Hotspur and Xisco Munoz has left Watford. With Solskjaer, that means turnover at more than a quarter of the clubs.
While many rugby fans like Baden above recoil at the calls for Foster’s head, the sport is the brick house compared to football’s straw when it comes to coaching and managerial stability.
PHOENIX GET THE POINT
There would be a yawning gap in my credibility if I suddenly professed to be an A-League expert but I was underwhelmed by the Phoenix’s first-up 1-1 draw with Macarthur FC. Don’t rush to judgement, says a peer who follows the team with a laser focus. Not only have Macarthur recruited strongly, but the Phoenix are notoriously poor starters - just two wins from 15 round one games in their history - so they’ll be fine with taking a point.
#PENGSHUAIISOK
The story of Peng Shuai is super weird, but it seems at least concerns over her immediate welfare are no longer as acute. AP is reporting that Peng appeared on a 30-minute video call from Beijing with IOC officials, including president Thomas Bach, and told them she was safe and well. Her whereabouts were unknown for two weeks after she accuses a high-ranking Communist Party official of sexual assault.
GIS IS A GENIUS
The Qatar GP was super boring, even if Lewis Hamilton’s win further tightened the race to the championship with Max Verstappen.
The Supercars race in Sydney on Saturday was the opposite of boring. With Sunday’s race cancelled it turned out to be a championship-winning effort from Shane van Gisbergen who came from a long way back after he was forced to double-stack in the pits behind teammate Jamie Whincup, to win.
Former colleague D’Arcy Waldegrave wrote this year that SvG was the best allround driver in the world, including Hamilton. Having seen what he did at Sydney I’m inclined to agree and if you still need convincing, check out this from Sandown earlier in the season. This video should be X-rated.
THIS WEEK
I’m not ignoring the 3-0 T20I pantsing the Black Caps took in India, I’m just deferring until Wednesday, when another edition of The BYC will appear. I will say this, however: I’ve never been less bothered by a series whitewash in my life.
I also want to dig into the role of the officials and technology in sport, and why some sports have melded the two together seamlessly, while others just get it wrong.
By Friday, I’ll have collated all the feedback I asked for a week ago and will share a few of the insights as we head into the gentler, rugby-less months. At least one of you wants more golf, so let’s sign out with an outlink to Lydia Ko’s latest triumph.
Thanks for getting all the waaaaaay down here.
