Gregor Paul: The awkward modern foe missing from All Blacks 2022 schedule

All Blacks players sing the New Zealand national anthem during The Rugby Championship match between the South Africa Springboks and New Zealand All Blacks. Photo / Photosport.co.nz

OPINION:

There is a welcome retro theme to 2022, with confirmation coming this week that the All Blacks will return to Christchurch, embark on a two-test tour of South Africa and play at Twickenham for the first time since 2018.

With Ireland likely to play two mid-week games when they are here in July, the clock feels like it is being wound back to a more wholesome time.

But 2022's old school vibe will be best established not by what is being put into the calendar, but by what has been taken out.

One modern foe will be missing this year and that is chronic fatigue – an enemy that became an endemic feature of professional rugby life from 2012 when the Pumas joined the Rugby Championship.

Argentina's arrival had a dramatic and not fully appreciated impact on New Zealand's best players because it locked the All Blacks into an annual schedule where they would finish the Rugby Championship with away games in South America and South Africa.

It was a deceptively punishing business getting to Argentina, adjusting to being 15 hours behind, playing a test and then flying to South Africa, which is five hours ahead.

Former All Blacks coach Steve Hansen says the impacts of travel and jet-lag often meant the team could only have one meaningful training ahead of playing the Boks.

That two-week finale to the Rugby Championship would have been just about manageable had it been the only major structural change to the season.

But it was just one part of a perfect storm that was almost unimaginably cruel in what it asked the players to endure and while no one wants to admit this, it is unquestionably true that part of the reason the All Blacks have been in a slow but perceptible decline is that they have been blunted and drained by excessive travel and playing demands.

Argentina's injection into the Rugby Championship coincided with a long-term agreement to play three Bledisloe Cup tests a year and at least one other additional test purely to drive revenue.

That meant the All Blacks typically finished each season by playing seven tests in nine weeks, travelling twice around the world to do so.

When Super Rugby expanded to 18 teams in 2016, the demands became almost ludicrous.

Ireland's Jack Conan and James Ryan celebrate as Ronan Kelleher scores a try in 2021. Photo / Photosport.co.nz

The inclusion of the Jaguares and Sunwolves meant there was additional travel to South America and Japan and that rugby was literally non-stop from February to late November.

The first week of international action was always a fraught time for Hansen, waiting to see how many of his selected squad would make it into camp after playing bruising Super Rugby fixtures the day before they assembled.

Even worse was seeing some of his players depart early on the Sunday morning after the last June test to catch flights to South Africa or Argentina to resume Super Rugby.

And because of the frankly daft agreement to allow the two African conference winners home advantage, it was usual for two New Zealand sides to have to fly back to the Republic for play-off games.

The air miles that clocked up were wild and the impact on performance clear and obvious.

Between 2004 and 2011 the All Blacks didn't – 2007 World Cup aside – lose a test in the Northern Hemisphere.

Between 2012 and 2019 – World Cup aside – they lost to England at Twickenham and to Ireland in Chicago and Dublin and as Hansen would continually tell the NZR board, the All Blacks were crawling over the line every season he was in charge.

Sustaining high quality performances late into the season was next to impossible when so many players were either operating at reduced capacity or broken.

Super Rugby coaches have bemoaned the enforced game time restrictions placed on their best players in the past decade, but without those protections, the consequences would have been disastrous – mass overseas defections, early retirements, yet higher injury tolls and more test defeats.

But 2022 bears little to no resemblance to those bad old, oppressive days. The tyranny of distance is no longer a problem, now that Super Rugby Pacific is shorter and kinder, only featuring teams from Australia, New Zealand and the Islands.

The Rugby Championship schedule has been amended so the All Blacks, in any given year, will only go to one of South Africa or Argentina, not both and for the foreseeable future, there will only be two Bledisloe Cup tests a year.

From routinely travelling more than 140,000km a year as some players were, the maximum anyone is likely to amass this year is about 75,000km.

But just as importantly, 2022 is not about cramming games into every available weekend.

The Super Rugby final will take place on June 18, with the first test scheduled for July 2 at Eden Park. Hansen would have killed for that sort of rest and preparation time.

Equally, there is a two-week gap after the Irish series before the team plays South Africa on August 7 and most significantly of all, there is a five-week break between the last Rugby Championship match against Australia at Eden Park on September 24 and the All Blacks first end of year tour test on October 29 in Tokyo.

This less demanding schedule isn't going to magically transform the All Blacks, but it will have a major bearing on their energy levels later in the season.

For the first time since 2010, the All Blacks should arrive in the UK this November with plenty left in the tank.

No one will be hanging on, nursing sore and broken bits and counting down the days until they can finally stop, lie down on a beach and celebrate that there is not a rugby ball in sight.

And maybe, as a result of the revamped season, we will discover that part of the reason the Northern Hemisphere appear to be on the ascendancy is that they have, for the better part of the last five years, encountered All Blacks teams in November who have been just about dead on their feet.