2019 Rugby World Cup: Dylan Cleaver - Time to embrace the All Blacks/England rivalry in a different way

ANY GIVEN MONDAY

It is reassuring in times of such global confusion that there is something that remains a black-and-white issue.

New Zealanders don't like the England rugby team; the English hate the All Blacks. It'll be on for Youngs and old alike this weekend.

It's tempting to say that weirdest and yet strangely satisfying rugby rivalry will reignite but the truth is it never went away – the two teams just stopped playing each other.

READ MORE:
• Dylan Cleaver: What is true and what is not after round two of the Rugby World Cup
• Dylan Cleaver: Lessons I've learned from spending a week on Planet Joseph Parker
• Dylan Cleaver: All Blacks hot favourites for the Platitude World Cup

This will be just the fourth time they have met at a Rugby World Cup and just the second time in an elimination match. The last time, also at the semifinal stage, saw 74 points scored, 20 alone by a young winger with a big fend.

There is unlikely to be such defensive profligacy on Saturday.

If the relative lack of knockout matches between two global rugby heavyweights is a curious quirk, even more unlikely is the fact they have met just once in the last World Cup cycle.

With the rugby season now a 10-month a year affair and there being a staggering amount of internationals that once played will never be remembered again, it is bizarre that Steve Hansen and Eddie Jones' shared history as coaches of the All Blacks and England will amount to two games, total.

The one previous meeting was one of those few end-of-season tests that linger, not least because the All Blacks held on by a point and were fortunate to do so, with the TMO (correctly, just) ruling out a Sam Underhill try after Courtney Lawes charged down TJ Perenara from an offside position.

That Twickenham test ended with a cacophony of boos, which perfectly illustrates the way these two rugby nations feel about each other.

It's mostly harmless fun marked by terrible attempts at "banter", but perhaps it's time to embrace the rivalry in a more, gulp, mature way.

Some of the ill-feeling is a construct of the media.

My rugby travels were never overly extensive but there was always the sense that, with a couple of exceptions, the relatively small New Zealand press contingent were never fans of the much larger English contingent and vice versa.

(One particularly pompous English scribe was derisively known only as "Wing Commander", a man of upright standing with a well-groomed moustache and public school enunciation.)

This enmity resulted in the same old records being played: the British press would churn out can't-miss tropes concerning the All Blacks' unabated cheating, the rape of the Pacific Island talent and haka indignities, and the New Zealand media would rise to the bait. Every. Single. Time.

In return, we'd lob a few soggy double-happies their way, usually a reworking of the Boring-Boring-England theme.

It's not just the crowds and the media with a shared distaste, however.

Jeff Wilson's Seasons of Gold might not have differed much from 1001 other paint-by-numbers New Zealand sports biographies, but the line that England was the one team he couldn't stomach losing to was intriguing.

The hatred towards England is no secret. Jones, the man leading them in Japan, recently tried to articulate why: "Because of the history that is involved with England and the surrounding countries, there's that long-seated hatred. You can feel that."

That covers Wales, Scotland, Ireland and France, but it doesn't really cover the New Zealand antipathy.

Perhaps Richard Williams, writing in the Guardian , got to the nub when he opined: "Those who represent England on the rugby field generally go about their business in the belief that everyone else hates them. No argument there but they are often wrong about the cause, which they presume to be a reaction against a certain arrogance that comes from being rich, powerful and possessed by an unshakeable sense of entitlement founded on their role in the game's origins. In fact, they are disliked because of the way they play."

While England's range of enemies – from close neighbours to distant former colonies – is impressive, it would be wrong to think that the All Blacks are everybody's pint of Guinness.

Many of the criticisms attached to England can just as easily be transferred to their rivals this weekend, most notably a sense of smug superiority from a fanbase, in New Zealand's case one accustomed to uninterrupted success.

Anybody who dares criticise the All Blacks or the machinery behind it is too often shot down in a blaze of "idiocy", as Irish writer Ewan MacKenna described it after joining a long and not necessarily distinguished list of those who believe rugby should stop pandering to the haka and its protocols.

(As an irrelevance, I do sympathise with MacKenna's central point, if only he'd stuck to it, and the fact we get worked up by fans singing during the haka shows we have reached peak-level idiocy.)

But let's not digress.

The England-All Blacks semifinal pits the two best teams at this tournament together a week early but it shouldn't really be marketed as a clash of rugby cultures any more.

For a start, while we mock rugby in England as a game for toffs and New Zealanders go to great lengths to celebrate the sport's egalitarian foothold here, we need only look at recent patterns in schoolboy rugby to realise this no longer holds true .

We also see a clash of aesthetics, but England are no longer a team of kick-and-clap merchants trying to strangle our free-running cavaliers.

England might still excel in set-piece and structured play, but nobody who watched their quarter-final demolition of Australia could call them boring.

We have spent decades mocking the rigidity of English rugby but we'd be proud to call the likes of Vunipola, Underhill and May our own. Even if Owen Farrell does not mirror perfectly what we think a first-five should look like, there can be no doubting his bravery, efficiency and occasional brilliance.

Jones and Hansen have begun the week talking about mutual respect and it feels like more than window-dressing.

And so it should - because the All Blacks are excellent and England are pretty damn good too.

It'll hurt if the All Blacks lose. It always should.

But the pain should come from a genuine place, not born of an irrational hatred for a Boring Boring England that exists now only in preconceived ideas.

You won't find me swimming in the Twitter cesspool much these days, unless somebody forwards me something totally excellent on one of the best days of the year – Yankees Elimination Day . Tip of the cap (with a big 'B' on it) to Cam McMillan. "Focus baby."

‌