OPINION:
Melodramatic meltdowns and even national mourning are expected bi-products of poor results for the All Blacks. In that respect, the fall-out from New Zealand's current run of four losses in five test matches is delivering. This time, though, it feels like a more serious malaise has descended.
At least from 19,000km away, the situation appears to be nearing an existential crisis for rugby union. And the pervading attitude towards high tackles among New Zealanders, which amounts to a disconnect with most of the rest of the world, is a contributing factor.
We must begin with a glance across codes. Israel Dagg, who won 66 caps for the All Blacks between 2010 and 2017, summarises things nicely.
"We've got a real situation at the moment where rugby league and rugby union are competing and rugby league is absolutely dominating," he said this week during a guest appearance on The 42.ie's Rugby Weekly Extra podcast.
"If you want to go and watch sport for entertainment, you go and watch league at the moment. They're ticking all the boxes and one of the biggest factors is that they have got clarity in how the game is being played. The game [union] is just... the rules, the officiating β it's confusing. It's so stop-start and there's no ball in play."
Elaborating on a general sense of disenfranchisement, Dagg hailed this year's State of Origin series as the holy grail for drama and intensity. An annual best-of-three bash between the states of New South Wales anΒΒΒd Queensland in Australia, Origin is one of world sport's most precious jewels.
It has always held a mystical allure for union fans. But the start of this year's decider on July 13 was a tough watch for 15-a-side aficionados, particularly given the heightened awareness of concussion issues with which they are learning to live.
Before the clock had ticked to four minutes, a trio of players had left the field. Cameron Murray, the New South Wales back-rower, was the first after clashing heads with opponent Corey Oates in an upright tackle. In modern union, the incident would have yielded at least a spell in the sin bin for Murray. Here, there was no penalty.
Selwyn Cobbo and Lindsay Collins of Queensland were the next victims. Both of these concussions were caused by lower tackles as defenders smashed into a hip and an elbow, respectively. Unfortunate and unavoidable accidents, whatever the sport. Sound-bites from the commentary box, however, betrayed different outlooks.
"Queensland claims an early scalp" was the call as Murray staggered across the Suncorp Stadium turf. Cobbo was then described as being "in Disneyland".
Language is important here. "Bell-ringer", another common phrase to describe a smack to the head, sounds glorifying. "Brain injury", a more sinister and stark term, is closer to reality.
The early chaos ended up as a footnote on a thrilling evening in Brisbane that saw Queensland triumph 22-12 to take the series. An epic showdown also featured a full-scale punch-up between Dane Gagai and Matt Burton that only yielded two yellow cards and was sealed by a 70-metre try from Ben Hunt.
Gagai and Burton binned! π³ #Origin pic.twitter.com/o0VhmgTKYH
— Tyson Whelan (@tyson_whelan) July 13, 2022
Dagg's praise was not an attempt to trivialise concussion. Rather, it recognised the action-packed nature of a gladiatorial contest in which the balance between spectacle and safety contrasted sharply with New Zealand's loss to Ireland in Dunedin three days previously. The first period of that second Test was punctuated by three yellow cards and a red. Multiple trips to the television match official (TMO) meant around 57 minutes elapsed between kick-off and half-time.
In the scramble for attention across Australia and New Zealand, where rugby union is in fierce competition with league and other sports like Australian rules football as well as soccer, delays are not much of a draw.
"You want to see the ball in play," Dagg added in his interview with The 42. "You don't want to be watching players get ready for a line-out or a scrum going down or the ref going up to the TMO. The TMO is p----- me off.
"I just think the game of rugby is too confusing and there's too much of it on our TVs and people are getting bored. It's in dire need of change. How we go about it I am unsure but a good start would be to get some common sense in the officiating."
The trouble is that most onlookers from the northern hemisphere probably thought that the referee, Jaco Peyper, had been lenient at Forsyth Barr Stadium. Few eyebrows would have been raised among that demographic if Leicester Fainga'anuku had been permanently dismissed rather than sin-binned.
To them β well, those of us accustomed to how rugby union has been refereed everywhere except the Antipodes over recent years β Angus Ta'avao's head-on-head collision with Garry Ringrose merited a clear-cut red card.
And yet, it prompted a column from Gregor Paul in the New Zealand Herald that decried a "yellow and red card fixation" that is "killing" rugby. Paul argued that the further roll-out of a 20-minute replacement law, used on a trial basis instead of red cards in Super Rugby and The Rugby Championship, would mitigate against such incidents.
Ta'avao, he said, was merely "trundling around doing his job". In truth, because of the way that Super Rugby Pacific was officiated, with Jack Goodhue escaping censure in the final between the Crusaders and the Blues, Ta'avao's plight was entirely predictable.
Paul also proposed that northern hemisphere compliance with strict sanctions would only loosen when empty seats begin to open up at Twickenham and the Aviva Stadium in Dublin. Well, why not explore this further?
Back in March, England hosted Ireland and were reduced to 14 men within two minutes when Charlie Ewels was sent off for clumping into James Ryan β a challenge reasonably similar to Ta'avao's on Ringrose. Spectators accepted Mathieu Raynal's decision to eject Ewels.
The match remained compelling and competitive and Twickenham was probably the loudest it has been since 2015 as a crackling atmosphere enhanced it.
It should be said that Kiwis do not hold a monopoly on scepticism towards harsh punishments. Someone who has worked closely with World Rugby, collecting data on sending-offs, asked "is something [a red card] that a team gets every 14th match going to change behaviour?" They answered their own question: "I'm not sure it will."
That said, there does appear to be a firm and lingering belief in New Zealand that red cards ruin matches. Could that sentiment be borne out of paranoia over rugby union's sliding popularity? Participation numbers are certainly dropping, so rage against high-tackle reprimands might just be displaced anger. We have a chicken-and-egg scenario, in any case.
The next strand is the shift between the more stringent high tackle sanction framework (HTSF) and head contact protocol (HCP), which was finalised in 2021 while Joe Schmidt β now ensconced with the All Blacks β was World Rugby's director of rugby performance. Devised in conjunction with referees such as Peyper and Wayne Barnes and coaches like Dave Rennie and Gregor Townsend, it has granted licence for referees to be more lenient in cases of unintentional head contact.
Privately, though, there has been a feeling among referees β the pawns thrust into the spotlight to carry out these directives β that World Rugby figureheads had become "freaked out" by a number of "soft" red cards that ticked each box of the HTSF and that something had to be done so that a World Cup match in 2023 was not decided by a controversial, process-driven red card.
Other insiders are convinced that Schmidt had his sights set on changing or eradicating the HTSF, which was introduced in 2019, upon his arrival at World Rugby because southern hemisphere nations resented its perceived rigidity.
Resistance to the HTSF was partly why New Zealand and Australia pushed for, and were granted, a 20-minute red card trial. The split has since been consolidated by the rejection of its wider use. Meanwhile, a legacy of the friction between HTSF and HCP systems are decisions such as the yellow card issued to Ireland prop Andrew Porter in the third Test against New Zealand.
The loosehead prop started high, but absorbed the impact of Brodie Retallick. This did not help Retallick too much. He fractured his cheekbone. But the yellow card given by Barnes was upheld by a citing committee to leave New Zealanders perplexed.
One final, yet unavoidable thread is the harrowing trickle of ex-players revealing diagnoses of early on-set dementia and probable chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). They have, in the main, been from the United Kingdom.
Ryan Jones was the latest, just this weekend. The sickening news, reported by The Sunday Times, hit so hard because the former back-rower was often irrepressible on the pitch. He is a modern great. And now his life has been turned upside down. At the age of 41.
Jones, his former Wales team-mate Alix Popham and World Cup-winner Steve Thompson have joined the class action law suit against World Rugby and other governing bodies.
Carl Hayman, the former All Blacks prop, is among the group of around 150 former professionals involved. His affliction, though, has been strongly linked to an eight-year stint in Europe playing for Newcastle Falcons and Toulon rather than any health setbacks at home.
That provides distance. And, anyway, New Zealand Rugby is protected from a class action because of the country's accident compensation claims act. This inhibits people from suing for damages in the event of personal injury.
Nobody is saying that New Zealand is in denial about concussion, yet nobody denies the disconnect between them and the prevailing philosophy of the northern hemisphere.
The very notion is morbid, but more than one source suggested that it might take an earth-shattering announcement from an icon like Richie McCaw or Dan Carter to bring the two into line. We must hope it does not come to that.
The Warriors' second-rower has been recalled for Queensland for State of Origin game 2.