Will Jordan celebrates his try with Beauden Barrett and Rieko Ioane. Photo / Photosport
Will Jordan celebrates his try with Beauden Barrett and Rieko Ioane. Photo / Photosport
OPINION:
The similarities between this year and 2009 are starting to feel eerily similar. Which might ultimately prove to be no bad thing.
After their first eight tests of 2009, the All Blacks had won four and lost four, precisely the same record they have after eight tests this year.
In 2009, the All Blacks struggled for much of the year to build a functioning and relevant attack game after being slow to adapt to the prevailing trend of most teams not wanting to play with the ball.
This new defensive mode led to teams kicking more and that in turn exposed the All Blacks as being deficient in their aerial skill-sets.
And in 2009, there was an underlying current of discontent about the decision to retain the coaching trio of Graham Henry, Steve Hansen and Wayne Smith – one strong enough to create tension and difficulty between the team and the media.
All of this is frighteningly similar to how things have been this year. The All Blacks' skill-sets have been under duress for much of this year – their pass and catch sharpness and ability under the high ball not up to snuff against Ireland or in the first test against South Africa, and their set-piece, maul and collision work equally exposed as frail.
And of course, the tension has certainly been there with the media in 2022 as there has been strong, consistent and universal voices calling for coaching change.
The thing about 2009, however, was that it turned out to be the launching pad for the most successful decade in All Blacks history.
Graham Henry, Steve Hansen and Wayne Smith. Photo / Photosport
Those last of those opening eight games was the nadir and from sitting on four wins and four losses, the All Blacks wouldn't lose another test until November 2010 when the Wallabies pipped them in the final minute of the fourth Bledisloe that year which was played in Hong Kong.
That same team which battled so hard in the first part of 2009 would go on to win the 2011 World Cup and many of them were still around when the All Blacks won again in 2015, losing just three tests between collecting their two world titles.
The catalyst in changing their trajectory in 2009 was a brilliant and ruthless performance against Australia in the final Tri-Nations match. The All Blacks went to Wellington under all sort of pressure having lost their third test of the series to South Africa in Hamilton and responded with an emphatic destruction of the Wallabies – one where they got all their foundation bits right and at last found the confidence to pass and catch with the accuracy needed and suddenly everything clicked into place.
That one game marked the turning point for a decade of brilliance and could the same be about to happen?
Could the All Blacks again use their final Rugby Championship test – against Australia – to repeat the pattern of 2009 and bounce out of this period of uncertainty, to storm the World Cup next year?
Few would agree such a renaissance looks likely, but then that was also the case at the corresponding period in 2009 and there have been signs of something developing within the All Blacks for those prepared to look hard enough.
The All Blacks have been up, down and all over the place this year, but in their last few tests, there have been prolonged periods of clarity, cohesion and quite ruthless rugby.
Jordie Barrett scores the winning try against the Wallabies. Photo / Photosport
When they have been focused, cool-headed and red-blooded, the All Blacks have been superb.
This team, when they play well, look good enough to beat anyone – Ireland, South Africa, England and even France.
At times in the first half against the Boks at Ellis Park, for all of their test against the Pumas in Hamilton and for the first 20 minutes of the second half in Melbourne, the All Blacks showed that they can play at a pace that is too fast for most other teams to live with.
The issues that have beset them, prevented the All Blacks of 2022 from dominating opponents the way that the team of 2009 would go on to do, have been their inability to stay in that mental zone for long enough and how easily they have been knocked out of the right head space.
They don't lack the physical ability or tactical know-how, but they don't yet have the clinical, ruthless mindset that came to define that great decade of All Blacks success.
The challenge for this team is to learn the art of finishing what they start – of maintaining their concentration, discipline and accuracy once they have taken a lead and put their opponent under a degree of scoreboard pressure.
