Lurking in the comments section below a preview of the All Blacks vs Italy World Cup pool match was this each-way bet: “The ABs will either win big or capitulate … Who knows who will turn up these days?”
The All Blacks rarely, if ever, capitulate, but we know what the respondent was getting at. Once a byword for consistency, the team have latterly been a “riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”, as Winston Churchill described the Soviet Union. Coach Ian Foster’s tenure, now drawing to a close, has been the proverbial rollercoaster ride: sometimes exhilarating, sometimes alarming, occasionally nausea-inducing.
The All Blacks duly won big via a compelling blend of flamboyance and ruthlessness, but we already knew they are rugby’s foremost flat-track bullies, in a league of their own when it comes to annihilating inferior opponents, especially those who play into their hands by taking an expansive approach. As former coach Steve Hansen’s biographer, Gregor Paul, wrote, “It’s suicide to play an attacking game against the All Blacks. No matter how good others become, they will never be as good.” Italy’s fullback Tommaso Allan said something similar: “They kept getting advantages and just playing without pressure. When they do that, they’re the best in the world.”
A more pertinent indicator of where the All Blacks sit heading into the knockout phase was the eye-popping intensity of the Ireland vs South Africa match a week earlier. The prize on offer, one that both teams clearly felt was worth emptying the tank for, was a probable quarter-final rendezvous with the All Blacks. Beforehand, former Springbok greats Jean de Villiers and Victor Matfield made no bones about their preference for getting the All Blacks rather than hosts France. Former Ireland captain Brian O’Driscoll flatly declared, “There’s nothing to fear in a New Zealand team any more.”
Of course, Scotland could upset these calculations by beating Ireland in the final round of pool play on October 8, as, theoretically, could Italy by beating France.
There have been instances at previous World Cups of teams quietly fancying their chances against the All Blacks. This, however, was a case of actively wanting to play them rather than another team; of viewing the All Blacks as the significantly easier assignment. That’s unprecedented.
And why wouldn’t they want to avoid this golden generation French team riding a 17-game winning streak at home that includes two decisive wins over the All Blacks – 40-25 in 2021 and 27-13 in the tournament’s opening match? Though it’s true host nations have sometimes struggled under the weight of expectations – for instance, England failing to progress beyond pool play in 2015 – the French team and public seem far more connected and invested in the tournament than when they last hosted it in 2007.
From a French perspective, the highlight of that tournament came at the All Blacks’ expense in Cardiff (a few games were farmed out to Wales and Scotland as part of the ever-murky bidding process.) Back on home soil, France lost their semi-final to England and were humbled by Argentina in the bronze medal game, an appropriately dire conclusion to a rather joyless campaign.
Now, as a nation waits anxiously for the next fitness update on captain Antoine Dupont, widely regarded as the best player in the world, there’s a palpable sense that this is their time. (France boast far and away the best cup record of nations that have never won the tournament, having contested three finals and three bronze medal games.)
The South Africans
Why wouldn’t the Springboks want to play the All Blacks after bullying them to their worst-ever defeat in a warm-up game at Twickenham? The Boks know they are flush with the attributes needed to shut down, frustrate and rattle the All Blacks, to apply and maintain the pressure that Italy didn’t exert: relentless physicality; a blitz defence that denies space and time on the ball; an expert aerial game, both kicking and contesting; a juggernaut scrum; a Swiss watch lineout; a monster forward pack with a second wave of behemoths to come off the bench.
For the Boks, bringing these attributes to bear requires no tactical adjustments, no revision of the game plan. It’s the way they play; it’s in their DNA.
As former world heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson famously observed, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” No rugby player in their right mind throws punches anymore, least of all in World Cup knockout games, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get beaten up. “Let’s fuck them up physically,” then coach and current power behind the throne Rassie Erasmus told his team before their 2019 World Cup semi-final against Wales. Given that young South African males are attracted to professional rugby because it provides opportunities to see the world, earn hard currency and fuck people up physically, he could have just said, “Play your natural game, boys.”
When the All Blacks were in London to play England in 2013, a Daily Telegraph journalist sneaked into their hotel team room to discover a white board with the inscription “We are the most dominant team in the history of the world.” There was some basis for this grandiosity: they’d lost just one of their previous 32 games. From 2012 to 2015, the All Blacks won 49, drew two and lost only three of 54 games, a streak that culminated in them becoming the first – and thus far only – team to win back-to-back World Cups.
The following week in Dublin, they needed an injury-time try, converted from the sideline, to become the first team in the professional era to win every game in a calendar year. Having come agonisingly close to securing their first-ever win over the All Blacks, the Irish were understandably devastated.
The two nations first met on a rugby field in 1905. After the 2013 game, the record stood at New Zealand 27, Ireland 0, drawn 1. Since then, Ireland have won five to New Zealand’s three. Why wouldn’t Ireland, the top-ranked team, want to play the fourth-ranked All Blacks, especially when the trend line is solidly in their favour? The Irish have come a long way from being the roaring boys of international rugby who saved their best for the after-match, a team of tearaways, dreamers and blarney merchants like fly-half Mick English, who shrugged off a game-deciding defensive miss on his opposite, Phil Horrocks-Taylor, thus: “Horrocks went one way, Taylor went the other and I was left holding the bloody hyphen!”
The Australians
The tournament has had storylines aplenty, notably the acceleration of Fiji’s transformation from rugby’s Harlem Globetrotters into a heavyweight test team. There have been vibrant contributions from the likes of Portugal and Uruguay, who were supposedly there just to make up the numbers. The biggest story, however, and one with serious implications for New Zealand rugby, has been Australia’s crash-and-burn campaign.
For Kiwis, a wallow in schadenfreude is a tempting reaction to Australian sporting disaster, especially when self-inflicted. And when the trainwreck has been presided over, if not choreographed, by the maniacal figure of coach Eddie Jones, the urge to chortle is irresistible.
Jones took over at the start of the year following the tawdry shafting of highly respected (on this side of the Tasman at least) Kiwi Dave Rennie. According to former Wallaby-turned-broadcaster Greg Martin, Rennie had “the personality of a chair”, which made him drastically ill-equipped to generate the media coverage that rugby in Australia desperately needs if it is to compete with Aussie Rules, rugby league and football.
Pinning down Jones’s personality would be a fascinating exercise, perhaps requiring advanced qualifications in the field. His means of commanding media coverage was erratic selection – the Wallabies have had six captains this year – and turning his press conferences into fringe performance art replete with truculent back and forth and pie-in-the-sky soundbites.
The other-worldly nature of these performances was perfectly captured in Irish impressionist Conor Moore’s spoof of Jones’s press conference following the catastrophic loss to Wales.
Jones: “I said, ‘Let Wales come onto you,’ mate. ‘Let them have the ball. Lure them into a false sense of security, and when they least expect it … pounce.’” (Triumphant, superior-being smirk)
Reporter: “But you didn’t pounce.”
Jones: “I said, ‘When they least expect it,’ mate. ‘Maybe not tonight, maybe not tomorrow’, mate. ‘When they least expect it.’ But I wouldn’t expect you guys to understand that because you don’t know anything about rugby, mate.”
Jones’s shrinking cohort of defenders keep insisting his outlandish shtick is intended to take the pressure off his embattled players. If so, the results suggest it didn’t work. One suspects they were far more affected by reports that Jones, despite being contracted to coach the Wallabies though to the 2027 World Cup, has been angling for the soon-to-be-vacated gig of coaching Japan’s Brave Blossoms. Jones issued a less than full-throated denial, but the unseemliness, combined with the Wallabies’ two wins – over Georgia and Portugal – in nine matches this year, may prompt Rugby Australia to let him go, particularly if the Japanese connection gets it off the hook in terms of a payout.
Tempting though schadenfreude is, the reality is that Australian rugby needs to improve – and quickly. Pundits are compulsive builders of sweeping narratives from single performances, so the demolition of Italy might hush the doomsaying around Southern Hemisphere rugby until the next setback. However, the Australian team’s inability to compete in Super Rugby Pacific makes the competition far from ideal preparation for international rugby and therefore poses a very real threat to the All Blacks brand.
It would be interesting to know what Martin makes of Foster’s personality. The low-key Hamiltonian’s inability to connect with the public – 78% of the 18,000 people who participated in a 2021 New Zealand Herald poll wanted him sacked – and the stark contrast with his preternaturally upbeat rival and successor, break-dancing surfer dude Scott “Razor” Robertson, have undoubtedly contributed to the miasma of discontent that has swirled around our sporting flagship in recent years. That, in turn, was surely a factor in New Zealand Rugby’s decision to, in effect, constructively dismiss Foster by opting to appoint the next All Blacks coach (for 2024 and beyond)before rather than, as has happened previously, after the World Cup.
The next week – or two or three – will define coach Foster: a grey man, one of nature’s assistants promoted beyond his ability, when challenging times called for charisma and leadership? Or a much-maligned, under-appreciated strategist whose stoicism and stubbornness were exactly what the times called for and who got it right when it mattered.
The dumb-luck factor
If there’s a silver lining in the ludicrously lopsided draw that ensures only two of the world’s top five teams can progress to the semi-finals, it’s that the pair who do go through are well placed to make the final. Should the All Blacks overcome Ireland (or South Africa) in the quarter-finals, they look likely to face the far less formidable challenge of Argentina or Wales in the semis.
Luck, in the form of capricious refereeing, officious television match official intervention, injury or the bounce of the ball, will come into it. Given the way the drawn 2017 British and Irish Lions vs All Blacks series and the 2019 Men’s Cricket World Cup final played out, New Zealanders should appreciate that better than most.
But luck remains sport’s elephant in the room, a looming presence that people pretend not to notice. Sport is an artificial construct designed to produce heroes, and heroes overcome obstacles, foreseeable and unexpected, to get the job done. If all that separates winners and losers is pure, dumb luck, the heroism narrative falls flat.
Rudyard Kipling evoked “those two impostors”, triumph and disaster. It’s fitting and illustrative of both Foster’s tenure and sport in general that, after four indeterminate years, either of those wildly divergent scenarios could pan out.