Tri-Nations, the annual RWC tournament
Columnist By Spiro Zavos, 4 Jul 2008 Spiro Zavos is a Roar Expert
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- Ali Williams, All Blacks, Graham Henry, New Zealand, Nick Mallett, Peter de Villiers, Richie McCaw, robbie deans, Rod Macqueen, Rugby Union, Rugby World Cup, Scotland, South Africa, Southern Hemisphere, Springboks, The Springboks, Wales, wallabies
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Some years ago I opined that it is harder to win the Tri-Nations tournament than the Rugby World Cup.
Now Nick Mallett, the coach of the Springboks during the record seventeen Test wins sequence in 1998/99 and the current coach of Italy, has made the same argument.
The reason I offered for my rather Southern Hemisphere triumphalist opinion (and Mallett’s reasons, too) were that the Tri-Nations teams (Australia, South Africa and New Zealand) have generally been the best teams in the world since the first RWC in 1987.
The exception was the period between October 2003 and June 2004 when England (which won the RWC in 2003) was the top ranked team for 35 weeks.
The current world rankings are: South Africa 90.18, New Zealand 89.79, Australia 84.56, Argentina 83.42, England 83.16, Wales 80,12, France 79.24, Ireland 77.18, Scotland 76.92, Fiji 76.77.
It is possible to win the RWC without playing a Tri-Nations side.
South Africa in 1995 is the only side to win the RWC and beat both other Tri-Nations sides in the process. New Zealand won the RWC without playing Australia, the strongest team in the world at that stage.
Australia won in 1991 with South Africa not being in the tournament. In 1999, Australia won the RWC without playing New Zealand. And in 2007, the Springboks won their second RWC, but this time they did not have to face either New Zealand or Australia.
To put the issue into a perspective, the Springboks won the 2007 RWC, but the All Blacks won the Tri-Nations tournamernt that year.
Who will win the Tri-Nations this year?
After the disaster of my 2007 RWC predictions, with the fearless prediction that South Africa could not win with its hopeless away record, I’m giving up predictions and going for indicative guesses.
My indicative guess is that the Wallabies are at least a year off being a formidable side, and of being capable of winning difficult matches outside of Australia. What they have going for them, though, is a talented coach in Robbie Deans, the best for the Wallabies since Rod Macqueen, and a tendency to play up to the level of the opposition with a terrific defensive system.
South Africa or New Zealand?
The Springboks are the current RWC champions and have kept most this side. They’ve won their last thirteen Tests.
Graham Henry calls the current Springboks a “10 out of 10 side.”
The question mark over the team is whether the new coach, Peter de Villiers, has the real stuff as a Test coach. Many are called and few are chosen.
The All Blacks have won 29 consecutive Tests in New Zealand. They are probably closer to the end of this run of success than the beginning. They’ve lost a number of senior players from last year. Richie McCaw is out, at least until the last few Tri-Nations matches, and Ali Williams, the only world-class lineout jumper the All Blacks have, is going to play with an injured ankle.
The opinion of Mark Keohane, a feisty and opiniated South African rugby writer who was the media man for Mallett, makes sense to me: “The reality is this. If a Bok team missing only Jacque Fourie and Fourie du Preez can’t beat an All Blacks team without Rokocoko, Mauger, Maclister, Kelleher, McCaw, Collins, Jack and Hayman, then they won’t win in New Zealand for another decade.”
Therefore, all three teams – the Wallabies, the Springboks and the All Blacks – have ‘everything to play for,’ as the cliche suggests.
Recommend this story.
July 4th 2008 @ 12:21pm
Jerry said | July 4th 2008 @ 12:21pm | Report comment
Sheek – I agree with you on the whole but I can’t agree re 1995. I still can’t see any footage of the 1995 cup and wonder what would have happened with a fully fit All Black XV in the final. I don’t subscribe to any conspiracy theories about betting syndicates or the existence of Suzie, but it’s undeniable that a majority of the starting XV of that AB side were severely affected by food poisoning and that this played a huge role in deciding the outcome of the match.
July 4th 2008 @ 1:28pm
Mick of Newie said | July 4th 2008 @ 1:28pm | Report comment
I would have thought it is easier for the best team to win the Tri nations than the world cup because of its format which removes the influence of one off performance /chance.
Therefore the world cup is harder to win because being best is not necessary but being very good and performing/being lucky might get you there.
You might call it the All Black paradox.
July 4th 2008 @ 2:12pm
TembaVJ said | July 4th 2008 @ 2:12pm | Report comment
Here we go, the old Suzie factor… Jesus you lot never give up do you? Yes a bunch of poisoned player are going to grind out 100+ minutes of rugby. Its the oldest and most ridiculous story I have ever hear. Sheek said it best they where out smarted by a tactically superior game plan, that’s it… no Suzy or lepricons with four leave clovers.
July 4th 2008 @ 2:26pm
sheek said | July 4th 2008 @ 2:26pm | Report comment
Jerry,
Only from my own experience, sometimes when I was sick or hung over, I played better simply because I forced myselfd to concentrate better. Also, you tended to improve as the game went on. Let’s put this to bed – the ABs thought all they had to do was turn up to win (in 1995). The Boks played smarter.
Mick of Newie,
In the 3N you can drop games, but still win the comp. In 2006 for example, each of the 3 countries won both home games & lost both away games. The Boks won on bonus points.
In the RWC you can drop a pool game. But from the quarters onwards, you have to win everything. So yes, I agree with you.
July 4th 2008 @ 2:54pm
Jerry said | July 4th 2008 @ 2:54pm | Report comment
Temba – I specifically said I DIDN’T believe in the conspiracy theories or Suzie. I do, however, believe the first person reports of players like Wilson, Kronfeld etc who’ve come out and said they were sick as dogs for the two days prior to the game. Wilson was vomitting on the sideline on camera for gods sake!
Sheek – whatever. I’m not sure how you can authoritively say what the AB’s mindset was, and comparing your experiences with top level rugby is not really a valid comparison. This is an elite sport where the margins of error are minute and it’s the 1% that makes all the difference. The AB’s lost after 100 minutes when recovering from (for the sake of Temba) ACCIDENTAL food poisoning or a stomach virus of some sort. It’s not a hard interpolation to speculate they might have won if they’d been fully fit, especially when they won 3 on the trot in SA the following year.
Also, that year where all the teams won their home games was 2004. In 06 the AB’s won 5 from 6 and won in a canter.
July 4th 2008 @ 3:38pm
sheek said | July 4th 2008 @ 3:38pm | Report comment
Thanks Jerry about which 3N year it was.
I did say “only from my experience”. I agree you can’t compare it to top level rugby. Anyway, it’s a shame any suggestion of food poisoning ought to detract from the Boks winning in 1995.
Perhaps if they replayed that match 5 times, that might have been the Boks only win (out of 5). But they won the one that mattered. They did what they had to do on the day.
July 4th 2008 @ 3:42pm
Jason Cave said | July 4th 2008 @ 3:42pm | Report comment
I think the Wallabies are a year or 2 away from being a very good team. I don’t know about you, but I’m looking forward to Bledisloe Cup Game 1 on 26th July. That game will tell us a lot abut this Wallabies team, and whether or not they’re on the right path to RWC 2011 in New Zealand.
July 4th 2008 @ 4:19pm
Photon said | July 4th 2008 @ 4:19pm | Report comment
Jerry, you don’t get it. England would never have beaten the Wallabies with the limited game plan they used in Marseilles if it wasn’t a World Cup quater-final. It’s the pressure and the moment that reduces the advantage a quality side has over a limited side. In 1995 if the All Blacks played the Springboks 10 times the All Blacks would have won maybe 7 of the games. That final just happened to be one of the 3 they would have lost. Just exercise a bit of dignity, (I know it’s hard when the only world cup you’ve won was a testimonal tournament) and accept that you lost to a better team on the day. Say it loud say it proud, WE CHOKED LIKE WE ALWAYS DO
July 4th 2008 @ 5:29pm
ohtani's jacket said | July 4th 2008 @ 5:29pm | Report comment
I don’t buy that the Boks played smarter than us.
The game went so deep into extra time that South Africa were minutes away from losing the Cup on a technicality (their disciplinary record.) They had one game plan and one game plan alone — stop Jonah. James Small did an excellent job marking Jonah, never letting him get on the outside, funneling him into the inside defence. Whatever bitterness there was at the time has eased over time. Luyt is to blame for a lot of that ill feeling. There are members of the squad and All Black management who still believe they were poisoned, but most fans acknowledge that it united a nation and was a great moment in rugby history. Besides, we had our revenge the next year and at the time a series victory in South Africa meant more than winning a World Cup. It was arguably the greatest moment in All Blacks history. After that victory & the Lions victory in ’97, South African rugby was never quite the same. Winning the World Cup so soon after readmission was supposed to begin a new era of Springboks domination, but they’ve struggled with professionalism.
It’s unrealistic to expect New Zealand to be six times World Champion, and I’d hate to think about the state of the game if we had been. What a service we’ve done to world rugby by cocking it up so many times! Realistically, our best chances to win were in ’95 and ’07.
The problem with the Rugby World Cup is that it has such a short history and there are so few teams who have a realistic chance of winning it, which means people lack perspective. In the Football World Cup, waiting 20+ years between World Cup wins is simply part of the annals of the game. In New Zealand rugby, it’s an obession, but NZ rugby likes its everests. It’s not that different from the Australian cricket team really. They’re a hell of a lot more focused if they lose the Ashes or have some challenge like winning in India or the Caribbean.
In regards to the Tri-Nations, 9 Tests in an 11 week marathon (played in 3 different countries) does appear more difficult than winning a World Cup, but it’s a points table and New Zealand’s dominance at home makes it easy to win, especially when SA can’t win in Australia and Australia can’t win in SA. If New Zealand win the Rugby World Cup in 2011, I expect the heckling to be that we can only win a World Cup on home soil.
July 4th 2008 @ 5:40pm
ohtani's jacket said | July 4th 2008 @ 5:40pm | Report comment
I love how the ’87 World Cup gets belittled, just because the home nations didn’t take it seriously. If it wasn’t for New Zealand and Australia, there wouldn’t be a World Cup. No team has ever played better at a World Cup than that ’87 side. Few sides have ever played better than they did for the two years AFTER the ’87 World Cup, and if it wasn’t for a series of cock-ups on the part of the NZRU they would’ve gone back-to-back. Not only that, but they played well in the ’91 semi-final. They played well in the ’92 Bledisloe series!
There, I’ve had my little rant.