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An ardent All Blacks supporter recently sent me a blistering email – how the hell could the New Zealand Rugby Union give away the home game status for the opening matches of the Bledisloe Cup series to the Wallabies?
The answer, I suppose, is that John O’Neill, who was the CEO of the ARU when the long-term deal was struck, somehow made the NZRU an offer they couldn’t refuse.
O’Neill developed the concept of Bledisloe Cup week in Sydney with the NSW Government. There are numerous events involving the contest, with the culmination of the festivities at ANZ Stadium on the Saturday night.
In setting up this arrangement, O’Neill also set up the Wallabies for their best chance of winning back the Bledisloe Cup. In three-match series, as we’ve seen in State of Origin, the team that wins the first match has a strong statistical chance of winning overall.
So in 2014 the Wallabies have got the first Test advantage.
The second Bledisloe Cup Test is played at Auckland’s Eden Park, where the All Blacks last lost back in 1994 to France, a team that scored a glorious try from their own goal-line on full time. If ever a ground can be deemed to be a home fortress, Eden Park is to the All Blacks.
The third Bledisloe Cup Test will be played at Brisbane’s Suncorp Stadium. The Wallabies defeated the All Blacks at this ground as recently as 2011, with Radike Samo scoring one of the great Test tries in a storming first half for the Wallabies. The All Blacks came back in the second half, but as the Crusaders learnt against the Waratahs, a team can’t expect to win a match when it concedes a hatful of points early on.
So we come to the agonising question for Wallaby supporters: if not this year, when?
Michael Hooper was 11 when the Wallabies last won the Bledisloe Cup. The All Blacks are gunning for a record (for first-tier rugby countries) 18 straight Tests on Saturday night. On the law of averages, you’d have to say that they are closer to their next loss than they were last year, or the year before.
This is pretty skimpy rationalising, admittedly. But I get back to this notion that sooner or later the Wallabies are going to win back the Bledisloe Cup.
Even Steve Hansen has conceded that “realistically we know we’ll get beaten at some point”. Then he added, “But we’re going to do our damndest to make sure we prepare well enough so that it becomes hard work for the opposition…
“I find it interesting that people think winning is a burden. Winning is actually very satisfying.”
In a way, it is easier to continue a winning series of Tests than it is to break a losing series of Tests. When you lose there is pressure on the players to hold their places in the side, and on the coach to somehow come up with a winning method.
Often this leads to players being promoted or dropped when they didn’t deserve one of these fates. The coach, as well, comes up with tactics of desperation that end up playing into the hands of the opposition.
Ewen McKenzie, the Wallaby coach, promised before his appointment that he knew how to beat New Zealand teams. His Wallabies lost three Tests to the All Blacks last year, in McKenzie’s first outings as the Wallaby coach.
Since then McKenzie’s Wallabies have put together a winning streak of seven Tests. This season France were easily dismissed 3-0 in the home series.
Does he keep the game plan and the players who did well against France? Does he bring into his calculations the brilliant victory of the Waratahs against the Crusaders in the 2014 Super Rugby final? Does this victory mean a greater number of Waratahs in the starting Wallabies side?
Judging by media reports, McKenzie is not going to be overly swayed by the Waratahs victory. The drum is that Nic White, Bernard Foley, Matt Toomua, and Tevita Kuridrani will be the halves and centres, with Adam Ashley-Cooper, Pat McCabe and Israel Folau the back three.
No Kurtley Beale in the starting backline, in other words, and Ashley-Cooper being played in the wrong position.
I have always maintained that the best way to beat New Zealand teams is to confront them with clever, attacking, speedy backs. Beale set up most of the sensational attacking play for the Waratahs when they raced to a 14-0 lead in as many minutes against the Crusaders. His passing, his stepping and his running proved to be too much, at least early, for the Crusaders.
And the attacking combination of Foley, Beale, Ashley-Cooper and Folau was just too slick and brilliant, as an ensemble, for the Crusaders and other teams, including the Highlanders, throughout the season. This combination would prove to be a handful for the All Blacks, despite the superior coaching and talent they bring.
However, McKenzie has systems he wants put in place that make the aggressive Toomua and Kuridrani in the centres the arrow-head point of the Wallabies’ attack.
He also has so much confidence in his front row players that even with Scott Sio out, along with the two most experienced hookers in Stephen Moore and Tatafu Polota-Nau, he refuses to recall veteran loosehead prop Benn Robinson.
The reports are that Robinson doesn’t do a lot of work around the field. But looking at his performance in the Super Rugby final, against a pack of eight All Blacks, Robinson did well around the field, making tackles and the occasional short-legged burst. His scrumming, too, looked to be secure enough.
This is an important point, because one of the strengths of the All Blacks under Sir Graham Henry and now Steve Hansen is they make little changes and adjustments. Each year the All Blacks are the same, especially in the performance of the basics, and ever so slightly different.
The difference this year will be a concentration on more traditional, driving forward play. Even a team like the Hurricanes, the perennial entertainers, joined the other New Zealand franchises in setting up driving maul and one-off hit-ups. Tighter play in the forwards, in other words, before putting the ball wide in the backs.
This raises the question of whether the Wallaby forwards will be tough enough to contain a very strong, mature (look at the back three of Richie McCaw, Jerome Kaino and Kieran Read, especially), driving All Blacks pack. The first Test could be settled on this.
One encouraging sign for Wallaby supporters is that the Waratahs were not overwhelmed by the Crusaders in the scrums and lineouts. They lost a couple of lineouts and scrums and conceded several penalties, but this was more than matched by the way the Waratahs were able to recycle their own ball easily throughout the match, while making it hard for the Crusaders to recycle their own.
This dominance in the rucks led to McCaw making his fateful intervention on that 50-50 play at the end of the match to give Foley his shot at glory, which he accepted with admirable poise.
McCaw saw that the Waratahs were 45 metres out from the Crusaders try line. They had runners set on both sides. They had a roll on. They had kept recycling their attacks easily throughout the match. A couple of more recycled rucks and the Crusaders were facing try time against them, or they were vulnerable to easy drop goal.
So he went in for the ball…
If the Waratahs did this against the Crusaders, then the Wallabies can do the same against the All Blacks.
The other point is that runs of outs end sooner or later. The Waratahs had not won a Super Rugby grand final in 19 years. Now that drought is over.
The Wallabies should take heart from this. If the Waratahs can beat their hoodoo, why not the Wallabies?
Then again, the Wallabies’ run of Bledisloe Cup-winning outs is – only – 11 years, not 19 years.