That look in Dan Carter’s eyes, thinking of what might have been as he sat on the sideline watching it all fall apart… it’s been haunting me.
A few weeks back I spoke about the All Blacks being in a dark French nightclub, plucking up the courage to go and talk to Destiny, a funny-looking older girl with smudged make-up and a strange cast in her eye. The All Blacks were asking on their nation’s behalf.
It was the sort of talk that puts undue pressure on the All Blacks.
Right about now if she had been the girl for us, Destiny would be saying yes to a rum and coke and writing her phone number on a napkin… and of course by this time next week she would also be wobbling around her bedroom all morning with a big dopey grin on her face, giggly and weak in the knees.
We now know that the date didn’t go so well. She thought we had too much baggage… and if a babe like Destiny says no, we should examine ourselves closely with an eye to improving our chances. In four years she’ll be at our house, on heat, and many other dogs will be spraying the backyard.
Those who thought it was a done deal in 2007 are the ones finding it hardest to believe. There hasn’t been a done deal in France since 1940 when Hitler decided to expand his co-prosperity sphere.
I’m worried New Zealand’s destiny is to relive the same thing over and over again, that the burden of public expectation is always going to hamstring our All Blacks. Subscribers have responded to my last palliative letter in their hundreds, and I am reassured somewhat that our comprehension problem isn’t so bad, but the question remains.
The collegial post mortem is almost complete and the reasons for our loss are manifestly clear. The rotation policy went way too far and ultimately spun out of control… it should have created depth as planned, but then the selectors should have settled on a first fifteen. Trying to field a different side every week in a seven-week tournament was ludicrous.
The leadership was missing at the death… so much for a whole group of empowered leaders, Richie McCaw being able to leave such things as dropkick decisions to others. Key members of the leadership group weren’t out there.
Even so, with the disastrous conditioning program having utterly failed to the point where our most important players were limping off, and in a quarterfinal no less after being in the easiest pool, even then our first fifteen might have come unstuck. All that was required for the whole house of cards to come tumbling down were a few ostrich-criteria backline selections, a piece of Freddy Michalak brilliance and a referee out of his depth.
Tournaments are like that. Graham Henry said it himself a hundred times.
The All Blacks’ fabulous test record between Cups counted for nothing. England in the final… there’s proof, if ever you needed it, that exhaustive preparation and pre-tournament form count for nothing.
We’re now hearing that players, in a relaxed mood at a sponsors event in Edinburgh during pool play, were saying “if we all do our jobs right, the score will take care of itself.”
So whose job was it to worry about the score? “All doing our jobs” sounds right, but then why didn’t they? I want to look at fear as the reason… the baggage… and not necessarily theirs, ours.
As The Man in the Stand has been saying for months, born to rule breeds vulnerability.
The Man was railing right through the Tri-Nations, questioning everyone’s Hare Krishna-like devotion to the rotation program, saying we’d all drunk the Kool-Aid. It was epic stuff for which he was actually threatened.
Now we can see that scepticism was healthier than blind acceptance, so let’s look more closely.
We absolutely must not let the referee become a trench to dive into.
Wayne Barnes made some awfully strange calls, or non-calls, but they were the sort of tight-game decisions that get made when pressure is placed on decision-makers. He and Jonathan Kaplan either weren’t sighted or looked away for a split second, maybe to count the other players arriving from various angles at what Barnes nervously worried was going to be a breakdown, and Michalak galloped like a Time Bandit through the ripped cosmic curtain.
These things happen. In those blinks of the eye when the universe folds over on itself, French things happen. Centuries of European politics and warfare have given the French a knack for accomplishing missions undetected… just like living on the Dark Continent with a small breeding population has given South Africans a survivalist mentality.
Paddy O’Brien was way out of line telling us to grow up… we may need to, sure, but coming from him it was offensive. The French being whistled off the park the following week against England was a horrible irony.
Meanwhile the howls of protest accusing Barnes and his touch judges are long and plaintive, but I’ve heard the same people in the past calling for less touch judge interference.
For New Zealanders to accuse Barnes of bias or corruption is senseless. What, didn’t he realise the All Blacks were supposed to win? Any bias he might have had was accidental, having been brought up in England listening to cocky New Zealanders’ taunts about boring rugby. A South Africa versus England final? The mortgage just expired on our say-so about what is or is not boring.
It is time for our arrogance to end. It is time to stop expecting victory from the All Blacks like that right is God-given, time for us to stop feeling sick after losses. You think you feel sick? Picture someone unstable feeling the same way (and believe me they’re out there, I try to write this column in a style that excludes them, but every week I am accused of treachery by the rabid and the unhinged).
The tournament comes here in 2011 and this nation is in grave danger. Not just of New Zealand not being ready, much more immediate than that. If England wins this tournament and some nutcase Kiwi fan living in London is found hanged wearing his All Blacks scarf, it will be plastered all over the Fleet Street rags and we will be a laughing stock… every Knightsbridge yuppie, reading his morning paper after dropping little Chloe and Tarquin off at kindy, is going to snigger at the tragic colonials for decades.
Already there are some damning statistics about a spike in women requiring refuge on Sunday October the seventh. That is sickening enough.
The weight of expectation and our insular world view are one and the same thing. Look at New Zealand in general… our dropping education standards, once-clean beaches strewn with rubbish, fatcat councils unable to delegate responsibility while immigrants gratefully fill a slew of vacant menial positions, gangs and car thieves poisoning whole suburbs… we are throwing away paradise. When it comes to appreciating what we have we are lazy, stupid, violent and dishonest.
Likewise when it comes to the All Blacks… we criticise drunk from our armchairs, most of us displaying a lack of high level experience, and we put our wives in battered women shelters after losses while pretending that sort of thing doesn’t happen.
We make them fear losses. The fear of losing is not a good motivation, no matter what former All Black captains are almost forced to tell us. It’s a powerful motivation, sure, but counterproductive. Fear puts enormous pressure on people in tight situations. We actually give ourselves stage fright sometimes with the incessant solemnity, and the bigger the stage the bigger the fright.
Some will want them to change style and play a different way, but I’m not worried about that. I submit that however they play the stage fright will be real if we need them to win too badly.
Henry won’t want the job again. I’m definitely for appointing Steve Hansen as head coach anyway, the man who fixed our forward pack. I certainly don’t need heads to roll after they’ve won three Tri-Nations, four Bledisloes, a Grand Slam and swept the Lions.
What I wish for the All Blacks, a team with the greatest winning record in world sports history but currently unable to shake off this fictitious cloak of failure, is a real ability to play the beautiful rugby they usually play no matter where, when or how big the game… or not, that’s up to them, but without the fear, really believing in it and damn whether they win or not.
Then it will happen. It’s what they’re being told to do as individuals. Our collective fear stops them doing it as a team.
Sod Holy Grails. In other words play for yourselves, boys, and don’t worry about us. We’ll love you anyway.
You do your job, we’ll do ours… and it’s our job to make sure that unfinished stadia, grotty little power failures, airport strandings of dignitaries and collapsing bridges don’t ruin the 2011 tournament.
Whether we win it or not? Ha. Some things are more important. The All Blacks are our best, but the gap between their proud record and this
nation’s in general is growing.
Got that New Zealand? Pull your lucky socks up.
Until next week,
Inky remains at your service.
http://www.backend.co.nz/inky
Darryl
Guest
Inky, I don't think NZ is in quite as much trouble as you seem to make out. There are two problems with NZ's lack of WC glory: 1. You always fire your coach if he fails. If you'd kept John Mitchell, I dare say you'd be in the final this weekend. I actually wrote to the NZRU (and bear in mind, I'm South African, living in South Africa) suggesting that the smartest thing they could do was to NOT get rid of Graham Henry. Look at what Clive Woodward learned from 1999. Think of the hunger he and his players had going into 2003. Think of the lessons Henry has learned, and the hunger the remaining players will have to get rid of the blight that is 2007. If you need anything to galvanize a team, that would be it. 2. The WC is over-rated. Teams try and pass off four years of inbetween rugby as an excuse for building to the next WC. How is this a fair swap for a campaign that, as with NZ's, can fail from one bad referee call. It's ridiculous. Somehow (and I don't know how) the value of the WC needs to be discounted, diluted. It is big, but it shouldn't be as big as it is. Firstly the format sucks, and secondly, well, it's only once every four years. There's too much time between 'rematches' and leaves everybody but the winners with a four year morning mouth. Henry's biggest failing leading up to this World Cup, I think, was his inability to settle on a first choice team. This meant that when the pressure was on, the team didn't have enough glue from the past to bond them together, and they predictably fell apart. I submit that if Henry had done as Jake White has done, and maintained a high level of consistency in his selections, instead of the silly rotation policy, that he would not have struggled to overcome the pressure from the French in that QF. It would have been familiar territory. Personally, I think this is why South Africa have been able to dig themselves out of one or two holes in this WC campaign. Smit gets the boys together behind the try line and says "guys, we've been here before, and we've gotten ourselves out of this mess... we can do it again". World rugby, despite what Stephen Jones may say or think, needs a strong NZ. Heck, never mind need, we WANT a strong New Zealand. We respect Australia because they outthink us, but we respect NZ even more, because they outplay us. There's a big difference in my books. I for one hope that Henry wants to keep the job, and that the NZRU are smart enough not to repeat the mistakes of 2003. I think, if you do, and Henry does indeed learn from his past mistakes, 2011 stands a much greater chance of success. Otherwise, I agree. Your destiny will be to always lose at the WC's.
Peter L
Guest
Phew! So, Inky, that's quite a big soap box you're standing on. Strikes me you've got a point to make though. Lord knows I don't understand why anyone - male or female - would need to take out in violence a loss on any sporting field, but I don't think NZ stands alone in this sad piece of society. In fact I don't think this generation, or even this era has a mortgage on that - it is a sad reflection on humanity in general that even the Greeks and the Romans, during the "heydays" of their empires exhibited similar traits. But what you'r saying is we should know better - in fact we bloody well MUST get to know better. Go Inky - run for PM, I'll vote for you (and I'd say you will have a less gravelly voice than the encumbent).