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Former Wallaby skipper John Eales has called open season on New Zealand’s fragile World Cup–psyche with comments in The Sydney Morning Herald aimed squarely at our dodgy tournament record.
“Time may move slowly for the All Blacks as they exist in the shadow of the World Cup – 24 hours a day, for the next 360 odd days,” he said earlier this week.
Subtle, ain’t he? Subtle like a two-metre lock.
There’s nothing new to these mind games. The Aussies generally start wading in about a year out from every World Cup. Somewhere in Sydney, someone flicks on the Klieg searchlight and projects a big Wallaby into the night sky, and then all hell breaks loose.
It starts with a deafening drone of wood on wood as ex-Wallabies vacate their rocking chairs all around the country and call into their local papers to opine on the prohibitive weight of expectation bearing down on the All Blacks.
Standby for Eales’s back-up singers to join the chorus at any moment. They are generally – in no particular order – Messrs Farr-Jones, Horan and Kearns. Old coaches such as Bob Dwyer and Eddie Jones usually do a spell on the microphone too.
But you have to admit that Eales is doing a bang-up job all on his own, at this stage. Take a gander at this…
“A key tenet of NZ’s pitch to host the tournament was that their nation is a stadium of four-million people,” Eales said, throwing the Kiwi’s propaganda back in their faces.
“That amounts to a lot of attention on this All Black squad. That pressure will build as the Cup nears and with an increasing weight of evidence that the Wallabies are capable of winning the Webb Ellis trophy.”
Of course the pressure card is only one half of the Aussie playbook. They usually also like to point out how the Kiwis have peaked between World Cups. That’s been a recurring fact over the years and probably explains why New Zealanders are appalled to have won 15 straight tests right now.
Could this world cup build-up get any worse? A clean sweep of the Tri Nations, 10 straight wins over the Wallabies and a genuine shot at a world record Test winning streak? I mean let’s pull the All Blacks out of this thing now to save ourselves the embarrassment.
But this time the peak might not be as miss-timed as usual. Generally when the All Blacks go berserk like this, they go on a two to two-and-a-half year binge. Their outstanding mid-90s teams dominated 1996 and 1997. Then Henry’s first world-beaters were peerless through 2005, 2006 and the wrong half of 2007.
Now he’s built another monster in his basement but so far this one’s only got one season on the clock. By the time we’ve gone another, the world cup will have been settled.
That won’t stop the ex-Wallaby brigade, though. Standby for the mind games to roll on.
Join The Roar rugby editor Christy Doran, former Wallaby Matt Toomua and a cast of regular and special guests as they look at the biggest issues in the game on The Roar Rugby Podcast. If you’re looking for great odds on the next game check out Aussie bookmaker PlayUp. Chances are you’re about to lose. Set a deposit limit.