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Australia's Quade Cooper kicks midfield in front of Daniel Carter during the Investec Tri Nations rugby match between Australia Wallabies and New Zealand All Blacks for the Bledisloe Cup at Eden Park, Auckland, New Zealand, Saturday August 6 2011. (AAP Images/NZPA, Stephen Barker).
I sat in the car out the front of my house last night having driven home from a friend’s place. There we had watched the obliteration of the Wallabies at Eden Park, and don’t think for a moment that that is hyperbole.
There was no time… none… in the 80 minutes when it looked like the Wallabies were up for this.
The Aussie gold jersey might as well have been a yellow streak a mile wide.
I turned off the engine and sat there in silence. The engine tick…tick…ticked blackly. Silence reigned, then Bob Marley began to build through the speakers.
“Get up! Stand up!…Stand up for your rights!… Get up! Stand up!… Don’t give up the fight!…”
I winced and wished the Wallabies forward pack was there to hear it.
Get up. Stand up. Stand up for… yeah right.
Those of you who are Roar stalwarts may have noticed that I don’t actually write too many post-match reviews. I prefer relaying the wonderful stories that rugby has to offer over hammering a bunch of wounded players with the unfair benefit of hindsight.
But a match like last night’s Bledisloe demands a response. And it demands an answer. WTF?
“Get up! Stand up! Stand up for your rights!”
Let’s start with the only place that matters against the All Blacks and that’s up front. Where in the world did our national team, the team that apparently represents 21,874,900 proud Aussies (pending the census), possibly get the idea that it might beat the All Blacks at fortress Eden Park, for the first time since 1986, without first taking the All Blacks forwards out of the equation?
Thinking that you can beat the most successful and ruthless team in world rugby without being ruthless yourself, is a little like thinking you might beat Mike Tyson with a few good jabs, or that you could probably take down Kimbo Slice with some flashy footwork. Earth to Pretenders – these guys know the language of pain and punishment.
“Get up! Stand up! Stand up for your rights!”
After the Thrilla-in-Manila heavyweight fight in 1975, Joe Frazier said of Muhammad Ali, “Man, I hit him with punches that’d bring down the walls of a city” and Ali said, “It was like death. Closest thing to dying that I know of”.
Compare, contrast and giggle. Whereas Ali and Frazier were both prepared to go to war and die, the all-a-Twitter Wallabies were perhaps prepared to go to an extra-hard pillowfight and come away with a tummyache.
Of this game, Richie McCaw would surely say “It was like a really tough walk to the shops. It was the closest thing to an eight year-old’s birthday party that I know of” and if the X-box Wallabies were honest, they’d say, “We hit them with tackles that would definitely dent my sister’s Barbie house”.
For God’s sake. Brad Thorn has played 200 games of top-line rugby league for the Brisbane Broncos, 77 games for the Crusaders and 49 Tests for the most successful rugby team of all-time. What does it take to get over the top of a man like this? To win his respect? Well, you don’t need to just put him off…you need to put him to sleep. A hip flick pass and a nifty step is not cutting it. What in the world makes a team think that a man like this might let them win one… just because?
Well, I’ve got news for you, Zoolander-wannabes, and it’s all bad. Brad Thorn is giving nothing away to nobody. If you really wanted it, you’d take it, but it’s pretty obvious that you don’t really want it.
Eden Park. Bledisloe Cup. The All Blacks. Couldn’t quite get up for that one? Well, what in the world does it take?
Because if that’s not enough, then we can’t work it out.
“Get up! Stand up! Stand up for your rights!”
Substitute any name you like for Thorn and the story is the same. Mealamu? Read? McCaw? Franks? These guys privately laugh at the idea that the Wallabies might figure in the business end of the World Cup, and that’s because the Wallabies’ achilles heel couldn’t be any more obvious. We have no appetite for the tough stuff.
“Get up! Stand up! Stand up for your rights!”
Of course, Pat McCabe eats the contact up with a spoon, but there’s a problem with that, and that is that he’s a frickin’ centre. When McCabe and Ioane are the hardest men in your team, things are vastly awry – particularly when your captain is a 6 and should be leading the hits.
As my man Bob Marley said – and he was talking to you Rocky – “You can fool some people sometimes, but you can’t fool all the people all the time. So now we see the light – what you gonna do? Stand up for your rights?”
You’d better work it out pronto. The worst thing about this loss is that every tinpot rugby wannabe team from Alaska to Zimbabwe is now sharpening their sabres and thinking they can rattle the Aussies, because the Wallaby pigs fake the tough stuff.
In particular, our poolmates at the World Cup Ireland, Italy, Russia and the USA, now all think that they are in with a chance. The gameplan is as obvious as a wart on your forehead. Go out and bash the fruits in yellow by fair means or foul and you’re in with a shot.
“Get up! Stand up! Stand up for your rights!”
The back-of-the-bike-sheds approach has an uncomfortably long list of accompanying successes against Australia stretching back to Tonga in 1973. Even Italy were unlucky not to beat the Wallabies in 2009 when Quade Cooper got them out of jail with a late try, and the Irish have beaten us a couple of times on wet, dark, NZ-esque nights, as have Munster last year. Don’t even mention Samoa.
We all know the truth. The Wallabies don’t like it up ‘em.
And now, come September, every man and his rabid dog is going to forget rugby and come out to smash the Wallabies because they think they’re yella. Next thing you know, a ward full of injuries and hey presto… no men left standing come knockout stages. World. Cup. Ovah.
Are the Wallabies all soft? No, but as a team, they’re like a Caramello Koala. The soft centre dribbles out when the bite comes on.
Samoa and now the All Blacks have exposed the Wallabies soft underbelly, and if you Aussies want to figure in the October sessions of NZ2011, there’s only one thing to do.
“Get up! Stand up! Stand up for your rights!”