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I can’t deny that it’s a little satisfying when the Daily Telegraph and friends are made to look stupid, even if that does lump me in with a nation of All Black fans. Before New Zealand took on Australia in their Rugby World Cup semi-final, Australia’s News Ltd papers were insufferably arrogant in dismissing Aaron Cruden.
He made them eat their copy.
“The All Blacks have turned to a cancer-surviving rookie nursing skateboard injuries – and an outcast who’d gone fishing – to rescue their World Cup,” said Iain Payten’s syndicated piece.
“The vice-like pressure on the Kiwis ahead of their semi-final with the Wallabies was ratcheted up a couple more notches yesterday.” (Can a vice be ratcheted? Isn’t that usually the province of a ratchet? Does a vice have notches on it? To the toolshed!)
With Cruden’s inclusion for the injured Dan Carter and Colin Slade, “the wheels on the Kiwi’s [sic] World Cup campaign are now rattling loudly. Nerves in New Zealand are now jangling with equal volume.”
So the rattling wheels made the nerves jangle accordingly, though the correlation to the ratchet and the vice was not made clear. One would speculate that tighter ratcheting would lead to rattle-free wheels, but I won’t get involved. Too many cooks throw the goats up the wall without the bathwater.
Cruden’s skating accident, meanwhile, was “hardly athletic prowess to ease the worries of Kiwis”, who looked “set to have their 24-year drought extended by Australia on Sunday.”
It’s surprising they didn’t slip in a gag about Cruden not having the balls to play at the top level.
For the record, in just his second start for the All Blacks, Cruden played admirably behind a dominant New Zealand pack, with a smooth, efficient, and unflustered game. He survived a test of immense (dare I say vice-like?) pressure.
Over here in New Zealand, though, the hype has swung too far in exactly the opposite direction. To a rugby-loving public who was indeed nervous (the state of the wheels notwithstanding) Cruden is the greatest thing since sliced metaphors.
I find myself in Auckland with the official Qantas supporters’ tour, awaiting the Wallabies’ consolation game on Friday – the video below shows some of what we’ve been up to. And everywhere The Great Crusade goes in the meantime, all we hear about is Aaron Cruden.
He’s in every All Black fan’s conversation. He’s every second page of every newspaper you pick up. And as I sampled New Zealand’s fine emergency room facilities following a minor skeletal incident, there he was on TV, being quizzed one-on-one on a half-hour interview show.
He has been fulsomely praised for his level-headedness, calm, poise, and ability to go out there and slot straight into the national side.
The Kiwi media also loved the little extras of the Cruden story. The unlikely hero angle, the little bloke, the youngster. The cancer survivor, the All Black discard, recalled at the last instant to lead his ragtag Minneapolis ice-hockey team to an unlikely junior championship.
The fact that Cruden a) had been skateboarding a couple of weeks previously, and b) was planning a holiday to LA around the time of the final, was translated into c), that Cruden was supposed to be skateboarding in Disneyland when he got the call-up.
This is one of those lovely instances of portmanteau journalistic construction. I like pastries, the Spring Carnival, and space documentaries. “Geoff Lemon is starting a new horse bakery ON THE MOON!”
No matter. Each strand was part of the Cruden story. Life’s rich and semi-fictional tapestry.
All of which begs the question – is this much attention really a good idea? And is it all a bit much, too soon?
Sure, to make your second start in a World Cup semi-final is an imposing feat, and to do it well is a credit to the player.
But in a few days, Cruden will make his third start for the All Blacks, in a World Cup final. Has anyone considered that this is not the easiest task in the world either? Or that keeping his cool in one match does not guarantee it’ll happen in the next? Or that all this extra attention might not exactly help the cause?
Last Sunday, no-one expected anything of Cruden. No-one knew how he would cope. He delivered way above expectations, because expectations were nil.
Now expectations are immense, and it may be the pressure of that, rather than the pressure of the tournament, that could start to get to the 22-year-old.
Perhaps he will pass the next test as cleanly as he did the first. Perhaps the level of hero-worship will only be spannered up a few vice-notches after a massive All Black win.
But if New Zealand’s coaching staff had had more time to think, they might have held Cruden out of some of the post-semi-final spotlight. And if New Zealand’s media was serious about getting behind the All Blacks, they’d have done well to leave the little No. 10 alone.
At least until Monday.
Follow Geoff on Twitter: @GeoffLemonSport