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With 14 minutes to play Manu Samoa were only six points behind the All Blacks in the historic and dramatic Test – the first in Samoa – between the two teams.
The intensity of play of Manu Samoa, their brutal tackling and the bulk and strength of their runners resulted in a contest that was far more confrontational and dangerous for the All Blacks than their matches, say, against Scotland or Italy, and even Wales in recent years.
In the end, the All Blacks through the boot of Dan Carter added another penalty goal. The 25-16 scoreline was Manu Samoa’s best result against the All Blacks.
A sweat-dripping, hollow-checked from exhaustion Richie McCaw, after waiting some minutes to regain his breath, told the crowd:
“I am not sure words now can actually justify the type of match it was but I will say to the Manu Samoa team: ‘The way you played, that’s what true Test match rugby is about … I just take my hat off to you. Going forward into upcoming matches and the World Cup, perform like that and you’ll get better. I know you are going to be a force to be reckoned with.'”
This was an honest appraisal on the Test. Honest because it acknowledged the tremendous spirit of the Manu Samoa side, in defence and on attack. It was a recognition, too, that the mighty All Blacks had to reach deep into their own reservoirs of courage, skill, tenacity and bloodymindedness in not contemplating defeat to force a victory that was much better than the scoreline suggests.
I say this because some of the New Zealand rugby (and rugby league) writers were dismissive of the All Blacks’ performance. The underlying notion here is that all the All Blacks have to do is go out, play well and they will smash their opponents off the park.
And the All Blacks did not do this against Manu Samoa, therefore they played poorly.
This is nonsense. Every game has to be won on the field. And in the era of professional rugby, even second tier teams are capable of defeating first tier sides, as the Wallabies found out to their cost in 2011 when they played Manu Samoa at Parramatta.
Playing Manu Samoa at Apia, in the first Test between the national side and the All Blacks out of New Zealand, was an incredibly difficult task for the All Blacks. It was, in my opinion, the equivalent of the NSW Blues playing the Queensland Maroons in the State of Origin decider at Suncorp Stadium, to win back the mantle of winning the series for 2015. Well, we know what happened in that particular contest.
The fact that the All Blacks toughed out a win in an environment where the crowd was totally opposed to them and their opponents were fuelled with hometown self-belief is to the credit of the team, its on-field leadership and the coaching staff.
Rather than being somehow a portend to a poor 2015 Rugby World Cup tournament for the All Blacks, I believe that this gutsy display confirmed the belief that New Zealand is going to present a side in England in a couple of months’ time that is immeasurably better than the side that won the Webb Ellis trophy in 2011.
The Test between Manu (Warrior) Samoa and the All Blacks needs some further context because it was as much a sociological and historical occasion as a major rugby event.
With the relationship between Samoa and New Zealand as a League of Nations mandate territory between the World Wars, with the uprisings of the 1920s, with the mass migration to New Zealand in the 1960s by so-called ‘over-stayers’, with the second generation becoming New Zealand/Samoans and with the browning of the All Blacks from the late 1990s onwards, the Samoan-New Zealand connection has given rise to a people with two homelands, Samoa and New Zealand.
Two homelands and two conflicting loyalties, in many cases. And so when the All Blacks played Manu Samoa in Samoa it was like a State of Origin match, with an unusual twist. The origin of most of the players was New Zealand.
Manu Samoa at the 2011 Rugby World Cup tournament, for instance, contained only one player not born in New Zealand. The All Blacks, in the same tournament, actually had a couple of players (like Jerome Kaino) who were born in Samoa or American Samoa.
So when the usual suspects like Stephen Jones and the other like-minded British rugby writers start fulminating against Australia and New Zealand stealing Pasifika players, they are in Basil Fawlty-type ranting. England had more overseas-born players in their 2011 Rugby World Cup squad than New Zealand or Australia.
There is a tendency among the Pasifika community in Australia and New Zealand to identify with their ethnic origins, the origins of their parents or grand-parents, rather than their birth origins. This is rather like the immigrant communities in the USA, where people will identify themselves as Irish-American, Greek-American, African-American and so on.
The fact is that most players with a Pasifika background who play for the Wallabies or the All Blacks are born in Australia or New Zealand, or have been educated from a relatively young age in these two countries.
It is a fact, too, that the culture of Samoa is extremely Samoan-centric. There is a belief that Samoa is the centre of the universe, rather like the Chinese notion of the Middle Kingdom. Samoan pride in their ancestry, distinctive culture and in their nation’s history has a special dimension that is not easily understood by people who easily adopt (and I put myself into this category) an acceptance of assimilation.
Viewers of the match on Fox Sports, or people watching the replays, saw the distinguished figure of Tupua Tamasese Tupuola Tufuga Efi, Samoa’s head of state, a former prime minister, president of the Samoan rugby union and a friend of the great and the good, including popes and presidents.
When we were youngsters at St Patrick’s College, Silverstream, a rugby school that produced distinguished scholars and leaders like the current deputy prime minister of New Zealand, Bill English, Efi and I were in the same dormitory. We were both interested in current affairs and on Saturday nights, when the other boys were watching a movie, we discussed the latest issue of Time magazine.
Everyone at the school played rugby. Efi was a big fellow and he was a bustling, enthusiastic forward for the Second XV. The First XV, which was unbeaten for a number of years, had a tackling machine, Morrie Thompson, the original ‘Chiropractor’, also from Samoa.
Most of the Samoan students stayed on in New Zealand, but even when they did they tended to identify (and their children, too) as Samoan.
Efi, who was of noble caste, went back to Samoa and entered into politics. I used to be amused when he came to New Zealand as prime minister – often the visits coincided with important All Blacks Tests – that he would get his secretary to ring me up in my office as a journalist with the national New Zealand daily The Dominion with an invitation for lunch.
I would tell my editor, ‘don’t expect me back any time, I’m going out for a long lunch with the prime minister of Samoa’. At lunch, the conversation turned to how rugby could be enhanced in Samoa. There were digressions, too, on Samoa’s ambivalent relationship with New Zealand. Efi’s grandfather was killed during one of the uprisings,
Presiding at the historic Test at Apia, with the New Zealand prime minister John Key sitting near him, was a fulfilment, I would guess, of an ambition for Samoa and for Samoan rugby, from my old friend.
The breakthrough for Samoan rugby really came during the 1991 Rugby World Cup tournament. Samoa, in its first Rugby World Cup tournament, defeated Wales, at Cardiff, something England couldn’t do for nearly a decade, with a rag-tag side of mostly unknown players (some like Michael Jones became famous) from the provinces of New Zealand.
The professional era has been operating in rugby since 1996. It has taken a long time for Samoan rugby to get back to the heady days of 1991. The passionate performance at Apia on Wednesday, acknowledged so generously by McCaw, indicates, to me at least, that the nexus between professional rugby and a strong national side for Samoa is becoming forged.
David Pocock has rightly called out for more involvement by Australian rugby with playing Tests in the Pasifika. Those of us who agree with this call have been underwhelmed by the ARU’s seeming lack of interest in these matters.
Meanwhile, the New Zealand Rugby Union is further entrenching its emotional hold over the rugby-mad supporters in the region by sending the iconic New Zealand Maori All Blacks to Suva to play Fiji on Saturday, a match that Fox Sports (bless them) will televise starting at 1pm.
The Wallabies management will no doubt be watching this match closely (even if the ARU seems to be oblivious to the challenges of the region) because in their pool of death at the 2015 Rugby World Cup tournament, Australia plays England, Wales – and Fiji.