Reflecting on the Bledisloe Cup and Rugby Championship gives us cause to think about what Aussie rugby’s annual trial at the hands against New Zealand teams means for rugby in this country.
Many have said that the regular losses are bad for the Australian game and have suggested various measures of protecting Australian fans and players from the continual sense of failure. Suggestions have included trying to sell amateur club rugby as a spectator sport, maintaining a separate Super Rugby competition, maintaining Australian-only conferences or for the Wallabies to play the All Blacks less often.
Yet look at what has just happened – after the toughest of trials against the All Blacks, Dave Rennie’s Wallabies have beaten the world champion Springboks twice in a row. Surely that tells us that the Wallabies are a better team for the New Zealand challenge.
Queensland Reds coach Brad Thorn has been saying that Australian teams need to play the Kiwis to get better since COVID disrupted our competitions. Right now it looks like there was never a truer word spoken and that the Kiwi games are as much a gift as a trial.
(Photo by Will Russell/Getty Images)
So Australian rugby supporters need to see the folly of wrapping the Australian game in cotton wool and to learn to deal with lopsided win-loss ratios against New Zealand teams, at least in the short term. My suggestion to help Australian fans tolerate the losses is to accept that New Zealand is just better at rugby than us, then support our teams as they step up to meet the challenge. The deal is of course that we see the best effort from the Australian teams in every single game – losing because the other side is better is acceptable if there is a genuine commitment to improvement, but losing through slackness is intolerable.
Considering why the Kiwis are better has caused me to reflect on starting rugby as an eight-year-old kid in New Zealand before moving to Australia at age 14. I had plenty of enthusiasm but no talent, yet I played enough to remember how even in the junior levels the Kiwis had a very competitive ethos that undoubtedly continues.
We had a couple of smaller kids who had been playing since they were five and who would tear the rest of us up with amazing skills and would fearlessly tackle far bigger kids, and they were up against plenty more talented players in other schools. The level of competition meant that even at ages nine or ten feelings weren’t protected – if you weren’t good enough for, say, a zone-level match, you didn’t get picked for the team, and if you became upset, all you got was a sympathetic shrug and were told, “That’s life”.
Even at that young age Kiwi competitiveness drove standards, with one of my starkest memories as a 12-year-old prop being scolded by my best mate because his mother had seen me walking between rucks. The talented kids also didn’t get pandered to. I remember a grave discussion among my ten-year-old mates about one of our friends who was one of the talented early starters mentioned above but who was a ball hog. He was picked on the wing rather than his favourite position at first five until he was willing to pass.
We were all very serious for a bunch of short people talking about footy, as were kids in just about every school in New Zealand, taking the lead from how seriously adult New Zealanders took the game.
I don’t know enough about what goes on in Australian junior rugby today to definitively comment on the competitiveness in those grades, but I do know that in Australia we see senior players getting professional gigs who don’t start with the on-field work ethic and toughness of their New Zealand counterparts. That suggests to me that the junior competition is shallower and that the talented kids might get pandered to only to get found out when they become seniors, which is what we all see when the Australian professional teams playing catchup to New Zealanders.
The only time I have ever personally witnessed New Zealand-level competitiveness in Australian rugby was when my mates went to the GPS private schools in the 1980s and 90s. They were fanatically proud of their school rugby teams, and the fact that a relatively small number of schools contributed so many players to Wallabies teams that won two World Cups and matched New Zealand for more than a decade is surely a testament to how a hyper-competitive culture drives results.
Are we that competitive throughout Australian rugby now? I don’t believe so. SO the question is: how do we get back there?
The answer is to have all Australian rugby supporters support the professional teams as they embrace the annual losses to New Zealand as the gift that they are: a chance for our teams to learn and grow. That is the way that we will see professional standards improve and more of the great results like we have just seen against the Springboks. With the Wallabies leading by example, this is the way that we will see the return of a winning hyper-competitive ethos finding its way back into Australian rugby.
Rhys Bosley
Roar Pro
Good stuff Mate, I am sure plenty would.
stillmissit
Roar Guru
Not sure who will be interested in this Rhys but I have written and sent it in.
stillmissit
Roar Guru
Thanks Rhys, I will think about it.
Rhys Bosley
Roar Pro
Wow, that is a powerful story about the greatness of rugby SMI, I encourage you to write it up formally and submit it!
Peter L
Guest
I was going to start by saying I agreed - but realised, actually, I don't agree. The ABs played what was in front of them. The first test looked quite close but that was largely because for some inexplicable reason the ABs repeatedly took their foot off the pedal - that may have been because psychologically they knew they were up against rookies, it may have been first test of the year wobbles, it may have been something else entirely, but they definitely backed off at least three times, almost to their detriment in the end. I don't believe having the more experienced WBs would have changed the outcomes, but the ABs would have played them differenty.
TJ-Go Force!
Roar Rookie
Good article Rhys. A different perspective for sure. I am now more keen to see how we finish the year in terms of wins and losses. If we end up with 10 wins from a 14-15 game season, that’s a success no matter which way you slice it and Rennie and has team should be praised. I think we’re also witnessing the emergence of a truly dominant Kiwi side with depth across the park. I’ll admit I wasn’t sure how good this kiwi team was going to be, but they’re utterly ruthless. Pretty much already the complete package two years out from the World Cup.
Muglair
Roar Rookie
As long as the ABs stay around 1 or 2 then it allows us to check in our speed of thought and execution and test our individual and team skills. This is certainly the best place we have been so far on the road to 2023. DR hit the jackpot with being able to go forward with what he thought would work and what appeared to work with the French series. Pretty much every pundit overestimated the French depth and we were lucky to then be totally found out three times by the ABs. It was desperate times and desperate measures were taken, and it has worked out. Even if SA were to be thrashed by the ABs I still think we are substantially in front of where we were three weeks ago. You can only go to your next level by playing with and against better players/teams. Speed is the key and has to be constantly measured and honed, and it is not as easy as a stopwatch and a sprint.
Muglair
Roar Rookie
Well we did not know in advance that we would be so abject at the start and be so much better at the finish. The real reason is probably that there needed to be a rest period before the EOYT, maybe thinking the players could go home. Very 2019 thinking.
Muglair
Roar Rookie
But you got a laugh, which is much better for the soul.
Muglair
Roar Rookie
:laughing: Living case study of the success in keeping it simple!
Muglair
Roar Rookie
Is it a one percenter? All Blacks just make the right decision and execute the right skill just a bit quicker and a bit better than we do?
stillmissit
Roar Guru
Ken, my entry to rugby was at school but I only played one season as I got a butchers round as a delivery boy and the money was better than the mud. I went back to rugby as a 19-year-old working-class street fighter who was on his way to prison if he didn't change his ways, also I was getting a bit unfit. So the knocks and bumps were pure joy to me and handing it out and taking it in a controlled manner allowed me to let out the angry part of me whilst the upper-class ex-private school educated and young farmers I played with, I found I preferred, to the louts and no-hopers I had been hanging around with. It was the start of a conversion for which I am eternally grateful, my close mate, captain and mentor who gave me the idea that I could make something of myself only died in April this year and luckily I wrote to him to tell him what an impact he had on my life only 6 weeks before he died.
stillmissit
Roar Guru
Amazing Ken. Never heard of such a thing in my long and wayward life. Played for Wallabies at 18! truly outstanding effort.
stillmissit
Roar Guru
Mug, you certainly are putting more thought into it than RA. The idea has merit and I remember reading some stuff on coaching after reffing, I am no total dummy but I found it confusing with arrows and dotted lines going all over the place. Then running around at training with a piece of paper I could barely understand did not guarantee success. Finnane's game was 90% intimidation, 9% strength and 1% skill, played against him a few times but luckily I was in the row, it was the props who copped it. Don't know much about the founding of the AIS but I was at the 76 Olympics and it put me off going to another Olympics ever again.
stillmissit
Roar Guru
Mug, I am too old and short of money and influence. I couldn't give a toss about those who for whatever reason want to destroy peoples, fought for, basic legal rights by the politicians and judiciaries addiction to political madness. I am hoping for offence but suspect I ain't gonna get it from you?
Glenn Bickford
Guest
I disagree. I think the current team is a very different animal from the one that lost to the All Blacks. One could even argue that if Australia had a perfect kicking record in the first test against the AB, they might even have won. I think the impact of the players that have been bought into the team have made a big difference. Having said that, we also seeing a tiring Boks team. They have been in a bubble since May, and that includes not seeing family and friends, and then also having to quarantine for 2 weeks. Something both Aus and NZ missed. This weekend I see Australia beating the Argentina and the AB beating the Boks. Weekends have never been so busy.
Ken Catchpole's Other Leg
Roar Guru
Stills, I noticed as a junior coach, that some kids who weren’t introduced till later, say U/14’s would get a case of the u/6 tears when the first bumps and bruises came. There was an emotional shock at the legality of the contact. And tears at the ‘injustice’ of it all. But most grew through the experience. As you do. I remember being stopped suddenly by a dominant tackle at a school trial at 17. It was enough to knock my ambition down a few grades. Happily I rediscovered the game later, and the ambition.
jeznez
Roar Guru
Went to a mate’s wedding last week. Statistically he’ll have another wife this week and in two months he’ll have 10!
Ken Catchpole's Other Leg
Roar Guru
All good Mugs. Skills coaching for urgency -with accuracy - in unison, is the vacuum I perceive.
Ken Catchpole's Other Leg
Roar Guru
Br Terry Curley at Joeys was a Wallaby.