Australian rugby has many problems – financial crisis, ever-shrinking audiences, shortage of coaching expertise, Greg Martin, etc etc.
But one problem which I have come to notice after many years of careful study is perhaps not mentioned enough in contemporary commentary, despite being possibly the biggest factor holding back Australian rugby success:
New Zealanders are better at rugby than Australians.
This has been clear for some time now, and it doesn’t seem likely to go away any time soon. On the weekend five Australian teams played in five games of varying flavours. In three of them, the Reds, Force and Waratahs seemed like they might be about to win, until their opponents remembered that New Zealanders are better than Australians, and beat them.
In one of them, the Crusaders remembered it right from the kickoff, and the Rebels were ruthlessly slaughtered as a result.
Captain Scott Barrett of the Crusaders leads his team onto the field prior to the round ten Super Rugby Pacific match between the Crusaders and Melbourne Rebels. (Photo by Kai Schwoerer/Getty Images)
In the fifth, of course, the Brumbies managed to win, but that’s of limited comfort: the Rebels’ result showed the awful consequences of beating a New Zealand team, and the fallout of the Brumbies’ victory will be scenes of nightmarish carnage at the Hurricanes-Waratahs game this weekend.
That’s been the pattern of Bledisloe Cup rugby for the last couple of decades too: we’ve learnt that the most reckless thing the Wallabies can possibly do is beat the All Blacks, because it just makes them angry.
Now, yes, there’s been some progress this season, as Australian Super Rugby teams have shown promise and managed to knock off Kiwi sides a few times, using subtle trickery and mind games to convince the NZers that either they’re NOT better at rugby, or that they’re SO much better at rugby they don’t need to try very hard. But we’ve thought we’ve seen progress before, and it always seems to end up with a brutal reminder of the fact:
New Zealanders are better at rugby than Australians.
Now, of course this isn’t a problem confined to Australia. Scotland, Italy, Japan, China, Germany, Suriname, Belgium and the Democratic Republic of the Congo are just a few of the countries who are also not as good at rugby as New Zealand.
But Australians are in the uniquely unhappy position of being worse at rugby than New Zealanders, while also having to play against them about a hundred times a year. What bliss it must be to live in a country where you only have to play New Zealanders sporadically, or not at all!
But the question is WHY? Why are New Zealanders so much better at rugby than Australians? I’ve come up with a few factors that explain the discrepancy.
Firstly, there is culture. When a baby is born in New Zealand, he or she is given a rugby ball to play with in the crib, granting them a huge headstart over the average Australian child, who is generally not allowed to handle a rugby ball until they hit puberty or are signed to an NRL club, whichever comes first.
The moment Kiwi children begin to walk, they are put to work on a scrum machine. Grades K-12 in New Zealand schools devote up to 80% of class time to video reviews of All Black victories. It makes a difference.
Secondly, there is conditioning. New Zealand is a rugged and challenging landscape, full of towering mountains and harsh terrain. Having to negotiate those lofty peaks and rocky, uneven ground all the time gives New Zealanders naturally powerful calves and thighs, which are of great benefit on the rugby field. By contrast, Australia is flat and full of escalators, allowing our bodies to become flabby and weak through under-use. We are no match for the mountain-toned frames of the Kiwis.
(Photo by James Worsfold/Getty Images)
Thirdly, there is weather. Australia is famous for its beautiful weather, which tends to make us relaxed and peaceable, with warm feelings in our hearts for our fellow humans. New Zealand’s weather, on the other hand, is famously awful: wet, freezing and miserable. This means New Zealanders are not only able to deal with difficult on-field conditions more easily, it also makes them more irritable and liable to deep-seated hatred of the world and all its inhabitants. Bitter and furious due to lives lived in a constant state of damp, their ability to unleash that fury against opponents is legendary.
Fourthly, there is boredom. There is nothing to do in New Zealand except play rugby, so they do it all the time. Conversely, the wide variety of entertainment and recreational options available to Australians is crippling our rugby stocks.
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Fifthly, there is revenge. The list of outrages committed by Australia against New Zealand is long – the misappropriation of pavlova, taking Russell Crowe, refusing to take Paul Henry, etc – and all New Zealanders are driven by an inner fire of vengeance that burns brightly and impels them to inflict as much pain on us as possible as payback.
And sixthly, there is size. New Zealanders are big and scary and I am terrified of them.
So what can Australian rugby do about this? Teaming with the federal government to institute programmes of child indoctrination, build artifical mountains across the nation, and seed the clouds with silver iodide to provide constant rain would be a good start, but there are some things that can’t be fixed.
It could be we will never be as good at rugby as New Zealanders. Some say that we were once, in a long-forgotten age that old-timers call “the Nineties” – although even then, if you go by the legends, everyone kind of felt that it was against nature.
The true solution may simply be that we need to stop playing rugby against New Zealanders, for the sake of our own national self-esteem. Hopefully, as Rugby Australia reviews its past missteps and embarks on reform, it will give due consideration to cutting all ties with New Zealand and instead organising a regular annual schedule of games against Canada.
Otherwise, I guess, we could always pull the Russell Crowe routine on the All Blacks?
Ben Pobjie
Expert
The boys versus masters rugby match in that movie is certainly reminiscent of the average Bledisloe game.
cs
Roar Guru
Hmmm, perhaps Ben, unless it was the inspiration for the relevant skit in The Meaning of Life.
kingplaymaker
Roar Guru
Normally the domestic and international competitions would be alternated as in Europe, so the one after the other order would have just been a pandemic precaution to minimise travelling. 'The winning you can’t control, and the tribal nature is a given in the SR structure,' If there's a domestic structure it's controlled in the sense that an Australian team always wins which is what the fans once (I'm not making any value judgment on this but just describing it how it is). So there doesn't seem to be much tribal investment in Super rugby because it's not Australia vs Australia with an Australian winner, which again is the fans' obsession. Certainly agree regarding marketing. The idea that no one in Melbourne even knows when the Rebels are playing is a fundamental failure from RA to understand that it's the 21st Century. The 'they must come to find us' attitude doesn't fit with commercial reality.
Muglair
Roar Rookie
In 2021 the trans tasman came straight after the SRAU, highlighting the gulf. NZ actually has similar problems to us, just off a much stronger base, hence the risk we can both slip backwards, especially if the quality of our rugby keeps deteriorating. The winning you can't control, and the tribal nature is a given in the SR structure, moreso than the NRC where players could be coming from anywhere just for the short season. FIFO. What is non-existent is the marketing and any attempt to connect rugby supporters with the professional teams.
kingplaymaker
Roar Guru
So I agree completely on the calamitous state of rugby. I think the difference between Australia and New Zealand is basically down to the presence of 16 NRL teams competing for the same talent in Australia and stealing whole teams' worth of talent. Actually the player numbers in Australia are pretty good but again and again the young players developed are simply stolen by league. Of course this happens in New Zealand as well but not to quite the same extent. See this list of horror and the players' backgrounds and note these just the star players and that there will be a whole group of good Super level players lost to league who wouldn't make this list of stars: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/rugbyunion/article-11929581/The-NRL-stars-union-experience-thrive-Super-Rugby-Wallabies.html As for a domestic competition it may well not be the magic bullet hoped for, but the problem is the nature of fan support. Most fans want to see their teams winning and an Australian team always winning the trophy. Whatever one personally enjoys, the reality is that the majority of fans are driven by 'tribal', national supporting desire. 'The quality of rugby was OK because the teams were playing each other.' That's another reason why. 2021 there was both domestic competition and Trans-Tasman like now. Both rather than one or the other.
TJ-Go Force!
Roar Rookie
Yeah I really like the 3-game tours against other countries. The one against France a couple years ago was brilliant.
Peter
Roar Rookie
Fair enough... :happy: The Bled is of such little value now I'm pretty ambivalent about its future. Probably a 3 test series each year before and after WC years seems a decent solution. Aust and NZ need to tour for competition, rather than rattling each others bones year in year out.
TJ-Go Force!
Roar Rookie
I was wrong, I wasn't aware we brought it in, and shouldn't Roar after a couple pints. Accept my humble apologies. I still think the retained title sucks and needs to go. 3 game series is my preferred choice or, if not possible, total points scored across two tests in case of a tied 1-1 series.
Peter
Roar Rookie
Most decent people admit when they're clearly wrong, I guess you're not one of them
maxxlord
Roar Rookie
Anybody else notice that the more wins and close results the Aussie teams rack up against the Kiwis the more we are seeing articles such as these? Articles hoping to casually dismiss the evidence of results and our own eyes. The Aussie teams are improving, Aussie players are improving. Wright a good example of clear improvement. What that translates to for the Wallabies, nobody knows. The Wallabies have a senior and practical coaching team (age and experience) a team that will likely select well and coach well. What that translates to for the Wallabies, nobody knows. The faint smell of worry appears to be catching the wind though with all these articles "cementing" what no-hopers the Wallabies are. Time will tell.
Wizz
Roar Rookie
Rather a boatload of Bangladesh than kiwis,surely they can't beat us at rugby...ps Muldoon was a moron.
Ben
Roar Rookie
The last time Australia were competitive against the All Blacks were when they had a couple of South African boys in the team.
Blink
Roar Rookie
But what if we lost? That would be worse than losing to NZ, which we're used to. Nice article Ben.
fiwiboy7042
Roar Rookie
I hear you. I've fallen off the use of emoticons but I need to change that! :happy:
Muglair
Roar Rookie
That is because we clearly have nowhere near the number of 2nd tier ready players as NZ does and we have pathways in a decades old decline. Increasing the number of teams just brings NZ back to our level, somewhere below genuine tier 2. Too big a gap for players then trying to compete internationally. Everyone keeps quoting how good a domestic competition would be because of the quality and crowd at the 2020 AU final. That competition was a false dawn. The quality of rugby was OK because the teams were playing each other. Post Cheka and the next generation coming through created an optimistic belief that Australian rugby had turned the corner. Until we started playing Kiwi teams again.
Ben Pobjie
Expert
John Cleese lost his virginity in New Zealand, so it wasn’t devoid of entertainment even in the sixties.
cs
Roar Guru
Sounds kinda like Mick, or 'Brenda' as Keith in a grumpy mood is given to calling him. KR was hardly Simon Pure but was much more likely to chase the girls out of rather than into his hotel rooms.
terminal2k
Roar Rookie
If it's 1-1 nobody won the Bledisloe. None of this retention bs. It gets locked away and nobody gets to play with it
terminal2k
Roar Rookie
I seriously think we should be playing an annual series with Fiji, Japan and Argentina.
sheek
Roar Guru
fiwiboy7042, My last two paras were tongue in cheek. I’ve been to NZ twice, in 1975 & 2006, & loved each visit. NZ is smaller & tighter, much easier & quicker to get around. And you don’t have our vast deserts, which are mostly waste lands (at least to human eyes). One day, they’ll rediscover the ancient Egyptian/Persian lost art of turning deserts into oases, but not at present. I’m digressing now, but I like the idea of NOT promoting what you have. Every year a new list of ‘best beaches’ comes out. And I think to myself, there’s goes such & such beach, soon to be trashed by thoughtless humans. As The Eagles sang so prophetically so long ago,” “Call some place paradise, kiss it goodbye”. My fav place in all NZ was Queenstown (I haven’t yet made the Coromandel or Bay of Islands). But a mate of mine who went back there more recently (my visit was 2006) says Queenstown is now over-commercialised. Again, call some place paradise, kiss it goodbye…