‘fanning flames of xenophobia’
calmness about us and improve all aspects of our game.’’
In the past, my experience with the All Blacks is that they are honest and objective in terms of their performance appraisal and will examine what they are not doing as well as they have always done.
The All Blacks won’t see the defeat to Ireland in Dublin as an anomaly. The leadership group will look at it and say: ‘‘We haven’t been up to scratch of late Welsh mother before moving to Wales when he was two.
WalesOnline said North, Jonathan Davies, Dan Lydiate, Ross Moriarty and Jake Ball were all key players in the Welsh squad who were born in England, while Kiwis Gareth Anscombe and Hadleigh Parkes were born in New Zealand.
One Twitter user said: ‘‘When talking about multi-cultural societies, we generally don’t consider people who moved to England as kids as foreign. That’s how xenophobia and racism spreads.’’
Another added: ‘‘The list is absolute nonsense and you should be ashamed of yourself for propagating it. George North isn’t really Welsh because he only moved there aged two despite having a Welsh mother. Jamie Heaslip shouldn’t be considered Irish because his dad was on duty with the UN peacekeepers?’’
Former Ireland No 8 Heaslip was born in Tiberias, Israel, while his father was working there for the United Nations and how do we go about fixing the problems?’’
There have been calls for Kieran Read to step down as captain but, for me, that is not the solution. I think the 33-year-old remains a very good captain, and the one thing you won’t see from the All Blacks is them panicking because that is not what they do. They don’t have knee-jerk reactions to defeats and won’t fire people willy-nilly. A sense of level-headedness is a strength of the All Blacks.
The current scenario is a big test of the All Blacks’ leadership ability. The New Zealanders have lost very good leaders in the form of Richie McCaw, who retired in 2015, and assistant coach Wayne Smith who walked away from the test arena last year. It’s the first full season without the influence of Smith. The current leadership group need to step up and say: ‘‘Those leaders aren’t here any more and we are good enough to follow the guidelines they set.’’
For me, the best part of the All Blacks project is that the baton is handed over from one group to the next. The All Blacks are effective at succession planning. Read was around when McCaw captained and Hansen took over from Graham Henry, having served as his assistant. Both men must now really take charge.
Some will suggest that the All Blacks’ aura of invincibility is gone but I believe the bad news for the rest of the world is that the All Blacks will come back stronger from the setbacks they have endured.
As a case in point, when South Africa beat New Zealand three times in a row in 2009, after the Boks bombarded the All Blacks with high balls and put Joe Rokocoko and Sitiveni Sivivatu under pressure, the All Blacks made an art form of the aerial game – even if it was by picking fullbacks on the wings. *South African Brendan Venter is a 1995 Rugby World Cup winner and a former assistant coach of the Springboks. Interim
(UNIFIL).
It’s not the first time Pichot has spoken out about the subject of players opting to represent a nation they were not born in.
The Argentinian said rugby was ‘‘losing something’’ when former Hurricanes captain Brad Shields was first pictured in an England shirt.
Masterton-born Shields qualifies for England via both his parents who moved to New Zealand in their childhood and he made his international debut against South Africa in June.
Pichot, who made 71 appearances for Argentina from 1995-2008, was instrumental in having World Rugby extend the qualification period for players to switch countries from three to five years living in their new country.
It has been something of a crusade for Pichot, who voiced his concerns over the subject when he was elevated to the vicechairman role of the sport’s governing body in 2016. Force in Lebanon