A great escape from a hole as big as SBW
Midfielder endures a nightmare game as All Blacks get a reality check about complacency and test rugby.
IF a punter at the TAB had put $100 on the All Blacks to win last night he or she would have picked up a $4 payout.
When odds are stacked like that no wonder the test played out like a rugby Twilight Zone, where every expectation is upended, and the only constant is the fact excitement levels were off the scale.
It was stunning enough that the All Blacks too often could hardly put an attack together without self-inflicted damage. Four handling errors in the first four minutes from Sonny Bill Williams? Inconceivable. But it happened.
Williams in fact would continue to stumble throughout the whole game, losing far too many battles with ball retention. Three minutes from halftime, and an All Black scrum is so dominant the ball fires back so fast it ricochets off Kieran Read’s foot, and Aaron Smith knocks on, which kills a likely chance of a try. Extraordinary.
And it wasn’t as if all the spooky stuff was coming from the All Blacks. Bernard Foley, who most of us would have guessed might struggle to win a foot race with a strainer post, suddenly finds after burners and races 20 metres to score. On the other hand he usually kicks with radar accuracy. Last night he seemed to have the goal posts in the cross hairs, not the gap between them.
The Wallabies forwards, who in Sydney had played more like the Pussycats, appeared to have been taken over by alien body snatchers, who unfortunately for New Zealand had grit, teeth, and drive, except, of course, for the scrum, when they were basically inept.
Just why the All Blacks started as sleepily as if they’d had to fly across the Indian Ocean in economy class, and been billeted in a Youth Hostel next to a motorway exit, will possibly remain a mystery for the ages. Rays of hope for the second spell, and for the rest of the season, came in very different forms.
There is now no question that Rieko Ione is the real deal on the wing. It certainly helps that he has such stunning speed, but the huge add on he offers is awareness of space and support players.
Growing up he wasn’t especially big, so at high school, before he sprouted to his current imposing 1.89m, he played mostly in the midfield, and those early skills have never deserted him.
Owen Franks has been a rock in the scrum for so long it felt weird to discover he does actually have parts of his body that aren’t made of sprung steel and barbed wire.
So it was something of a relief to see Nepo Laulala slot into the tighthead spot with such strength and technique the Australian scrum sometimes showed all the tensile strength of crepe paper.
So what does the fact the All Blacks had to desperately scrap and scrape their way to a win actually mean for both sides?
For the Wallabies a huge rise in optimism. Yes, when the pressure became almost unbearable at times in the second spell the Australians were offside, and caught for it so often, it was strange that at least one yellow card wasn’t dished out.
Against Argentina and South Africa they may be buckled, maybe even broken, in the scrums, but in general play, if they can find levels they reached last night they’ll be a huge threat. The All Blacks? You might think, having grabbed a stunning get out of gaol victory, there’d be a temptation to, as Steve Hansen once said, ‘‘flush the dunny and move on.’’
But that’s never been the way All Blacks teams operate. The fact is things were very bad before they got better, and their video analysis will be lengthy and brutal.
And if Hansen ever sensed even a tiny touch of complacency in a lead-up before a test in the rest of the year, all he’ll need to do is draw a player aside and murmur, ‘‘Come here son, I’ve got a video from Dunedin I’d like to show you.’’