League hit rock bottom?
Auckland. Anyway, that doesn’t matter now.
After the poor performance against against Tonga, the Kiwis needed the forwards to dominate for the whole game, Shaun Johnson to take control of the play and Roger Tuivasa-Sheck, Dallin Watene-Zelezniak and Jordan Rapana to score a bucketload of tries. Well they didn’t do any of that. The Kiwis were supposed to play ‘Kiwi style’ footy at this World Cup, which was supposed to be a tough and smart brand of league.
But this was turgid and stodgy, where there were 31 missed tackles, 13 errors and eight penalties conceded.
What was so disappointing was the Kiwis’ inability to wrestle back control of a game.
In the second half against Tonga and that the start of their match against Fiji, they struggled to halt a team that was on a roll.
Where were the lessons learnt and what were the areas tidied up from the Tongan defeat?
The Kiwis clearly lacked a player with the x-factor of Jarryd Hayne, someone who could command a game, threaten to break it open at any point, while also being a steadying influence.
Yes, the Kiwis defended well, but there’s more to winning a footy game than doing that.
No one would have ever called this a vintage Kiwis team, there were too many players missing for it to be considered that.
But there was still enough quality left to be better than this.
When the game – and jobs – were on the line in a frenetic last 15 minutes, Shaun Johnson tried to dance his way through the Fiji defence, but couldn’t find a way through and frankly, everyone else was pathetic in trying to create an opening.
This has to be the worst performance by a New Zealand team at a World Cup since the All Blacks bombed out in the quarterfinals in 2007.