Hansen’s troops smeared again by jealous rivals
There is a familiar pattern to the complaints coming out of the north.
‘‘A big part of that is they’ve got a fulltime programme. They treat it in some cases as a two or threeyear plan,’’ Philpott explains. ‘‘Their planning is well ahead of everybody else and the resources they’re putting into it are huge.
‘‘I really noticed it up close for the first time at the tournament in Manchester this year, just the physical difference in the players who are the same age but been in the programme for a couple of years.
‘‘They looked like a senior national men’s team; big strong men, particularly up front. That suits the type of game the European teams play as well.’’
The other challenge Philpott faces is what access he has to Super Rugby players, the likes of 19-yearold All Blacks apprentice Jordie Barrett. That dynamic is complicated further next year with the British and Irish Lions playing all five NZ Super teams.
‘‘The bottom line is Super Rugby has precedence, and always has. It comes down to how good our negotiating skills are with the coaches about who is available and who isn’t and a little bit around the timing.’’
In the case of Barrett, the door remains slightly ajar. The Hurricanes don’t play the Lions until June 27, with the Blues the first Super Rugby team to face the visitors on June 7.
The under-20s tournament from May 25 to June 18.
‘‘If Jordie decided he wanted to be involved in both there is the chance for both those things to occur but Stephen Perofeta at the Blues, Tana [Umaga] might decide he needs to be there. Those are conversations we have in the lead up to the tournament.’’ runs You’re not paranoid if they are out to get you.
And if there was ever any doubt that the All Blacks might consider a stab proof patch on the back of their jerseys to deflect knife stabs, consider 2016.
We learned from the snide comments of Irish team manager Neil Kearney after the test last week in Dublin that the citing commissioner, Bruce Kuklinski, had considered 12 episodes of possible foul play. And guess what? Just one involved the Irish team.
Nobody could blame Kuklinski, a schoolteacher from Victoria on Vancouver Island in Canada, who has refereed at international level, and was citing commissioner at the Rio Olympic sevens, for sending Malakai Fekitoa to a hearing for a crazily careless head high tackle. So far so fair. But how the hell did Kuklinski decide that the clash of heads between Sam Cane and Robbie Henshaw meant Cane had to be cited?
While Steve Hansen put his hand up immediately over the Fekitoa tackle, he sprang to Cane’s defence, and he had every right to do so.
Video of the tackle clearly shows that the considerable damage done to Henshaw was because of his and Cane’s heads banging together. It was an accident. No rules were broken. Cane should never have been cited.
Why does the Cane nonsense bug me so much? Because it’s not the first time this year the All Blacks have been unfairly smeared with the dirty team tag.
Look at the disgraceful attempts to paint Owen Franks as an eye gouger after his hand went over Wallabies lock Kane Douglas’s face in the August test in Wellington.
I’m looking here at coach Michael Cheika. And Kane Douglas. Cheika’s summation on the night of the game, when asked about the incident, was that ‘‘it was pretty hard to miss’’ for the citing commissioner.
It took five days before Douglas had the decency to say ‘‘My eyes were fine and it all happened so quickly I was on to the next thing in the game.’’
The fact Cheika and Douglas chose to stay silent about the fact Douglas’s eyes weren’t touched displays a massive lack of sportsmanship, class and decency.
What causes the sniping about the All Blacks? Good old fashioned jealousy, triggered by one team having too much success. Cane should never have been cited.
Having lived in Auckland in the 1980s during the golden era of Auckland rugby, and in Christchurch during the Crusaders’ glory days, I saw the same petty mantras playing out we now hear about the All Blacks.
Auckland/the Crusaders cheat. They’re professional foul artists. Referees are too scared to penalise them. They’re arrogant. They always get the benefit of the doubt.
It was garbage then about Auckland and the Crusaders, and it’s garbage now about the All Blacks.
The All Blacks aren’t perfect. They’ll make mistakes the way Fekitoa did. But they don’t win because they break the rules. They win because, like Auckland and the Crusaders in their day, they’re very, very good. Some of the comments about Brendon McCullum’s book with Greg McGee ‘‘Declared’’ have bemused me.
New Zealand sporting biographies are often panned for being too wishy washy. McCullum has been criticised by some reviewers for being too open.
In his review of ‘‘Declared’’, Brian Turner, a gifted poet and writer who has produced biographies of Colin Meads, Josh Kronfeld and Anton Oliver, refers to what he calls McCullum’s ‘‘fevered self justifications’’ and ‘‘jaundiced accounts’’ of incidents in his career. Where Turner loses me in particular is suggesting that somehow McCullum is wrong to be critical of his former mental conditioning coach Kerry Schwalger. Schwalger’s included, says Turner, in a list of those ‘‘who didn’t cut the mustard’’ with McCullum. ‘‘There’s no love lost there.’’
Basically Schwalger, who McCullum swears he had a written confidentiality agreement with while they worked together, passed on his notes of conversations with McCullum to Fairfax, the publishers of this newspaper. A High Court injunction sought by McCullum prevented any being published.
I don’t know about you, but if McCullum feels let down by Schwalger that seems a perfectly reasonable reaction.
Disclaimer: Greg McGee is a friend of more than 30 years. I have had books published by Mower, who published ‘‘Declared.’’