Australia quell Principality’s boisterous optimism but Kiwis will never get chance
Lack of All Blacks fixtures this autumn is both dismaying and perverse, writes Oliver Brown
They do love an overblown walk-on in Wales. “This is not just a pitch, this is the land of our fathers,” the public address announcer boomed, portentously. Fireworks crackled in broad daylight, while jets of fire strafed across a crisp blue sky. If the Principality Stadium roof had been on, one sensed it would have been blown clean into the River Taff.
Mercifully, we were spared the dry ice and disco music that once greeted England here for a Six Nations night game, but the pizzazz was such that Cardiff ’s master of ceremonies could quite safely moonlight in Las Vegas if the work dried up.
There is always boisterous optimism at the start of these autumn campaigns.
Recent results, not least a summer defeat to England at Twickenham and a series whitewash in New Zealand, had long been consigned to memory by a three-month break. But the hiatus cuts both ways. Where Wales were hesitant and half-paced after their layoff, the Wallabies exuded all the vigour and alertness of a team two-thirds through their campaign, whose minds have been trained solely on securing a first Australian Grand Slam against the home nations for 32 years.
That early November feeling of renewal threatens to dissolve quickly into rancour. Warren Gatland has engineered some wonderful highs in his nine years as Wales head coach, but the shellacking his players were dealt here calls into question the wisdom of his Lions job-share with his assistant Rob Howley taking charge here in the New Zealander’s absence. It was a similar story four years ago, when Gatland juggled his Welsh duties with preparing for his first Lions tour of duty. Wales’ record that autumn read: played four, lost four, including an embarrassing home loss to Samoa. Granted, they arrested the slump with a Six Nations title four months later, but the fragility of their defence yesterday suggested it would take divine intervention to achieve the same turnaround this time.
What would the All Blacks do to them? Alas, we will not find out. New Zealand have been a study in swaggering brilliance all year, with 18 wins on the bounce, and would surely relish their chances of beating Wales by more than the 40 points they managed in Dunedin in June.
But the men in black are far from these shores this weekend, having arranged to play Ireland in that febrile rugby hotbed of Chicago, Illinois, in a fixture mandated by their sponsors at American International Group.
When they should be here in Europe, putting on masterclasses in front of packed houses, they are making do with a US shirt-selling exercise. This autumn series is already much the poorer for their absence.
Money, sadly, is beginning to take an edge off the November showpieces. It is understood that New Zealand demanded a fee of £3 million to appear at Twickenham this year, outside their traditional international window, a considerable hike on the £1.5 million they asked for on their last visit.
So, the Rugby Football Union balked. Ian Ritchie, the RFU chief executive, argued, reasonably enough, that he could not agree to share out the £10 million in Twickenham matchday revenue so liberally – especially when there was no reciprocal commitment on the Kiwis’ part.
It is the supporters who lose out. New Zealand are offering a meagre, truncated tour in 2016: one more match against Ireland, then trips to France and Italy. Confrontations with Wales and England, always wonderfully atmospheric affairs, have been expunged from the schedule entirely. There were banks of empty seats at the Principality for the Australia match, which could be filled at a stroke if the strutting All Blacks rolled into town. But the cheque required to make it happen is not forthcoming. It is a perverse, dismaying situation. Rugby, just like any sport, needs to treat its fans to the best match-ups possible. At this point, the clash that everybody wants to see is that of Eddie Jones’s rejuvenated England against Steve Hansen’s seemingly unassailable All Blacks. There is a clamour around England, stirred by a first Six Nations Grand Slam since 2003 and a first ever 3-0 series win in Australia, to surpass anything in Stuart Lancaster’s reign. A collision with New Zealand, when the teams are so clearly established as the two best in the world, would bring it all to a rousing crescendo. Finally, we could find out how real the Jones revolution is. But the financial disagreements decree that we must settle for hosting Fiji instead. In all likelihood, England will not play New Zealand until 2018, when mobilisation for the next World Cup in Japan begins in earnest. There are some who argue that this delay will only ratchet up the anticipation, but this has little grounding in reality. These latest internationals, which kicked off amid such extravagant Cardiff pyrotechnics, should have been telegraphed towards a thrilling Twickenham denouement. Instead, just as boxing aficionados were cheated out of seeing Floyd Mayweather fight Manny Pacquiao until it was about five years too late, rugby fans are denied the opportunity to watch the one match that would sell itself. It is as exasperating as it is self-defeating.
There were banks of empty seats which could be filled if the strutting All Blacks rolled into town