SHAKE-UP LIKELY FOR THIRD TEST
Steve Hansen had the answer but not for the questions a lot of us were asking after France had embarrassed his world champions in Wellington. The All Blacks were dreadful in victory, the game was rubbish. The ensuing debate over the red card for French fullback Benjamin Fall turned into a handy distraction.
Rugby debates of this nature have always raged and always will.
The game is, among all the professional team sports, the king of organised chaos. It’s like a cross between a leaders’ debate and a pub brawl, with rule makers pretending they have answers to a world that is often a law unto itself.
If Hansen can solve rugby’s yellow and red card ills with one line after a test, he’s a genius beyond compare. That his sound bite came after his team had produced some of the worst rugby in his superb reign may not be a coincidence.
Hansen, in a shock to almost everyone in the media, turned out to be a master media manipulator, one more than capable of producing a red card herring when needed.
Okay. Hansen is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t comment, perhaps. But a dead-set All Black shocker is in danger of sneaking by, with the World Cup not far away.
The mid-year international window is not working out so well for the All Blacks, again, with pesky tourists from the north refusing to be the fall guys, so to speak.
The French may be doing more damage to the All Black aura than the 2017 Lions, whose series draw was aided by a red card. The unheralded French have been on the wrong side of card decisions, yet stretched the All Blacks at Eden Park while there was a level playing field, and did so again in Wellington when there wasn’t.
With Scott Barrett the major exception, there are new-ish All Blacks who simply aren’t up to the job, with No 8 Luke Whitelock heading that queue, and he was part of the worst All Black collective loose forward performance for many years.
This included the ridiculous sight of openside Sam Cane celebrating his lucky escape from a high shot in Auckland with a stupid, late blindside tackle on halfback Morgan Parra after he had punted the ball clear.
Lock Barrett has the biggest shoes to fill and has done a passable Brodie Retallick impression in both tests. The way he burrowed into a gap and smuggled a classy yet safe offload was a lesson to his teammates, who just couldn’t find the chemistry.
A sport which has turned over its entire operation to the production of an All Black team needs to come up with something better than what we saw on Saturday night. A lot of the game was unwatchable.
All power to France, whose captain Mathieu Bastareaud — so large, he looks like a couple of rugby rule books stacked together — has been an inspiration to his side. Reports that France’s natural inventiveness is on its deathbed may be exaggerated.
France may feel hard done by but not for most of my money.
Rugby and referee Angus Gardner should be applauded for the intent and application of the rule which led to Benjamin Fall’s dismissal.
You either leap to compete for the ball properly, or get the heck out of the landing zone, to lower the occurrence of horror situations like the one in which Beauden Barrett crashed head-first to the ground.
The world’s best players need to understand and embrace the safety transition taking place, one which is vital to rugby on moral, commercial and even survival grounds.
Which is not to say the ensuing debate is not legitimate. It’s all part of this crazy game. A lot of people see this situation very differently.
Decades ago, sage characters predicted that rugby would struggle as a professional sport because all the grey areas cannot stand up to the closest of scrutiny.
Allowing teams who commit red card offences to keep 15 players — and maybe even the offender — on the field may sound good in theory, and I’ve argued that way myself. But it will open up a fresh can of worms, rest assured.
Fair play is an extremely subjective business in rugby. When it comes to integrity, the game is a house of cards, and always will be.