Tell them they’re dreamin’ and feel serenity with NZ game
There are, judging by the events of last weekend, dreamers on both sides of the Tasman.
In New Zealand, they are of the creative, imaginative kind, working small miracles on the field with their footwork, timing and bravery.
In Australia, they are of the delusional kind, sitting in boardrooms and losing whatever tenuous grip they once held on reality.
Last weekend, we saw two compelling games that were rich with rugby intelligence, technical expertise and instinctive genius.
The rugby wasn’t relentlessly brilliant in either Wellington or Hamilton but it was fast, intense, punctuated with moments of magic and fantastically unpredictable and dramatic.
It was a weekend of rugby as imagined by Alfred Hitchcock — full of plot twists and the unexpected. Classic thrillers that meant you could never sit easy and underpinning it all was quality football.
It was the sort of rugby everyone has craved for years but has been denied by the presence of too many teams with greater potential in their balance sheets than in their playing rosters.
And the rugby is delivering because there are a lot of good players in this country. A lot of good coaches, too, and the combination produces rugby teams that have such a strong sense of what they are trying to do and players with the skills and confidence to back themselves to play what they see.
Jordie Barrett, who not so long ago was plagued by an impetuous streak, is now playing with such maturity and patience that he looks to be ahead of his brother in the national pecking order at fullback.
If Ngani Laumape wasn’t in Ian Foster’s plans before, he will be now. Everyone knew he was a tank but his ability to step and accelerate as he did so brilliantly to score the opening try of the game against the Blues in Wellington, was a major surprise.
And that’s the thing about New Zealand rugby, it’s refining promising talent such as Barrett and Laumape, rejuvenating established players such as Aaron Smith and Patrick Tuipulotu and unearthing new stars in Lachlan Boshier and Will Jordan.
If the Chiefs, based on their table position in Super Rugby Aotearoa, are the weakest franchise in the country then the game here is in phenomenally rude health.
There’s no easy game to be had in New Zealand and this is why Super Rugby Aotearoa has gripped the nation. There’s no respite and nowhere to hide and this is the bit that is being lost on the Australians.
New Zealand is delivering the original Super Rugby blueprint of the best provincial sides playing the best provincial sides and the Australians are dreaming if they think they have five teams that can play at this level.
They are dreaming if they think they have two teams that can play at this level, given that Australian sides won just once in 45 games on
New Zealand soil between 2015 and 2018.
In 2017, Australian sides didn’t record a win against New Zealand opposition and in 2018 they posted just three victories.
Australia is clearly outraged at being turfed out of Super Rugby and forced to reapply as it were but they are dreaming if they think they can win any support for their argument that they are the victims of Kiwi arrogance.
They are victims of their own shortcomings and lack of rugby success. They are, if anything, victims of their ambition far outweighing their ability and if they were to be invited en masse again to partake in Super Rugby Aotearoa next year, they would just be victims. Thumped every week and outclassed by the colossal weight of rugby talent in New Zealand.
The most conclusive proof there
Australia is clearly outraged at being turfed out of Super Rugby and forced to reapply.
is now unsustainable deluded thinking at the heart of the game in Australia is the claim that it is madness for an Auckland-based Pacific Island team to be in Super Rugby next year.
Rugby Australia chairman Hamish McLennan said that putting a Pasifika team in Manukau would be detrimental to the Blues and basing it in Sydney would make more sense.
He needs a lie down and a cup of tea, obviously. Auckland is the most prolific producer of rugby talent on the planet and about 40 per cent of all New Zealand’s professional players come out of the city’s 1A First XV competition.
A fair amount of Australia’s professional players do, too, and maybe McLennan should stop dreaming that Sydney can have two Super Rugby teams when, in 25 years of trying, it hasn’t managed to produce one.