NO PRESSURE, LADS . . .
G’DAY WALLABIES! Apparently you’re the favourites tonight. You’ve not beaten the ABs at Eden Park in 33 years. Welcome back to the fortress.
The rugby test in Perth last weekend was hard to watch for a New Zealander. For some of us, the 47-26 thrashing stirred dark, uncomfortable memories. Kurtley Beale laughing as he dodged two tackles and strolled behind the posts for a try in the last minute reminded me the worst display by an All Blacks team in the professional era was also in a Bledisloe Cup test, the game in Sydney in 1999.
We lost then 28-7, the same margin as last weekend in Perth, but that wasn’t the worst of it. Late in the Sydney game, a scrum was set inside the All Blacks 22. By the time referee Jim Fleming took mercy on New Zealand and blew it up, the Wallabies had marched over and through the All Blacks forwards, laughing and jeering as they went.
Australia went on to win the World Cup in Cardiff nine weeks later. The All Blacks were beaten in the Cup semifinal by France, and lost the playoff for third place to South Africa. Two 21-point losses to Australia before a World Cup? Should we draw any conclusions from history?
This week, Jeff Wilson, on the field that horrible rain-drenched night in Sydney, joined Simon Barnett and myself on NewstalkZB and offered hope.
“I really think this a better team than we had in 1999 to deal with this sort of adversity,” said Wilson. “The amount of experience there is in this side, they can well and truly respond to that [loss]. I have great faith in what they’re doing, and their records show they have some of the best coaching there has been in the game.”
At Eden Park, there’s a chance for the All Blacks to bury the Perth ghost in a hurry.
“Seven days becomes a really long time after a performance like that, when you’re a player in the All Blacks,” said Wilson. “You want to get back out there and rectify it.”
I don’t believe Wilson is being too optimistic when he says there are crucial differences between today’s team and the side of 1999, variations that suggest the 2019 squad should handle pressure better.
In 2019, the All Blacks have a number of players who are at the end of their international careers.
From captain Kieran Read to Ben Smith to Owen Franks, we know for a fact this is the last year they’ll be in the black jersey.
So we didn’t need a Facebook app to be reminded there are plenty of grizzled veterans in the ranks.
But in ’99, the problem was not too many older players but that most of the veterans, especially in the forwards, had left the game during the previous two years. Longterm captain Sean Fitzpatrick had a knee so damaged, it finally ground to a standstill.
Michael Jones, our only loose forward fit to fully compare with Richie McCaw, had retired.
Inspirational No 8 Zinzan Brooke had gone, too, and centre Frank Bunce, the wily, unshakeable rock of the backline, had fallen out of favour after flirting with playing for a French club.
The captain in ’99 was Taine Randell, as decent, open and good-hearted a person to have played the game. But he was only 23. The day after the slaughter in Sydney, I was at the airport, a shopping list of cosmetics written by my wife and daughter in my hand. As I rounded a tall rack, I almost bumped into Randell. He sprang back and looked so downhearted, I found myself mumbling, “it’ll be all right, mate”. He almost smiled and murmured, “I guess so”. Fifteen years after the campaign of ’99, he’d tell me: “Basically the only one who had any idea of what I was going through was my girlfriend, Jo, who is now my wife. We’ve talked about it since. We were just babes in arms. We had no idea. The rugby was okay but the All Blacks is a big machine. There are so many things you’re called on to do, and I just wasn’t mature enough. “I talked to a few people about it, but not one ever said to me, ‘don’t take the job. You’re out of your depth’. I was in just my fourth year of international rugby and I was one of the most experienced forwards in the team.
“You need experience to be unruffled under pressure. To be able to look and go, ‘yeah, we’ve been in this situation before’.”
When the ’99 Cup started, Randell had played just 25 tests. When Read runs out at the head of the All Blacks in Yokohama against South Africa on September 21, it’ll be his 122nd test.
Christian Cullen, moved from fullback to centre in ’99, would later say of the leadership vacuum in the semifinal lost 43-31 to France at Twickenham: “If ever there was a time when we needed Fitzy [Sean Fitzpatrick] back, it was now. He was the sort of bloke who would have said, ‘listen, this is what we are going to **** ing do’. But we didn’t have that type of leadership any more.”
The 2019 All Blacks do. And they have another string to their bow, which will need to really work to bring the World Cup home from Japan.
For years, they’ve consciously worked on developing on-field leaders.
As Randell said in 2014: “The All Blacks now have leadership groups, and in the everyday workplace, that’s also how it’s done. We didn’t have that at all. I’m not passing on any blame, it’s just how it was. In that [1999] team, everything was management led.”
For tonight’s test at Eden Park, there are chances being taken with selection, but they’re not as great as they seem at first glance. In the front row, Nepo Laulala gets just his 10th test as a starting prop. But beside him, hooker Dane Coles will be playing his 64th. Richie Mo’unga plays his fourth test as a starting first-five, but his halfback, Aaron Smith, will be in his 86th international.
Coach Steve Hansen is in his 16th season with the All Blacks, the last eight as head coach. With the position, despite the team’s quite extraordinary success, comes sniping, and the latest barbs centre on the theory that Hansen is a bit past his use-by date.
The Bledisloe Cup test at Eden Park and, much more importantly, the World Cup will be the only true ways to measure that theory. But having been in Sydney and then at Twickenham in 1999, I’m one who’s happy that the men in charge of the 2019 All Blacks team are weathered troupers who have walked this road before.