Heat is all on the hosts... and it’s a free hit for Lions
The Auld Mug comes home to Auckland on Thursday. Thousands will cram into the harbour area to meet the victory parade of Team New Zealand’s triumphant America’s Cup sailors.
They will bring their trophy by road through the city centre to Princes Wharf, before taking to the water and sailing it across Viaduct Basin.
At eden Park on Saturday, the locals are hoping to crown another old mug. Warren Gatland, coach of the British and Irish Lions.
Yet something is wrong. Gatland was widely expected to be returning here humiliated and already a beaten man; 2-0 down in the series and fearing another whitewash.
Instead it is all to play for and, suddenly, all to lose for the hosts. Defeat in the second Test has rocked the All Blacks, even with the mitigation of playing a man down in Wellington for 55 minutes.
New Zealand do not lose at home, no matter the circumstances. Not at eden Park since 1994 and, until Saturday, not anywhere across these isles since 2009. Series defeats are even rarer. None since losing both Tests in South Africa in 2009, none at home since France won in Christchurch and Auckland in 1994, and none over three Test matches since going down 2-1 in Australia in 1992.
If the Lions were to win on Saturday, they would be the first tourists to win a three-Test series here since Australia in 1986, and the first from the Northern hemisphere since the famous Lions tour from 1971.
And the All Blacks are favourites, of course. hot favourites. Yet, for the first time, favourites with the tiniest glimmer of uncertainty.
The Lions won’t see it this way, but all the pressure is on the hosts. This is now pretty much a free hit. Few expected the Lions to keep the contest alive until the third Test and, now they have, few expect them to finish the job. So even if they lose, as long as it is with spirit and honour, this has been a good tour.
IF New Zealand are beaten, however, it is the beginning of the end for Steve hansen’s regime. The All Blacks are like boxing champions. One defeat can have a seismic career impact. hansen had won 26 Tests in 28, and lost only one, when he revealed the pressure an All Blacks coach is under. ‘This is a job where you don’t have the luxury of being able to rebuild and lose,’ he said in 2013. ‘You must win every game.’
A World Cup win since then will make no difference if the Lions take this series. Maybe hansen has enough credit to survive short term, but the idea of simply handing over to his assistant Ian Foster at some point, the simple succession many have expected? That would be in jeopardy.
The Lions come here rarely. It is considered a privilege to coach against them and many of the greatest have not done it. Sir Brian Lochore, the coach who delivered New Zealand’s first World Cup win, did not take a Lions series. Nor did Sir Fred Allen, who stood down in 1968 with a 100 per cent win record from 14 games.
So while those victorious against the Lions are never forgotten, those who fail suffer an ignominious fate. Ivan Vodanovich was the coach in 1971. he did not take another All Blacks Test after losing that series. But there were bigger casualties.
Sir Colin Meads, still regarded as the greatest All Black, a sheep farmer whose talent and ferocity earned him 55 caps as well as a statue in his home town of Te Kuiti, did not play again.
Nor did Jazz Muller, a front row with a 20in neck, known as the Taranaki Tank. So traumatised by the defeat and the reaction to it, Muller lived as a recluse for 20 years, without television or telephone. he finally broke his silence 29 years later.
‘You get one crack at playing for the All Blacks,’ said Muller, ‘and when you’re finished, no bugger wants to know you.’ Not if you’ve lost the big one. Maybe these dark thoughts are just beginning to register within the All Blacks camp. Certainly the mighty Brodie Retallick seemed mildly reflective under questioning at the team hotel yesterday.
Perhaps it was the unfamiliar
glasses that gave him the look of a laboratory assistant, albeit one who has just absorbed the gamma ray that turns quiet professor Bruce Banner into the Incredible Hulk. Maybe he had just been doing a lot of thinking.
‘I look at it like a World Cup final,’ said Retallick. ‘Some may only go to one World Cup, and I can’t imagine my body will still be hanging in there in another 12 years, so I guess this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to play the Lions, and to try to win a Lions series. For us, it’s on the line. It’s massive.
‘Throughout the series, we’ve touched on the history and the different tours that have come to New Zealand. The history is not going to help us now, though — it’s just about what we are going to do to create our own history.
‘We’ve just got to nail this week. A lot’s been said since we lost in Wellington but we are in control of the history now. If we can go out there and do it, then we’ll come out on the right side.
‘Losing hasn’t happened a lot throughout my career so, right now, we’re probably feeling a bit more pressure within the group. It’s now or never, I suppose. It would be good to go out there now, and not have to worry about the rest of the week. We can’t let it happen again.’
Does that sound like the merest hint of doubt? The Lions started on Saturday with eight players who had been involved in a deciding Test win over Australia on the last tour. The last time the All Blacks needed to win the final Test in a best-of-three was against the Lions at Eden Park in 1993. They did so, 30-13, but it goes without saying there are no survivors from that game.
Indisputably, the All Blacks have been dragged out of their comfort zone. If they are still there when the final whistle blows on Saturday, there may be some newly-minted mugs, to go with that Auld one.