All Blacks legacy faces its toughest challenge
IThis feels like a seminal year, with New Zealand rugby at a crossroads and investors circling
t all began just after half-time, with New Zealand on the ropes and Australia within metres of the score that would have given them the lead for the first time in the 2021 Rugby Championship’s opening match at Eden Park in Auckland. The All Blacks’ No8, Ardie Savea, cynically interfered with a Wallaby ruck, and was sent to the sin-bin. The Green and Gold smelt blood; little did they know it would be theirs.
Savea’s yellow card ignited a ferocious New Zealand counteroffensive, a 10-minute period in which they scored a point a minute before accelerating away from their rivals in a 57-22 win. For large swathes of the first half, however, Australia, with the ball in hand at least, were the more coherent and incisive of the two sides, with the All Blacks’ six-point half-time lead coming almost entirely as a result of Wallaby errors.
The yellow card was the catalyst for New Zealand’s renaissance in that match, but could Savea’s time on the naughty step have had more profound implications? The current crop of All Blacks, under head coach Ian Foster – who was not the people’s choice, we should remember – have meandered since that 2019 World Cup semi-final defeat by England. Of course, in any period of transition, patience is required, but we are now almost halfway towards another World Cup. By now, the rebuild should have been complete and, for 35 minutes, it seemed as if it had.
Only time will tell, but Savea’s spell on the sidelines might have had the unintended consequence of refocusing the identity of the All Blacks, which had been lacking for, arguably, as long as three years. In that second half at Eden Park, the shackles came off, the pressure of representing one of the world’s most prestigious sporting brands was discarded, and all the talk of legacy, aura and history dismissed.
Foster’s charges remembered what they were: 15 blokes playing rugby, and doing it very well.
For all the sizzling greatness of New Zealand teams of yore, an irrefutable trait of the best All Blacks sides has been their groundedness, their humility. There has always been respect for what has come before, but always with a slightly selfish, pig-headed ambition to supersede it; to control their own destiny and forge their own identity. All Blacks sides will be forever compared to their predecessors – “change is hard” as New Zealand Rugby’s chief executive, Mark Robinson, put it – but all the great Kiwi sides, from Brian Lochore’s undefeated charges, to David Kirk’s world champions, from Sean Fitzpatrick’s wonders, to the two-time World Cup winners, are distinct. This current crop are not, yet – but might be soon.
There is every chance, too, that off-field events could define the current All Blacks cohort just as vividly as any on-field escapades. The players’ union, a stakeholder of New Zealand Rugby, is dragging its feet in giving the green light to Silver Lake, the US private equity firm looking to buy a 12.5 per cent stake in NZR’S commercial operations for Nz$387.5million (£194million). The deal values the business at Nz$3.1billion.
Because of NZR’S financial peril, other stakeholders, such as all 26 provincial unions and the NZ Maori Board, voted in favour of doing the deal in April, but the bump in the road has been the players, who have concerns about private equity getting their greedy mitts on a slice of the All Blacks pie. The players have requested further assurances, while also offering another route: selling five per cent of NZR’S commercial operations to New Zealanders via an offering on the local stock market.
Kirk, the first World Cupwinning captain and now president of the New Zealand Rugby Players’ Association, offered his own take: “It’s not ours to sell. How does this generation of administrators have the right to sell 130 years of custodianship? New Zealanders own it, that’s what makes it so valuable.”
With the shroud of Silver Lake hanging overhead, New Zealand rugby is at a crossroads. This feels like a seminal year for Sam Whitelock’s team and their legacy, a year in which the decisions they make will have far-reaching consequences for generations of New Zealand rugby players.
For now, though, the signs are that they are getting back to doing what they do best: playing rugby, and doing it very well.