by Richie McCaw
Okay, we’ve lost a lot of players. Dan and Ali are still overcoming serious Achilles injuries, and Anthony Boric, Jerome Kaino, Brendon Leonard, Conrad, Richard Kahui and Siti are all out, joined by Rudi Wulf when he falls awkwardly at training on the eve of the match and injures a shoulder. Rodney’s been ordered to take a break after a lacklustre Super 14. So we go into the test with some relatively untried combinations, particularly at loose forward, with Adam Thomson wearing the No. 7 alongside Kieran and Liam Messam. Nevertheless, as one train-spotter of a critic pointed out, we still go into that test with 360 caps against France’s 342, and should never have been beaten to the hit for 80 minutes.
It seems we get smacked by the reality of test rugby every year. Last year it was England, but only for about 10 minutes. Smithy says Super 14 is Mars and test rugby is Venus, and we’re still on Mars. Both might be warmer than Carisbrook. While part of our failure on a frigid Dunedin night could be put down to the inevitable transition from Super 14 to test rugby, it’s made worse by the IRB’s rulings about which of the ELVs are going to become permanent parts of the game.
In May, 10 of the 13 global experimental law variations were formally ratified into the rules of the game by the IRB rugby committee. Most of the ratified ELVs apply to scrums and lineouts and simply formalise what we’ve been doing for the best part of two seasons.
It’s the ELVs the IRB decided to dump that hurt us.
The bent-arm penalty has been ditched, so the tap-and-go which had quickened the pace and kept the ball in play longer has gone. I still reckon if the bent-arm penalty had been reffed the way the IRB intended, where a full penalty was awarded if the offence was deliberate, it might have survived. But it wasn’t, and didn’t.
The other rule that’s gone is the one allowing the defenders to pull down a rolling maul. That rule made the rolling maul easier to defend against—and therefore less often used—but the IRB thought that was a safety issue, so the old rule is back. The maul hasn’t often been a strength of New Zealand rugby, but I’m glad it’s back. It may contradict other basic rugby rules, like being allowed to tackle the man with the ball, and obstruction, but it’s unique to rugby and, if done well, another weapon in the armoury.
An objective observer might ask why, however, when faced with rule amendments which simplify the game and lift the pace, the IRB has once again bowed to complexity and stasis.
Whatever, using Smithy’s analogy, the rule changes leave us on Mars, where there are lots of tap-and-gos and virtually no rolling mauls, and Carisbrook turns out to be an unlikely Venus.
France take us on right up the middle, punishing us with rolling mauls and drives from lineouts. And, it has to be said, a level of aggression and physical commitment and relish for close-quarter combat which looks like it surprises a few of the new guys, as much as they’ve been warned to expect it. There are missed tackles, dropped pill, mis-kicks and intercepted passes that make it a wonder the All Blacks even get close.
BJ Lochore later tells Ted that the boys might have been ready for battle, but they weren’t ready for war.
Neither am I, but I’m not far off, faithfully rehabbing my knee, following another bloody plan, hoping to be ready for the opening Tri Nations match. I’m frustrated as all hell watching these guys who stuffed us at Cardiff do us over again. They might have left a few hard men at home, but there are still enough familiar spectres on the team-sheet to get the blood going: Clerc, Traille, Heymans, Caveman Chabal, Szarzewski and, of course, leading them, who else but Dusautoir.
Big Bad Brad runs down winger Vincent Clerc to save a try.
I’m not really part of it, but it’s easy to sense that things are a lot grimmer in the build-up to the return game in Wellington. Ted’s almost jovial mood of the week before has evaporated, not helped by the loss to injury of Adam Thomson and Horey. But Jerome Kaino, who became a heavy hitter at test level in last year’s northern tour, is back at No. 6, and with Kieran having his second game at No. 8 and Tanerau Latimer at No. 7, the back row looks better balanced.
It isn’t a memorable test, but it has one memorable moment, when Big Bad Brad runs down winger Vincent Clerc in the sixty-second minute to save a try. That’s the winning of the test 14–10 on a foul night in Wellington, made fouler by a strange rule that gives France the Dave Gallaher Trophy. Eh? We’re the holders, and we’ve drawn the series 1–1. But it’s decided by points difference across the two games. Which Einstein came up with that one?
My first club game in eight years—Christchurch against Lincoln, July 2009.
One trophy gone.
I play my first club game in eight years that weekend and the knee comes through okay, but as one of us gets up, another falls down. Ali pulls his Achilles in the build-up to the test against Italy, and the poor bastard needs surgery. Our locking stocks weren’t great anyway, apart from Brad. We have rookie Isaac Ross calling the lineouts and Bryn Evans on the bench.
There’s bugger all at stake against Italy at Christchurch, and we play accordingly, winning unimpressively. They’ve clearly not come to play, but just to lose by as little as possible. Not for the first time, we find it much harder to break down a team with that mindset.
There’s no relief on television either. On the same weekend we’re struggling to subdue Italy, the Aussies give France a 22–6 thumping, and Dingo Deans says they couldn’t have hoped for a better build-up and that ‘this year’s series is shaping as the most open in years’.
If we have any doubts about not being rated after Robbie’s quote and Ted’s comments about losing and our less-than-impressive form against France and Italy, they’re dispelled by a column by ex-Wallaby great Andrew Slack in the New Zealand Herald, headed ‘Rubbish All Blacks? Pull the other one’. We seem to have fallen so far in public estimation that Aussies have to reassure the New Zealand public that we’re not crap.
I’m determined that the team make a statement at Eden Park, just as we did last year, when our win at Eden Park was the defining moment of the season. We’ve got Rodney back, and Siti and Conrad and Horey.
But the Aussies have us scrambling, opening with pace and width. Berrick Barnes scores early, selling Siti a dummy and stepping through Mils’ tackle after an Adam Ashley-Cooper break. Not a great start. I’m rusty and make a few mistakes, and it’s clear that Conrad and Rodney and Horey are all finding their feet again at test level too.
Meanwhile, George Smith is right on his game and Giteau and Barnes seem to have more rhythm and timing than we do, and their lineout dominates ours. At one stage, we’re 10 points down. We’re still losing at halftime, but not lost. Down 10–13, it should have been more.
In the second half, we start showing character. Our scrum dominates theirs. Their scrum becomes as bad as our lineout. With 20 to go, Jerome charges down a Giteau clearance, and Stephen Donald kicks the penalty to put us in front. From there, we dominate territory and possession and the last quarter of the game is our best. We grind it out and get there 22–16. It’s not pretty, one try each, but neither are the conditions for running rugby.
Some guys step up. Kevvy and Kieran and Owen Franks make a difference when they come on. Richard Loe doubts that Owen’s scrummaging is up to test level, but that’s not what I’m seeing.
When we take off for South Africa next morning, I’ve no reason to believe that we’re not on the up and up.
While we’ve been flailing our way through testing wintry conditions, the South Africans have been on a high, ramping on from the Bulls’ demolition of the Chiefs in the Super 14 final to a three-test series win against an impressive British Lions outfit. That might have been a lot closer than the Boks were comfortable with, but the quality of the rugby was right up there, on hard grounds with the sun on their backs.
I’m hoping the travel will bind us together and the new environment will stimulate and lift us. We’d like to build on what we did at Newlands last year, even though it’s a tough ask to travel to Bloemfontein and play at high altitude i
n the space of a week.
Some guys step up . . . me and Kevvy after beating Australia at Eden Park in 2009.
That week in Bloemfontein I ask myself some questions in the Warwick that crystallise my worries and look for solutions:
When I struggle to get into the game and make an impact:
Get backs to set close target and give me something to hit.
Call drive so I can get involved.
Get in position early, run hard, demand the ball.
When ref is being inconsistent with his rulings. Especially when it is eliminating my effect:
Be calm when I talk to him.
Use right words—Can I speak when you have a moment?
Is that the standard for the game?
Put pressure on him.
Use short sentences which are to the point.
When I get taken out trying to get at ball at breakdown:
If they are putting one or two on me, must be opportunities for others.
Talk to others (8, 12, 13) and get them to do my job.
When I get taken out, identify who and why it is working.
When I’m planting and not getting shoulders on when tackling:
Why? Maybe I’m on the dancefloor too early. Leaving a little later will help.
Just keep going, and no worries about being stepped.
Big guys coming, get low and use shoulder. Just need to be confident.
NO FEAR.
We go in with the same pack, but bring in Brendon Leonard for Jimmy Cowan and Joe Rocks for Cory Jane.
We lose, but not for lack of effort or guts. Afterwards I tell the media that perhaps we weren’t smart enough to play at the right end of the field. Euphemism. We play spiritedly, but dumb.
We set a target of not giving away more than 10 penalties in a game, but by the 30-minute mark, we’ve already given away seven. We give them away like a lolly scramble, inventing new and interesting ways to incur Alain Rolland’s wrath. Some of them can be put down to Bok pressure, forcing us to try desperate moves in our own half. But two crooked put-ins to our dominant scrum? A miscued 22 drop-out by a prop?
Luckily, Ruan Pienaar’s having an off-day with the boot and we grind our way back from 17–3 to 20–16 in the third quarter, after a couple of Stephen Donald penalties and a brilliant try by Conrad. We’re getting some traction in the scrums and at the breakdowns, and despite Matfield’s dominance of our lineout, we can hear them gasping. We hammer them in a series of drives, but when the ball is finally released, Piri throws it to Jaque Fourie. It’s not the only inaccuracy which lets the pressure off, but it’s a critical one.
Number-one world ranking gone. The Boks have it back.
We’ve got a week to sort ourselves before the return game at Durban. No excuses this time, it’s at sea level and we should be acclimatised. We can’t use the thin air to excuse our kicking, catching or chasing, or the lineout throws.
But we’re worse, not better. We play reckless, panicky rugby, trying to run it when it isn’t on. Joe Rocks neglects to force the ball or kick it, and instead tries to run it out from behind our goal-line. We play like we don’t know each other. The Boks don’t have to play a lot of rugby: we try to play enough for both teams. Certainly, we make enough mistakes.
The Boks kick better than us and Habana is a magnificent chaser, so they’re always applying pressure through their kicks, whereas ours are mostly handing the ball back, either through inaccuracy or by giving them a lineout. One way or another, we give possession back more than 30 times. Heinrich Brussow is superlative on the ground.
Second trophy gone—the Freedom Cup.
We come home with our tail between our legs with 20 days to regroup before facing the Aussies in Sydney.
The only good news is that Dan has come through his low-key return to rugby, via a club game at his home town of Southbridge. So it looks like we’ll have Dan back, but I’m not sure even he could have saved us from our worst run of results since I’ve been an All Black. Three defeats in six tests.
One more loss and any chance of retaining the Tri Nations will be gone, and the Bledisloe will also be up for grabs.
Is it a question of personnel? There are guys not playing well, for sure. Rodney is a worry—the respite from the Iveco series doesn’t seem to have given him the fire back. You can’t doubt Rodder’s willpower, but the fierce joy for the fray isn’t there yet.
Joe Rocks saved our arses last year against Munster by doing what he does best—running round or over people with the ball in hand. This season, either he’s lost form or it’s a different game. Instead of catch-and-pass, it’s kick-and-chase: instead of doing one-on-ones at training, looking for speed and agility, Joe and the other wingers are standing under high balls. Joe might be a bit like the rest of us—unsure quite how the ground has shifted so quickly, from a ball-in-hand game to ball-in-air.
Back in May, Paddy O’Brien outlined the new tackle ball ruling endorsed by the IRB. Under this ruling, if the tackler or the first person arriving at the breakdown has their hands on the ball, they’re now entitled to keep their hands on it even though a ruck has formed.
This has swung the advantage at the breakdown back to the defending team in a major way. We’ve been slow to acknowledge that. We’ve been trying to play an expansive high-tempo game with ball in hand. Time and again, we’ve been caught trying to run the ball back from Bok kicks. Time and again our runners have been nailed and we’ve had to scramble and have conceded kickable penalties.
In the face of criticism from the likes of Laurie Mains and John Plumtree, who’ve both coached in South Africa and advocate structure, field position and aggression, Ted’s still saying that we’re playing the right style of football. He admits that it’s high risk, and difficult, particularly when you’re living off crumbs. He believes that if we’d only nailed a couple of opportunities . . . Smithy agrees, saying that if we kick long against the Boks, it relieves the pressure for a few seconds, then the ball comes right back at us in the air, with great chasers arriving at the same split second.
We’ve got to play better, not differently, is the coaches’ mantra.
Living off crumbs is inevitable if we can’t win our own lineouts. The media pressure comes down on Shag. His remark about flushing a bad performance down the dunny gets a lot of blow-back.
The real worry is that Paddy O’Brien said back in May that there’d be no further changes to the rules until after the RWC in 2011.
Somehow we’ve got to figure out how to play our game under these rules.
We’ve got this lineout right . . . Kieran Read soars above Rocky Elsom at Sydney.
The Aussies in Sydney aren’t necessarily the best gauge of how we’re going in that respect. At one stage we’re 15–6 down, then 18–16 down with five minutes to go. Dan misses a drop-goal but we keep pressing and get a penalty in the seventy-eighth minute, which Dan nails with complete composure. Then we hold our nerve at the very end of the game when the Aussies lay siege.
No disrespect to Beaver—Stephen Donald—who always gives it everything, but Dan makes a hell of a difference to our kicking game and general confidence. His tactical brain and left foot keeps putting us where we need to be.
It’s a huge relief to win, if only by a single point. We show real guts and character—that’s been true of pretty much every game, even when we’ve gone badly. Ted should be revelling in going 5–1 up against Dingo Deans, but with the resurgence of the Boks, Ted vs Robbie has become the inconsequential sideshow it always should have been.
A win’s a hell of a lot better than a loss—and we have again secured the Bledisloe Cup—but can we say any more that 19–18 over the Wallabies is a step in the right direction?
The Boks are the benchmark—they’ve already won the Mandela Cup for the series over Aussie—and we’re determined to throw the kitchen sink at them on our home territory at Hamilton. We trail them by four on the points table. If we can come away with a bonus point victory, we’ve got
a shot at retaining the Tri Nations championship. If we lose, South Africa takes it.
Got it! The Bledisloe, Sydney, 2009.
A try for me, but a shattering loss against the Boks at Hamilton.
We prepare well. There’s intensity during the week, a definite edge. Physicality is the key, I write in the Warwick. Must have quality set piece. Positive mentally in how we’re gonna play.
I’m sure we’ll have a big one. When the edge is there, we always do.
So what happens in Hamilton, the way it happens, leaves me as low as I’ve been since Cardiff.
It’s not just about being beaten 32–29. We’re comprehensively outplayed until the last 20. We don’t win one of our own lineouts in the first half. Victor Matfield seems to know our calls better than we do. Francois Steyn kicks three penalties from inside his own half. You could do a word association which would be pretty consistent across almost every report of the game, including our own. Lineout . . . shambles. Ball retention . . . sloppy. Decision making . . . flawed.
The Boks are the Tri Nations champions. Another trophy lost from the cupboard.
Fans aren’t happy. The media aren’t happy. We’re not happy.
‘Surely now the lineout has become intolerable?’ writes Gregor Paul. ‘If Steve Hansen can’t fix it, should someone else be given the chance?’
Larger questions are looming, not just in our minds. We’ve lost four tests out of eight.
‘The time has come,’ writes the same scribe, ‘to ask whether, two years out from the World Cup, it’s time for a rethink—have the coaching team lost the dressing room?’
The answer is no. The coaches haven’t lost the dressing room. But the dressing room is in danger of losing itself.
We—I—might be almost at a lower ebb than Cardiff. Different, would be a better way of describing it.
