At the start of the World Cup I was thinking that I may have been a bit negative (see my July post about the All Blacks looking fragile before the World Cup) but the loss to France in the quarter final proved me correct. Everyone, including the team themselves, thought that they could just pull out the “A” game when it counted but they couldn’t.
Some bleeding heart types drivel on about sport being just a competition and sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. That’s true but what these people don’t seem to realise, and what upsets the rest of us so much, is not that the All Blacks lost but that they lost playing very poorly. If they had played fairly well and France had played sensationally then you would have to take it on the chin and say well done France. But France didn’t play well apart from defending stoically and the All Blacks helped France in that regard by playing one-dimensional rugby for the most part. It’s a measure of how pitiful France were that the All Blacks could easily have one with a drop goal or penalty. In fact, if the All Black’s second try had been converted we may have had overtime.
Did the referee cost them the game? Well he certainly seemed to have eyes only for All Black infringements but really the All Blacks should have won comfortably even with the referee’s bias on the day.
What about Graham Henry, Steve Hansen and Wayne Smith? I think they panicked a bit going into this game. With three games until the final they decided that their two centres were not up to the job and took our most potent full back option away by selecting Mils Muliaina at centre. Mils may be a great centre but he is a fantastic full back and, as solid as MacDonald is, we lose something without Mils there and I don’t think Mils offers so much more at centre than Smith or Toeava that the exchange is worth it. You have to think that they intended to play Mils at centre for the rest of the tournament if they didn’t think Smith or Toeava were up to it for the quarter final; there was no opportunity for them to play themselves back in.
Secondly, how anyone could leave Howlett out after he played so well all year and all tournament is completely beyond me. A lot of people are saying Aaron Maujer should have been picked but I’m not convinced that he has played well enough this year. McAlister is a bit of a show pony but he is an exciting player. He was unlucky to get sin-binned but he missed the conversion that would have drawn the scores.
Richie McCaw was sick in the days before the game and I think the risk of not taking a specialised backup such as Daniel Braid or Marty Holah may have been shown up. They took impact players but not starters other then Richie.
At the end of the day would these player selections have made a difference? I doubt it. We may have scraped through the game I think we would have struggled against England just as much. We may have had a chance against South Africa if we made it to the final because the game may have been a little more open. At the end of the day, we had the players but not the team to do the job.
Some say the All Black brand has been diminished and I think that must be true to a certain degree; we may be ranked one or two in the world but we are not a team to fear at the World Cup where it matters most. The All Blacks brand can be polished up again only if we smash all comers for the next four years and win the 2011 World Cup and win it well.
Some overseas commentators say the All Blacks paid the price for arrogance but I think the coaches and players gave France far too much respect and in doing so didn’t play their own rugby apart from a spell in the first half when they got their first try.
Murray Deaker puts part of the problem down to a change in Graham Henry’s approach following negative feedback from a 360 degree review undertaken by the Rugby Union. I’m not close to the team so I don’t know what happened but a soft approach may explain the soft results and the stupid player rotation policy.
So, should Henry stay? Yes, provided he is prepared to admit that the strategies they put in place, rotation and conditioning programme, did not work and should not be used again.
Like most fans I am gutted but not as much as in 1999 and 2003. Am I a better sport? No. Just getting used to losing.
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