The Silver Fern

Tēnā koe. I'm visiting NZ from my home in Sydney for the first time in several years this week and am writing to you from my hotel room in Christchurch. Over breakfast this morning and at the bar last night, I strained my ears to over-hear conversations about 'Bring On Razor', but all the talk was of the Commonwealth Games or, of all sports, golf - which I'm told is experiencing a renaissance here. No sign of roaming lynch squads, which could be a healthy sign for NZ rugby or, alternatively, that the public has given up.

I did note, however, that the front cover of the NZ Herald this morning is plastered with a full-page editorial calling for Foster to be flushed, although in more restrained terms than that: "A decent man who is out of his depth in a brutal business," was the chosen phrase for the death sentence from the anonymous editorial bench. It was just not five defeats out of six matches, the Herald opines, but the manner of the defeats. "Foster's men are too often cluttered and confused in the execution of their roles." This seems to be a nice way of saying they are playing like headless chooks. Which raises the question of why it took them three years to work that out.

On the plane on the way across the Ta$man, I caught up with the Argentina-Wallabies game and had a premonition of the Bledisloe Cup travelling in the other direction this year. The Wallabies played with real rhythm and intent, as did Los Pumas. There is certainly room for argument whether the likes of Hunter Paisami and Jordan Petaia are better players than their All Black opposites, but there is no doubt in my mind that they are better coached. And that is, and has always been, the problem.

It's really not rocket science. New Zealand Rugby made a catastrophic error in appointing Foster. He may be a nice chap, but he is not an innovator and does not have the imagination to take the game forward. As countless others have pointed out, he's like a hack chef who inherited a five-star restaurant and never changed the menu. NZR need to get the cheque book out now and pay Foster out. It seems they almost certainly will at this point.. But that it was allowed to get this far is an indictment on the entire administration.

OK, I had better go and do some real work.

It’s hard not to conclude that the major source of the backline’s permanent funk is BB’s late career reluctance to take on the line as he did in his pomp. In receiving the ball he’s either going to nervously shovel it out to his brother or aimlessly kick it away. This leaves the opposition secure in either monstering JB and denying him space or waiting for the shallow kick.

The AB coaches, by clinging to a past-it Beauden and refusing to engineer a succession plan, have had to design their attack around him. And that seriously constrains the entire backline.

Don’t get me wrong. He still pulls out one or two great moments per game. The early cross-field kick for Narawa’s try, the 50/22 and some of his covering defence were admirable. But compared to the BB of old he’s only intermittently great. It’s only in flashes.

The rest of the time, for a spectator, it’s like watching a concert by an octogenarian rock legend. You close your eyes willing Roger Daltrey to hit the high-note scream at the climax to ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ but it’s not the same. It’s pantomime Who.

I know Razor is waiting for Mo’unga to return, but this leaves the team in a permanent stasis in the meantime. It’s the Beauden Barrett tribute show - his greatest hits - on endless repeat. We know how it goes. The problem is so does the opposition.

Politics and Pragmatism

In retaining Foster and elevating Schmidt to a more strategic role, the NZR has made both a political arse-saving decision and a sensibly pragmatic one. Fundamentally, of course, this was always about fixing up a public relations mess of their own making.

And what a mess. Given the public uproar over the All Blacks’ performances, It seemed almost certain a week ago that Foster was gone for all money. And I have little doubt that Robinson was on hand in South Africa to accept his ‘resignation’ after the Ellis Park test.

But the ABs’ beating the Boks against all the odds in game II mucked up the plan, leaving Robinson to convene that bizarre media conference in Johannesburg at which he said nothing of substance, while conveying what most of us have known all along - that the real villains in this saga are the NZR board themselves - an indecisive, directionless and poorly organised rabble whose original appointment of Foster in the face of better alternatives was both a poor choice and one they have been scrambling to make up for every since.

Like the AB performances themselves, at least up to Ellis Park, the NZR administration has been a shuffling, stumbling, conviction-less shambles. The right hand does not not appear to know what the left hand is doing, there is no boardroom game plan and no-one appears to be effectively in charge. So they have spared themselves further embarrassment with this 14-month workaround.

That’s the politics. What about the pragmatism? Well, that’s the good part. There appear still to be enough adults in this over-crowded kitchen to stop the next 14 months being a complete disaster. Foster remains the titular head of the galley, though much of his original coaching hands have been turfed out of the kitchen and replaced with smarter rugby brains - Ryan and Schmidt - who should be able to bring together the available ingredients to as to serve up a more palatable outcome.

You would hope that now a firm decision has been made - well, at least the appearance of one - this will end the self-generated soap opera and get people focused back on the task at hand. That starts with the Pumas in Christchurch next week and then onto the Wallabies and the retention of the Bledisloe Cup.

As for Razor Robertson, he may feel a sense of relief, not having to be drafted in at the worst possible moment to fix a mess created by somebody else. This gives him clear air to take over the top job next year, should be still be interested. And it gives the players, who were clearly and rightfully sick of the whole charade, a sense of certainty and direction.

If the outcome is Foster being more consultative, more open to new ideas and less dogged in his selections and game plans, the changes will be an improvement. They certainly couldn’t make things any worse. Could they?

Gracias chicos!

You have to give some credit to a gutsy Argentina. They took the opportunities that were given to them…on a platter mostly.

My sense is the ABs did what they are often are guilty of these days - not respecting the opposition, not respecting the ball, sacrificing structure and discipline for helter-skelter rugby, lacking pragmatism about taking three points when they are on offer, and playing loosey-goosey Super Rugby in the test arena.

Who do we blame for all that? There seems to be a lack of hard-heads in the coaching box and in the on-field leadership. For all his individual gifts, Savea is not a good skipper and seeks to win the game all on his own.

The ABs were 20-8 up at one stage and looked to be a try away from pulling away out of sight, but they let the Argentinians back in with sloppy, ultra-loose play that betrayed the old ‘we’re the Harlem Globetrotters of World Rugby and we can score more tries than you’ mentality.

Then when the pressure came on in the final quarter, they fell apart mentally. Loose and panicky passes, often with little pressure, wayward lineout throws, poor option-taking, and on it went. Same old car crash.

I don’t think Robertson is a bad coach, but I do wonder at the quality of his assistants and whether there are too many of them. It all seems too pally and collegiate. MacDonald has never impressed me, and I wonder what Hansen brings to the party.

In what was a familiar scenario, the whole AB game had a Marie Celeste element to it. There was a sense of nobody being at the wheel and you could see them drifting inexorably toward the rocks in slow motion. Yet the ABs thrashed Argentina in the WC semi-final and it’s tough to believe they suddenly became that bad, and Argentina that good in less than a year.

So it looks and smells like an attitude problem, a lack of leadership problem, an absence of test rugby pragmatism, and the old familiar trap of elevating the desire to put on a spectacle above the requirement to win the game.

The issues are lack of composure, fading concentration and poor structure on defence. Mentally, they are still not there. We continue to see lousy choices on attack, poor positioning on defence and lapses of discipline at key moments. Again, we see their capacity to momentarily look comfortable and in control and then drop their focus like a ADHD teen skipping his ritalin. And all this against a Wallaby team thrown together at the last minute. Something is wrong.

ABs in Razor’s mind:

https://i.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExa2J4enh5NDFwcTh4anl2ZHpmeWkyMDhhYTN3N3RkaDZtMGNzZHZ1NCZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/3oEjHZ10CNMhK6bpgQ/giphy.gif

ABs in reality…

https://i.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExemlpcXczcTNmOXQ5b3dlMmFudXJyNW9paGttcDFzZm40MXM1MGhlbiZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/OjHsiTRDh0U0OzPQJV/giphy.gif

Groundhog Day

Everyone has a theory on the continuing mystifying propensity for the All Blacks, formerly the world’s greatest team, to not only repeatedly shoot themselves in both feet, but then to remove their socks and blow their toes off one by one.

The test in Christchurch was there for the taking in the first half. But poor discipline, together with an incapacity to adjust to the referee’s idiosyncratic style, brought them undone. This was compounded by the head-scratching decision by the coaching box just minutes into the second half to replace the entire front row, including the ABs’ most in-form player. From there, it was just a comedy of schoolboy errors, including the aimless pie-chucking of Codie Taylor into potentially match-winning line outs.

All the Argentinians had to do was to give their opponents the ball and watch them implode. Correct me if I’m wrong, but haven’t we seen this movie before? Ian Foster and Sam Cane are like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, reliving the same nightmare over and over. In this case, however, the adenoidal tones of Sonny Bono on the alarm clock radio were supplied by Michael Cheika.

Murray’s character in that movie was a cynical and self-obsessed TV weatherman feeling trapped in a job and a routine that he doesn’t particularly like. So he is forced to live the same day over and over until he finds his purpose. Ultimately, after much trial and error, he realises he has choices and he has agency. He can’t keep blaming his predicament on everybody else.

In the case of the All Blacks, there are any number of external forces they can point to for their Groundhog funk. There is the coaching soap opera, of course, but also the selection controversies (wings at centres, open-sides at number eight, fullbacks at wings etc;). There is the ageing of faithful old warriors and the apparent lack of equally competent young replacements. There is the argument that Super Rugby, particularly without South Africa, is failing to prepare them for tests. There is the raiding of NZ coaching and playing IP by cashed-up NH clubs and an associated thinning of development programs at home. There is mounting concern among parents about stories of premature senility in repeatedly concussed players. Add to that stale game plans, refereeing controversies and inconsistencies and the vagaries of the rule book.

The point is there is always something externally you can blame for the state this team is in, but none on its own explains it. If you held a gun to my head and told me to boil it down to one thing, it would be a failure of leadership across the board. No-one is taking responsibility - from the NZR to the coaching set-up to the players themselves. The feeling is one of drift. Like the Mary Celeste, the All Black machine is a pilot-less ship lost at sea. And the failure of leadership is creating a crisis of confidence, of second-guessing that led to the debacle on Saturday night.

In short, no-one is in charge. And it shows.

Best AB performance of the year, arguably. They showed unusual composure and discipline. They varied their game and their defence was much improved. I thought the Jordie-Quinn centre combination was a significant step-up from what we have seen to date and the bench finally made an impact. Nothing brilliant, but given the atrocious conditions they were remarkably accurate. Only DMac’s early misses on what looked like a couple of relatively easy place-kicks let them down. The Wallabies’ backline fluency is a joy to watch but their discipline was poor, reflecting no doubt the pressure the ABs put them under. Praying for Jordan’s knee.

I have no particular inside knowledge, but I really am surprised at the consensus among Kiwi commentators - like Devlin and TJ - that Robertson is safe till the World Cup. I think there is a fairly solid case - in the early exit of Leon MacDonald, the unexplained departure of Jason Holland, the unconvincing AB wins (particularly against Scotland), the capitulation to the Boks in Wellington, the klutzy and ill disciplined loss to Argentina in Buenos Aires, and their limp performance against England together with the ritual mid-game drift and now the talk in the Liam Napier story of real dissent in the ranks - suggests something is really rotten inside that camp. Knowing David Kirk, having seen him in action at Fairfax when I worked there, he is big on governance and accountability. The mates network, winks and nudges culture and cosy Canterbury relationships behind Robertson’s initial appointment left a bad taste in the mouth of Joe Schmidt and suggests to me something off in the whole set-up. In conclusion, I really wouldn’t be surprised if Robertson is gone within months. In fact, I think the only argument against his sacking being expedited is the fact that NZR is still looking for a new CEO. My two cents worth.

So according to Rennie, Rieko Ioane gave some lip to Folau Faingaa about the Wallabies disrespecting the haka with the arrow formation. From what I can understand (and it seems hearsay upon hearsay), this comment was made on-field after the ABs scored the winning try.

Seriously? Here’s what’s going on here. It’s finals weekend in Australia for the actually popular codes. The Swans play the Cats and the Rabbitohs play the Panthers. The ARU needs eyeballs on their code and, by implication, their advertisers. So one of the spin doctors sends Rennie out to fan a confected controversy over a throwaway comment by one player to another in the heat of a game.

This happens constantly in Australia with rugby union. The hacks, desperate for column inches, are complicit with these five-minute manufactured controversies and lame attempts to fan outrage. And of course the rest of the media, including NZ’s own tumbleweed newsrooms, buy it.

It really is pathetic.

The Long, Sad Retreat

At half-time in that game, NZ looked to be well-positioned. They had had plenty of opportunities and were showing more on attack than the French. But in the second, they opened the door to their opposition through poor exits and an appalling strategy of mid-field bombs. Credit must go to the French, but it didn’t take much.

Indeed, we could see it all unravelling in slow motion. Worse, this was a movie we had viewed countless times before these past four years, or more. That it never changes can leave one doubting one’s own sanity. But the culprits are easy enough to spot.

Ever since the glory days up to 2015, NZ rugby has been keeping players (and coaches) well past their use-by dates. When he was gifted the succession by virtue of it being his turn, it quickly became apparent that Foster was not up to it. His ‘strategies’ were worked out by the other top teams years ago, but like a dog returning to its vomit he kept at it.

The corralling of new assistants in Schmidt and Ryan last year papered over the cracks for a while, but it has remained clear since that this remains Foster’s team and his vision. Knowing his contract is over after this tournament, he has clearly decided to go out playing his greatest hits to an audience that moved on years ago.

Of course, the responsibility ultimately lies with a week NZR which has repeatedly accepted Fozzy’s assurances that all was on track - against the evidence to the contrary. That allowed Foster to keep selecting people like BB, who has been on the world’s longest farewell tour.

The players, understandably, have declared their allegiance to Foster and have been repaid in turn with his fidelity, but that seems to have resulted in a lack of candour or willingness to suggest the emperor has no clothes. One wonders at what Ryan and Schmidt think.

On the field, the players look to some of the tiring old officers like Whitelock, Smith and BB to rally around the flag. But it’s hard to fight for a general whom you don’t ultimately respect and who you know is due to be decommissioned after this latest and last and bloody campaign.

Like Napoleon’s march home from Moscow, it’s a long and sad retreat and one you would hopehope would not destroy too many younger souls along the way. But I fear the damage will be too great. Unfortunately, that hope, on this grim evidence, may be forlorn.

@Dan54 My thoughts too. I knew a pasting was coming while watching the anthems. They weren’t up for this at all. And the Springboks clearly were. Mindset, attitude and mental strength are still the key underlying problems, which gets back to my earlier post about the Foster effect. I think he wants to be everyone’s mate, which is fatal for a head coach.

The Great Teacher

Who can hate the Irish? This is the country that gave us Yeats and Joyce and Wilde and Beckett, after all. A good chunk of us in this part of the world have roots in Ireland. And does anyone recall that the Irish, of all peoples, probably hate the English more than anyone?

But aside from their outsized contribution to literature, drama, music and oratory, the Irish have recently become rather good at rugby. To be sure, they have picked the brains and talent of other countries to do that, but in the process they have developed their own style, cohesion and power to the point that they have struck fear into the hearts of the traditional rugby superpowers. As that Irishman Wilde said: “Be yourself; everyone else is taken”.

Ireland’s exit in the quarter final of this World Cup is no disgrace. They just came up against an All Black side that was wounded and may have wanted it more. As well, to quote Andy Farrell in his post-match presser, these knockout games can swing on small moments - Jordie Barrett’s try-saving tackle, Sam Whitelock’s steal at the end, Sexton’s missed shots at goal. A tiny adjustment in the curtains of fate could have changed the denouement entirely.

That the ABs, to win that match, had to dig deeper than they have done in probably any other match since the 2011 final against France spoke volumes not only for their new-found resilience and self-belief but also for Ireland’s never-say-die commitment and ability to keep picking themselves up from setbacks. This Ireland team were never beaten, until the final whistle. Every drop of blood that could be shed on both sides was done so.

As for Sexton, sure he can be ornery, mouthy and hard to like at times. But is he more so than Fitzy or Coles or Marshall? Put it this way, if this 38-year-old warrior been playing in black would any of his most bitter critics here have been so quick to condemn him? And could anyone in their heart of hearts really claim that Ireland’s recent successes have not made watching rugby union a richer and more thrilling experience?

As for the All Blacks and their lame duck coach, it has been a tough few years, unquestionably, with a host of undesirable ‘firsts’ on the team resume. One could almost smell the regret seeping from the hard-nosed money men at Silver Lake. But the quarter final felt like a form of redemption and a reminder that sport, like life generally, can swing on the smallest of moments.

To quote another great Irishman in James Joyce:

“To learn, one must be humble. But life is the great teacher.”

@Jet Too many cheerleaders and former players in the NZ media and not enough actual journalists.

Come to God Moment for Surf Jesus

For All Black fans, this team offers a constantly recurring cycle of briefly raised hopes followed by crushing disappointment.

Nothing changes - the dropped balls, the pushed passes, the fundamental errors like missing touch from penalties, the brain fades and ill-discipline, the paucity of on-field leadership when heads droop amid the inevitable third-quarter meltdowns and, most galling of all, the Pollyanna rhetoric from Robertson and his mediocre coaches (‘we played some good footy out there, eh’).

Of course, the lottery that is the yellow card-red card ‘system’ is not helping, but that is an issue every team is having to contend with. We just contend with it worse than most.

Absent the sacking of the overrated Robertson and/or his deputies, together with the overdue retirement of a few of the old guard long living on past glories (you know who they are), I really can’t see what changes next year.

What I do know is that the high performance, no-excuses culture that the All Blacks once prided themselves on is now shattered. Rugby NZ ‘monetised’ the AB brand for private equity cash and ever since the marketing department and the PR spinners have been running the show - at the expense of on-field performance.

It is a shambles from top to bottom - from the factional, divided boardroom that leaks like a sieve, to coaching, to strategy, to selection, to on-field leadership, to skill development and to individual performances. The All Blacks are busted. We can all see it. The time for excuses is over. Arguably, they’ve gone backwards since 2023.

What should happen next? Ideally, heads should roll - from the top. More likely, there’ll be an official and non-transparent ‘review’ that will be largely a public relations exercise like everything else NZ Rugby does these days. Someone mentioned the possibility of tell-all books from MacDonald and Holland. Whatever, a light needs to be shone very broadly and very deeply into the mismanagement of the All Blacks brand.

In the meantime, there is simply no evidence that the coaching group have any idea what they are trying to achieve and it is that muddle-headed cluelessness that is reflected on the field of play as a rudderless AB team is reduced to gambling on individual brilliance and luck to win games. It worked against Ireland and Scotland. But England found them out and exposed their significant weaknesses.

You don’t win World Cups by failing to catch a high ball, or kick for touch, or defend on your own line, or rethink strategy when the run-on instructions prove wanting. You don’t win when you resort to tripping opponents up or going for miracle intercepts. And you don’t win when your coaching staff fail to correct the same recurring frailties in test after test and then come back with motherhood statements about ‘walking toward the pressure’.

It’s time for Surf Jesus to hang up his sandals.

From a grumpy old rugby fan comes this contribution:

The ADHD Blacks

Is Ritalin the best prescription for the compulsively hyperactive, ritually self-destructing 2024 All Blacks?

Clearly, a pattern is emerging. They spend days before each test in media interviews regurgitating vacuous self-help management nostrums about ‘walking toward the pressure’ and ‘embracing the opportunity’ - only to set their dials to full-throttle for 60 minutes on-field before running out of gas.

Perhaps we can put it down to generational change - a break-dancing, surf-riding, Gen-X guru of self-discovery indulging a bunch of over-pampered, over-stimulated, over-praised Gen-Z whizz-kids with a complete deficit of patience, grit or an ability to think on their designer-booted feet.

To me, this looks like attention-deficit, hyperactivity-disorder on the rugby field. It works in flashes as the adrenaline kicks in among the players, eager to impress teacher and add to the highlight reels. Then when the buttons they are pushing on their virtual X-Boxes no longer respond they cave into fits of ill-discipline. “I’m bored now.”

It’s hard to see any grown-up, hard-nosed thinking going on in the AB circles. Perhaps it’s another consequence of what happens when you sell out your culture to US private equity who are all about ‘brand value’ over substance.

Of course, there are the real, practical problems facing the squad - the vacuum left by the departure or retirement of the likes of Whitelock, Retallick, Aaron Smith and Mo’unga, the forced reliance on old warriors past their use-by dates, the absence of impact players off the bench, questions over Scott Barrett’s on-field leadership, questions about poor conditioning and late game fades.

But beyond all that is a suspicion that apart from motivational New Age nostrums about self-expression, there really is little going on below Razor’s sun-bleached locks. If there were, why is his team throwing the same tantrums in every test? It is becoming so predictable - his charges race out of the blocks like men possessed, build a handy lead and then blow it in a flurry of low-percentage miracle passes, Hail Mary high-balls to nowhere and brain-dead ill-discipline.

Are boots applied to backsides anymore, or are the grieving miscreants ‘counselled’ and denied their PlayStations for a day?

Nurse?

@kev It also ensures that only one style of play dominates in World Cups. The Springboks individually have fantastic skills and are capable of so much more than that. But Erasmus, justifiably cynical about how rugby is run, has developed techniques to squeeze out games in knock-out competitions by playing very little actual rugby. And that’s because he knows the game’s rule-makers and power centres have engineered it to produce an attritional battle that caters to the Northern Hemisphere mindset. Watch a game with a non-rusted on and see how they react to the increasingly stop-start and judicial-dominated nature of the event. Genuine curiosity at first gives way to quiet bemusement, then dismissal. If someone like me now dreads watching international rugby at this level (waiting for the inevitable voice of God from up in the box directing the referee to another card) I’m pretty sure that more footloose people looking to spend their (increasingly limited) discretionary income are going to tune out completely and look somewhere else for entertainment. Because that’s what this game is at the end of the day - entertainment. And if it doesn’t entertain beyond you few diehards that like watching scrum penalties, kicks for the corner and rolling mauls all day, it’s going to die a slow painful death.

Razor’s Ledge

Scott Robertson, lauded as the likely saviour of a wilting All Black brand, is now himself staring over a precipice, one pointing to not only the ABs’ first loss at Eden Park in more than three decades but its surrender of the Bledisloe Cup after 22 years.

After the ABs’ now typically nervy, formless and gormless performance in their 29-23 loss to the Pumas in Buenos Aires, questions will surely be asked about the calibre of Robertson’s leadership and the credentials of his coaching staff, beyond Jason Ryan.

Typically in rugby forums after AB losses, there is debate over whether this player or that should have been selected. And there is certainly a case that the man they call Razor has been too shy of wielding a sharp instrument of his own.

But it is hard now to dismiss the conclusion that the disjointed funk the All Blacks are in has more to do with the coaching and game-plan than to individual players themselves. The clunkiness of the backline play, the incompetence under the high ball, the passivity of the defence and, most of all, the chronic ill-discipline (leading to THREE yellow cards in this test) points to something fundamentally wrong in the coaching.

The contrast with the Wallabies’ gutsy, never-say-die performances against South Africa in Ellis Park and Capetown is striking. Joe Schmidt has put together a team that clearly has a strong sense of how it wants to play and he has designed a game plan around the opposition, not to match some mythical ‘this is our DNA’ brand marketing ideal. And the Wallabies, if anything, have been even more decimated by injuries than the All Blacks.

Schmidt has given young untried wingers like Jorgensen and Toole a chance. Robertson has stuck doggedly to Reece, who can be trusted on to deliver at least one brain explosion per game, and to Ioane, who now looks devoid of confidence after his disastrous shift back to left wing.

In fact, the entire backline, built around the well-past-his-best Beauden Barrett, still looks tentative, nervy and so afraid of making a mistake that it immediately falls into a hole of its own making. Out of ideas, it constantly kicks prized possession away with little intent. As a spectator, one is left wondering who is steering this ship. As it is, the team looks like a big black Mary Celeste, adrift and deserted.

There is a view, propounded by NZ Herald rugby writer Gregor Paul, that Razor has fallen victim to the Rugby NZ marketing machine, who want the All Blacks to match the Harlem Globetrotters brand image of frantic, fast rugby designed to keep the private equity owners happy and win over new global audiences. Certainly, if you read Ian Foster’s recent biography (ghost-written by Paul) this brand-marketing-tail-wagging-the-dog disease was creeping in when he was coach and was a big part of the white-anting against him that led to Razor’s early appointment - even before the 2023 World Cup had been played. And it was Foster’s treatment that played a part in Joe Schmidt taking up his appointment with the Wallabies.

But internal politics aside, it also may come down to the fact that Razor and, particularly, his assistants Jason Holland and Scott Hansen are just not very good – strategically inept, bad at communication and man management, lacking innovation, poor selectors and, most of all, so worried about losing that they are not installing a winning ethos or chancing their arm on a new generation of players.

As a result, the team look defeated in spirit, out of confidence and now standing on a narrow ledge over a very deep chasm, with Razor himself out the front.

Rugby is fucked. Too many laws. Too many pedantic piston wristed gibbons making decisions. Just fuck off. This is farcical. It is a broken game. People are not going to watch this shit.

Does anyone seriously believe the ABs have a chance next week in Perth, given what we saw at Eden Park in Bledisloe I and given the Wallabies will have Valetini and Skelton back? It seems virtually certain the win/lose cycle will continue.

I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling exasperated at the mediocrity of the selection policies and coaching quality of this regime under Scott Robertson. While the team last night had a few good moments, particularly in the first quarter, a lot of that was on the Wallabies’ passive defence. And of course, the ABs got a HUGE hand-up from the incompetent Italian ref in the second half.

With two seasons into Robertson’s rocky reign and one test to go before the Northern Hemisphere tour (who’s feeling nervous about Scotland and Wales?), the ABs still lack cohesion and confidence, while showing no sign they know what game they are trying to play.

Sure, they were better under the high ball at Eden Park and their set-piece was solid, but after the debacle in Wellington against the Boks, they needed to show more than basic competence. There was no fire or energy or focus there. They looked, yet again, like an ADHD teen on PlayStation , doing just enough to win the next round before they go back to the fridge.

A few weeks back, we were enthusing over the embarrassment of front row riches. Now, Lomax looks busted, Williams has still to fire, and we pray that Taylor doesn’t get injured again because after him, nobody can throw straight. As for the loose forwards, the constant chopping and changing there epitomises the lack of coherence or vision in the coaching. It was only a few weeks are go we were saying, ‘yes the backline is crap but at least Ryan has the forwards firing.’ But who can say that with any confidence at this point?

This team is mediocre, relying on its stars, and should have easily put away a Wallaby outfit missing several first choice players in Valetini, Skelton, Lolesio, Wright, and Kellaway. Thank heavens for Roigard last night, though what are the odds on the keystone cops in the coaching panel coaching him out of form as well?

The Wallabies are ranked, what, number six in the world? They have more than their own quota of journeymen. But they play with so much more confidence, intent and self-belief. The difference between them and the ABs is the coaching. Surely, the NZR can see that by now??

I don’t see what changes from here unless there is a clearout of the clueless and incoherent showpony Robertson and his mediocre, yes-man mates. As someone observed last night, the Bledisloe I ‘victory’ just represented a sticking plaster being placed over a gaping wound.

It could get really ugly in Perth.