All Black fan Tim Cronin from rugbyshirts.net wasn’t 100% happy with the win on Saturday…
The All Blacks kicked off their Championship campaign and their bid to retain the Bledisloe Cup with a 27-19 win in Sydney on Saturday night, but I can’t help but think that they let the Wallabies off the hook a bit.
When Mike Tyson was in his prime it was said that some (if not most) of his opponents had already lost the fight before the opening bell sounded. Standing in the opposite corner, black trunks and boots with no socks, a chiselled physique designed purely for inflicting pain and a hungry, menacing glare on his face, Tyson was simply so intimidating that his opponent lost all self-belief, and at best harboured thoughts of survival, but never really of victory.
The Wallabies looked like that as the opening match of the Championship got underway in Sydney on Saturday night. Sure, they landed a lucky punch early on when Sonny Bill Williams (New Zealand’s own Heavyweight boxing champ as it happens!) threw an ill-advised forward pass, but they still looked to be shaking at the knees as play restarted and the black machine, like Mike Tyson in a rugby shirt, began rolling forward.
Such was Australia’s lack of confidence that they started playing ‘catch-up footy’ with 65 minutes to go. They so clearly lacked the belief that they could beat the All Blacks in a stand-up battle that they began running it from their own goal-line, throwing obscenely bad passes and making cringe-worthy decisions when they were only trailing by 10 points.
If the All Blacks had have played somewhere near their real capabilities they could have crushed the Wallabies, ruining their confidence completely for the rest of the season. The Aussies played so poorly in the opening half hour of the Sydney test that the All Blacks could have led by 30 at the break, and gone on to canter past the half-century mark. Had that happened, Robbie Deans’ task would have been insurmountable. They would have travelled to New Zealand this weekend knowing that the result was a fore-gone conclusion, would have suffered another heavy defeat, and would have struggled to win a game throughout the tournament, even against Los Pumas.
But the All Blacks weren’t on their game. Yes, Alain Rolland was super-proud of his new whistle and grabbed any excuse to show us how loud he could blow it, but he was at least consistent. The All Blacks simply failed to execute with any accuracy.
I’m not saying that they should have been in tip-top form in their first outing since the Super XV; I’m just saying they could have well and truly crushed the will of an opponent who is notoriously resilient when times get tough.
The Australians are too smart to kid themselves in to think they were anything other than poor on Saturday night, but the fact that they were within 5 points of the All Blacks with just 5 minutes remaining will give them some heart. The World Champion’s inability to ‘finish-off’ their foe in the clinical fashion we have come to associate them with gave the Aussies an inexplicable sniff of victory on Saturday, and the wily Wallabies will take some motivation from the fact that they played so badly yet could well have won the match.
Captain McCaw’s decision to take the three-points on offer at the death, rather than simply kicking the ball out and letting the final whistle blow, did show the killer instinct you’d expect from the All Blacks, with Dan Carter’s successful kick denying the Wallabies a bonus-point. But while a win away from home is always gold when the Southern Hemisphere’s premier tournament takes place, it’s also nice, in this instance anyway, to kick your opponent when they down, and I think the All Blacks missed a huge opportunity to do just that on the weekend.
Tim Cronin is a Rugby fan and full time writer based in the rubble of the Canterbury Crusaders’ home town, Christchurch. Tim is a part of the Pukeko Sports team, where his role is watching, writing, and complaining about all things rugby.
