Sports After Dark

After the All Blacks crashed to their earliest exit ever in a World Cup, the calls for blood letting and the search for a scapegoat has already begun in New Zealand. But the blame rests entirely with the players.

This was supposed to be the All Blacks’ year, the year they finally delivered on all the promise they have shown, the year they finally bring home the World Cup, the year they end 20 years of frustration. Clearly nobody told the French.

Perhaps it is the hallmark of a genius that everybody thinks he is mad until he is proven correct. This was certainly the case for French coach Bernard Laporte when he selected Lionel Beauxis and Damien Traille to play a tactical kicking game against the All Blacks. Australia tried that in 2005 and were carved up by the All Blacks’ back three, so New Zealand fans were rubbing their hands in anticipation of another demolition.

Unfortunately for them, the All Blacks fell straight into Laporte’s perfectly baited trap. Instead of sticking to their own game plan, the All Blacks attempted to play the French at their own game which resulted in them needlessly kicking away possession.

At half time the All Blacks switched to plan B, a forwards based game, but Laporte’s team also had a plan B: Defend, create a turn over and counterattack. There was no plan C and it all fell apart for the All Blacks in the second half as teamwork broke down and players tried to win the game on their own.

The New Zealand public have, to a large extent, taken the loss in their stride but there are still remnants of the old knocking machine who are calling for heads to roll and looking for people to blame. The list of things being blamed is a long one: Referee Wayne Barnes, coach Graham Henry, assistants Steve Hansen and Wayne Smith, the NZRU for allowing the reconditioning process, the silver jerseys, no Hayley Westenra to sing the national anthem, George W. Bush (it seems fashionable to blame him for everything these days).

However, the one group of people who should bear the brunt of the blame are conspicuous by their absence: the players themselves. The warning signs were there for all to see for a long time. The dropped balls, the poor passing, the inability to break the line were all on show during the Tri-Nations but everyone seemed to expect everything to magically click into place when the World Cup started. Even during pool matches against rugby minnows the lack of accuracy amongst the players was obvious, but nobody said anything, instead choosing to believe that this would all go away once the chips were down.

Like so many others, I got sucked in by the hype, assuming the All Blacks would win each game before it was played and focussing on the next one, never really giving their current opponents the respect that they deserved. I can handle the All Blacks being beaten by a better team on the day, and despite all the rhetoric going around, they were. The simple fact is they did not play well enough to win that game, and even if they stole victory in the dying moments, I doubt they could have beaten England the following week.

So once again the team has failed in their quest to win the World Cup, but they should not be made into pariahs just for that. It is time for New Zealanders to accept the fact that we will not win them all.

This team played one of their worst games of the season against a French team playing their best. That sort of thing happens in sports. If you want to blame someone, blame Laporte. He clearly didn’t get the memo that this was the All Blacks’ World Cup.

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The And so the autopsy of the All Blacks’ campaign begins by Hamish McBrearty, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.