The fallout from the All Blacks loss continues

After another lacklustre All Black performance on Sunday morning, the opinion pages of the major papers and radio talkback have been running hot. Once you get past the “we never used to lose” rhetoric and the calls for the sacking of Graham Henry there are some people out there with some very good points.

Marc Hinton at Rugby Heaven was particularly harsh

This was so bad it was almost embarrassing. We awaited the All Black response in Durban this morning, but instead all we got was more of the same muddling mess that has marked their last fortnight in South Africa.If ever there was a vivid example of a team badly out of form and confidence it was the 80 abysmal minutes put in by Graham Henry’s All Blacks at Durban’s King’s Park this morning.

They gifted this win to a very, very good Springboks side that needs no such favours. Too many mistakes; too many bad decisions; too much indiscipline.

All Blacks fans must have been tearing their hair out watching this. Where were the promised improvements? Where was the response from Bloemfontein’s disappointment a week earlier?

Instead it was just more of the same old rubbish.

Indeed, it looked like a continuation of the Bloemfontein outing.

David Leggat at the NZ Herald laments the perceived lack of effort and accuracy:

It wasn’t so long ago that the All Blacks were a byword for rugby efficiency.

They might not necessarily have been the most scintillating team in the international game, did not routinely produce the eye-catching sort of rugby to make the soul soar or lift the fans out of their seats.

But they didn’t lose often, mistakes could be counted on one hand and they possessed huge mental resilience, which could get them out of the occasional jam. Home or away, they were the most daunting proposition in the game.

The days of near total dominance are long gone. But even so, it is legitimate to question when the last time was that a full-strength All Black team produced rugby of the dire quality of Durban yesterday.

Duncan Johnstone points out that the All Blacks need a major salvage operation in the next few games if they are to defend their Tri-Nations crown.

The All Blacks’ ears will be burning on their long flight back from a disastrous two weeks in South Africa.The public and the media finally appear unanimous – that was a very ordinary All Blacks effort overnight in Durban. It was astonishingly inept in so many ways.

In fact for most of the match Graham Henry’s team hardly resembled an All Blacks team. It was the most un-All Blacks like performance since Henry’s 2004 side copped consecutive and comprehensive losses in Australia and South Africa.

There’s something of a theme to these articles, that this recent All Black team aren’t actually playing like All Black team should.

Daniel Gilhooly comments about how the All Blacks poor discipline has cost them in their last two outing and how they seem to get on the wrong side of the referee.

The All Blacks endured an uncomfortable relationship with Welsh referee Nigel Owens but can only blame themselves for not capitalising on a numerical advantage during yesterday’s 31-19 test rugby loss to South Africa.

For the second successive test, the All Blacks paid dearly for indiscipline.

They were caned 13-7 by Owens in the penalty count, which follows the 12-7 tally against them when Ireland’s Alain Rolland controlled last week’s test in Bloemfontein.

Northern Hemisphere rugby writer Peter Bills points out that even though there are positive signs from Dan Carter, it will take more than his return to right the good ship All Blacks

If New Zealanders believe a single lifeboat named The Daniel W. Carter can rescue their floundering All Blacks ship, then they need to think again.

Not even Carter with a magic wand could transform this shambles of a side into a coherent force. Some major surgery and a significant rethink will clearly be required to do that.

The question is, are there other players in New Zealand able to make the step-up to test match rugby? Is what we are seeing pretty much what there is and no more? If so, 2009 looks like turning into Graham Henry’s “annus horribilis”.

Looks like this could be a very long year for Graham Henry and a bumper year for opinion columnists.

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The The fallout from the All Blacks loss continues by Hamish McBrearty, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.