Respect is always the sweeter when it comes hard-earned, and when it belatedly comes to pass in the country where rugby is the ultimate religion and has invariably provided the benchmark for all others. By way of example, after weeks of TAB’s derogatory if tongue-in-cheek promotion campaign, a billboard in the departure area of Auckland airport simply read: “You’re a class act Ireland. See you in France.”
For all the boorishness of some Kiwi fans in the Forsyth Barr Stadium in Dunedin and in the Sky Stadium in Wellington, as in the fallout from Ireland’s World Cup win over the Wallabies in Eden Park in 2011, everywhere you go locals invariably recognise the Irish accent and offer fulsome congratulations, as if we’d been playing!
The New Zealand Herald, albeit through its most balanced writer, Liam Napier, simply said it had to be acknowledged that Andy Farrell and co have constructed “a world-class team”.
As Johnny Sexton considered this series success in the light of history, while also wondering if such a three-test series like this will ever take place again, the thought occurred that World Rugby might be doing away with something very special when the new annual Nations League comes into being.
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This would do away with tours such as this, or similar ventures such as those by England, Wales and Scotland to Australia, South Africa and Argentina. That all three opening Tests were won by the home side before the Europeans drew level by completing a historic quartet of series-equalling wins over the southern hemisphere big four to set up a quartet of deciders.
Just as they reached their zenith, World Rugby are about to scrap summer tours by the Europeans to the southern hemisphere. From 2024 onwards, they will be replaced by three-test tours in two or three countries, with lots more plane-hopping, which may also prove less attractive to visiting supporters.
Here in New Zealand, a three-test, five-match tour has never felt more meaningful, not by a long shot. Nor, as the rivalry and familiarity has intensified, has it felt more intriguing. They are one of the last vestiges of the amateur era, and something of a unique concept.
[ New Zealand series win seals Ireland’s deserved spot atop world rankingsOpens in new window ]
Introducing a layered Nations League in football made some sense. It gave value to what had become somewhat discredited friendlies. But unlike soccer, summer or autumnal series never really felt like friendlies and Ireland’s latest tour of New Zealand certainly never felt like it fell into that category.
This applies as much here as it does at home. New Zealand rugby is reeling. They can’t really believe what they have seen. Ireland, little old Ireland as Farrell put it and where rugby is not even one of the top three team sports, have just beaten the almighty All Blacks in a Test series in their national game and on their own soil. Not just once, but twice in the space of eight days, and fully deserved wins too.
New Zealand rugby knows it, and are now left puzzled as to how it happened. It seems as if their whole system is left scratching their collective heads. It’s as if the computer has broken down.
This is also after the Ineos group, the British multinational chemicals company, signed a six-year sponsorship deal with New Zealand Rugby last year. SAP, New Zealand’s first-ever major technology partner, have also signed a multiyear deal with the All Blacks. Most of all, there was the much heralded €120 million deal with the US private equity firm Silver Lake in return for 5 to 8 per cent of NZR’s commercial revenue.
This was supposed to be the dawning of a new era, of further extending the All Blacks’ dominance of the game.
In all of this, it’s worth noting a few cracks in the pavement. Whereas in Ireland all four provinces are supported with a huge sense of identity and passion, in New Zealand less so. For pretty much all rugby fans, the All Blacks are their number one team.
But as often happens to the best, New Zealand had become spoiled by the All Blacks. From their last 2011 World Cup warm-up game against Tonga until the 2019 World Cup semi-final defeat by England, the All Blacks played 112 matches, won 99, drew four and lost only nine.
This equated to a 91.6 per cent wining rate ratio and featured some of the all-time great All Blacks such as Richie McCaw, Kieran Read, Dan Carter, Ma’a Nonu and more winning back-to-back World Cups. Even by the law of averages this was always going to be tough to maintain.
Since that defeat by England, the All Blacks have played 24 games with Ian Foster as head coach, winning just 16, drawing one and now losing seven, including four of their last five games. They’ve won just four of their last nine Tests, which includes the USA and a severely depleted Wales.
In truth, the cracks in the All Blacks edifice began with that semi-final defeat by England at the 2019 World Cup. The feeling that they could roll with the punches à la Ali in Zaire against George Foreman and spring from the ropes was seductive. But the All Blacks had begun to believe in their own hype, in their own ability to conjure tries out of little without controlling or imposing themselves on games, as they did in the pool opener against the eventual winners from South Africa.
[ Andy Farrell: ‘That’s the hardest thing to do in rugby by a country mile’Opens in new window ]
In both defeats by Ireland and France last November, and in all three Tests against Ireland, the All Blacks have had wonderful purple patches. But, lulled by their undoubted X-factor, it’s as if they’ve forgotten to construct sustained 80-minute performances on the solid foundations of set-piece, breakdown and defence as well.
So Ian Foster is copping it much like John Hart and John Mitchell before him. Maybe a change would help but the problems for New Zealand rugby and the All Blacks run deeper. Even they were always going to struggle to replace generational players like McCaw and Carter.
In any case, continuing dominance of the sport by the All Blacks would not have been healthy. Them coming back to a rising pack is no bad thing. Ireland single-handedly emulating the Wallabies and South Africa by inflicting back-to-back home defeats on the All Blacks for the first time since 1998, a more fluid world ranking, Japan into the top 10, Georgia beating Italy, even Chile beating the USA to qualify for the World Cup, these are all healthy signs. With the prospect of the Pacific Islands also being revived by the Joe Schmidt inspired change in eligibility, this is a timely period of international turbulence, relatively speaking, 14 months out from a World Cup, after so many years of a fairly settled global pecking order.
Instead, as things stand, the country noted for Guinness, the craic, U2 and Riverdance, is number one in the world rankings. We’re not supposed to be doing things like this. But let’s enjoy it while it lasts!
Praise be the new world order.
