The Wallabies folded early in their Tokyo test with the All Blacks on Saturday giving them their seventh straight loss against New Zealand. In the past 2 years Australia has won just 3 out of 14 games against Tri-Nations opponents. Only 1 of those wins came in the current season and their performance has gone from bad to worse. Last year they crossed the line 16 times, this year only 9 times.
As a dyed-in-the-wool All Black supporter, I find myself strangely unsettled by this turn of events. I would like to think Australia’s demise has been the consequence of an All Black ascendency, but it hasn’t. The ABs are playing their worst rugby in the Graham Henry era.
No, the Wallabies have been responsible for their own plummeting performance. To find what is rotten in Australia one must look within the camp.
I have invested several minutes of thoughtful analysis on this issue and have identified the root cause behind this decline. In two words: Robbie Deans. Continue reading →
The All Blacks ended their Tri-Nations season with the biggest winning margin of the series defeating the Wallabies 33-6 tonight in Wellington. It was a comprehensive victory with the ABs dominating both halves of the test match. The Australians looked good for about 8 minutes then faded as the game wore on. In sharp contrast with their brilliant performance against the Boks a fortnight ago, tonight they had little discipline and no clue.
Matt Giteau, where were you?
Several players stood tall for NZ tonight. Dan Carter turned in another near-perfect kicking performance (6 from 7). Jimmy Cowan had a solid night behind messy scrums. Nonu’s try was magnificent. Tialata and Rokocoko both played better than they have all season. Continue reading →
In 90 seconds last night the ABs retained the Bledisloe Cup and did something that no other team has yet managed to do in this year’s 3N – win away from home.
It was the most exciting game of rugby played in the southern hemisphere in a long time. The ABs dominated offensively yet had great difficulty putting points on the board thanks to the tireless Wallaby defense. The breakthrough came in the dying minutes (see above). Even then the Wallabies had not one but two more chances had victory. Thanks to Ben Alexander’s fumble a few metres from the line, it wasn’t to be.
This is the Wallabies third loss on the trot. In the last 12 months they have lost 7 of 14. Lose next week in Perth and Robbie Deans (currently enjoying a 60% success rate) will be the least successful Wallaby coach in recent memory.
By the same token, in what has been the worst year of his coaching tenure, Graham Henry is only at 57%, well below his career average of 84%.
One thing both coaches and teams can be happy about is at least the Springboks didn’t win!
It will be a long flight home for Graham Henry and the All Blacks. They went to the Republic hoping to get at least one win and instead they got comprehensively beaten two different ways. There was clear evidence of a change in tactics in the second game played last night in Durban, but the result was the same.
For the first time in Henry’s five years as coach, the ABs have lost three test matches in a single year – and the season has only just started. The Wallabies will smell blood and the next match in Sydney will be hard to win. Lose that and we will have a bona fide losing streak of three on the trot. The last time the All Blacks lost three or more in a row was 1998.
Will the ABs rebound or is this just the beginning of the end?
To answer this question we need to understand the three reasons behind the AB’s rapid demise. Continue reading →
Yesterday I happened upon the ABs training in So Kon Po. Today my wife and daughter discovered them at our local jogging track in Causeway Bay.
Back in June we saw the team training at Rugby Park in Christchurch. Then it was cold and there were 3,000 raving fans on the sidelines. Today it was warm and there were fewer than 50 spectators. One thing I never thought I’d see was mighty All Blacks tucking into popsicles after their workout. But as I said, it was a warm morning. Continue reading →
Look who’s playing in my back-yard! Last night coming back from dinner my wife ran into three sorry-looking Wallabies. This morning I discovered the ABs training at So Kon Po Recreation ground, just a few minutes walk from our flat. Continue reading →
So Stephen Donald finally gets his chance to show his qualities and is starting at No. 10 this Saturday with Dan Carter moved to inside centre. This is the same combination that turned the game around at Suncorp Stadium a few weeks ago. Matt Giteau reckons the move “could backfire.” Yeah, and theoretically it “could snow” this weekend in Hong Kong.
Giteau’s shortsightedness is no doubt a result of dapper Dan’s dazzling displays. But one thing few non-Kiwis realize, is that there is more than one quality play-maker in New Zealand. As we have argued before in these posts, Stephen Donald is a super-star in the making. The only reason the world has not yet heard of him is because he’s been playing under-study to the greatest pivot currently playing the game.
Donald has all the attributes that make for a great No.10 – he’s cunning, a phenomenal kicker, and he’s a fearless competitor. He’s played just five tests for the ABs and his winning record at the national level is 100%. (Incidentally, Richie McCaw also enjoys a 100% winning record this season.) In the 3N decider last month he showed he can work well with Dan Carter on his outside. Together the two of them helped turn a 10 point deficit into a dramatic victory.
At Brisbane Donald showed he had BMT. On Saturday he will be rewarded with his first start. The forecast here in Hong Kong shows it will be humid and 29. Could this be “Brisbane Part II” for the Waikato star?
Four of the five experts on our panel have picked the All Blacks to retain the Tri-Nations and Bledisloe Cups this weekend. Unsurprisingly, our dissenter is the solitary Wallaby supporter in the group, but even he thinks it will be close.
The Tri-Nations tournament gives southern hemisphere bragging rights to the winner. New Zealand has won the 3N trophy nine times in the 13 year history of the tournament and is on a 5 year winning streak. Australia has won in twice (in 2000 and 2001) and so has South Africa (in 1998 and 2004).
The Bledisloe Cup is fiercely contested by Australia and New Zealand only. In the 77 year history of this cup NZ has won 37 times and Australia 12 times. A win this Saturday will also give the All Blacks the Bledisloe Cup for the seventh year in a row.
The Tri-Nations final will be played in Brisbane which is noteworthy, since most of Australia’s home games have been played in Sydney. The two teams have played in Brisbane only twice since the mid-1990s and NZ won both matches. But in their last ten contests played on Australian soil, the Wallabies have had the advantage winning six times, most recently in Sydney two months ago.
An interesting wrinkle in this match could be the South African referee Jonathan Kaplan. No friend to NZ, Kaplan was one of the two touch judges in New Zealand’s controversial loss to France at the last RWC. After that game an IRB referees’ selection panel concluded that both touch judges had missed a number of French infringements including a forward pass that led to the match-winning try. Kaplan was given no further games to referee at that tournament.
In their last four games Robbie Deans’s Wallabies have won twice and lost twice. In their two wins they out-scored their opponents by one try in each game. In their last two defeats they were outscored 12 tries to 2. In other words, when the Wallabies have won it’s been close, but when they’ve lost it’s been a thumping.
In 12 days time the Wallabies face the All Blacks at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane.
In their last four games Graham Henry’s All Blacks have also won twice and lost twice. In their two wins the All Blacks out-scored their opponents 7 tries to 1, but in their two losses they were only outscored by a try in each game. In other words, when the ABs have lost, it’s been close, but when they’ve won it has been in emphatic style.
This year both teams have scored nearly the same number of tries (23 for the ABs, 22 for the Wallabies). But the Kiwis have been far better on defense letting in just 13 tries compared to 21for the Wallabies.
Guess what the Wallabies need to be working on this week?
In this Olympic season of champs and chumps, it seems appropriate to ask “who is the world’s best rugby team at the present time?” We’ve considered the stats and trophy cabinets and come up with five contenders for The World’s Best. Take a look at our short-list, then cast your vote below.
Yes, South Africa are RWC-winners – double-winners no less – and on Saturday they showed the Argies a thing or two about putting points on the board. But the team travels poorly and the RWC win is oh so last year. Significantly, they have an unfortunate habit of losing to top tier sides such as New Zealand and Australia. The Springboks were famously left out of the 1987 World Cup, which the All Blacks won. Bok fans like to believe that if their team been allowed to play, New Zealand would not have won that tournament. But the fact is the Boks have played the ABs 37 times since 1987 and have lost 70% of those matches. They have also lost most of their matches to Australia over the same period. The Springboks are undoubtedly the best team in South Africa, but as for the World’s Best? You be the judge.
The mighty New Zealand All Blacks currently hold the trophies for all the tournaments in which they compete, save one – the RWC. Their inability to win World Cups is well-known and a mark against them being judged World’s Best. Further, their grip on the Bledisloe and Tri-Nations Cups looked decidedly shaky a few weeks ago when they were given a real going over by an unproven Wallaby team. Yet they remain the most successful team – in terms of win-loss ratios – in the history of the sport.
Australiacurrently holds both the Cook Cup (which means they’re better than England) and the Mandela Plate (which means they’re better than South Africa). Like South Africa, they are double-RWC winners. They have also won two-thirds of their matches over the past decade. But their best claim to The World’s Best is that they are All Black-killers. I’m not saying they have a winning record against New Zealand – no team does – but the Wallabies have the least-worst losing record. They have only lost 52% of their matches against the ABs over the past 10 years. This compares with losing records of 68% for South Africa, 71% for France, 82% for England, and 100% for Wales.
The Welsh hold the 6N trophy which suggests they’re the top team in Europe in 2008. But their performance is often erratic. Their last Grand Slam came in 2005. Between then and now they were horrible, finishing fifth in 2006 and 2007. Even Italy did better than Wales last year. Even Italy! Plus, the Welsh are pretty hopeless against the SANZAR teams. In the last 20 years they’ve managed only two wins against 37 losses against 3N teams.
USA are the current Olympic champions, having beaten France 17-3 in 1924, the last time rugby was contested on the Olympic stage. In fact, the Americans have the best Olympic record of any nation winning gold in both 1920 and 1924. But since then it’s been all downhill. They managed to scrape a narrow 3-point win over Japan in the 1987 RWC, but that was about it. It’s been losses ever since. But you never know, 2008 could yet be their year.
The first half of the 2008 Tri-Nations series draws to a close with the All Blacks storming back from the brink. Their emphatic four-try win over the Wallabies tonight in Auckland was a remarkable about-face after last week’s melt-down in Sydney.
(After last Saturday All Black fans need a little cheering up. It’s rare indeed when Microsoft makes me laugh but I had a cackle putting this together.)
One of my favourite wings is a bloke by the name of “Journal Photo.” At least this is how Microsoft Speech Recognition interprets me when I try to pronounce “Joe Rocokoco.”
Silly me. I’ll never learn. I actually thought Microsoft’s speech programme might do what it promises to do, but after completing an extensive training profile it still can’t distinguish “Jimmy Cowan” from “Jimmy comma.”
Yet, it tries, and some of the results it comes up with are quite amusing. Greg Somerville, for instance, becomes the “Great sum of all,” which is kind of fitting.
I tried to imagine what would happen if Graham Henry (or “Grimly”) announced his team selections via Microsoft’s speech recognition programme. We might end up with a team like this…
No doubt the knives will be out in New Zealand this week as they usually are when the All Blacks lose a game that they should’ve won. But before we run the team out of town on a rail, let’s take a minute to celebrate an unprecedented home winning streak five years long! Continue reading →
A chilling photo was circulated in several NZ and Australian papers yesterday. It featured the new Wallaby coach Robbie Deans shaking hands with the current Wallaby captain Stirling Mortlock. The two of them are smiling in a conspiratorial way. It’s not hard to imagine what they might be thinking:
Mortlock: “Finally we get a coach who’ll pick players on form. This is Australia’s year to shine.”
Deans: “I’ll show the NZRU that they hired the wrong guy, just see if I don’t.”
In my recent travels I’ve spoken to numerous kiwis about Robbie’s departure and, surprise, surprise, no one thinks good will come of it. The nightmare scenario is that the Robbie Deans-coached Wallabies will beat the Graham Henry-coached All Blacks in the 2011 RWC tournament in front of an NZ crowd. Kiwis are sensitive enough to World Cup omens and Robbie’s crossing of the ditch rates as a bad one.
Of course it could all be part of a cunning plan by the NZRU to ensure victory by planting a Trojan horse in the Wallaby camp. That’s a nice thought. If that were the case we might see some interesting coaching decisions being made, such as:
–Wendell Sailor getting signed to play for Australia
–Matt Dunning playing full-back
–Dan Vickerman being asked to join the cheerleading squad
–and Eddie Jones being brought back as a specialist consultant, or better yet, Rudolph Streuli
The Super 14 season is history and it’s now time to hand out the black jerseys. For the benefit of non-NZ readers, we’ve pasted below the 26 players Graham Henry has picked for his All Black squad. (His list is fairly similar to the squad we picked two weeks back). The team facing Ireland will be named on Tuesday.
About this time of the year I pick my preferred All Black team on the basis of performance in the Super 14. I usually stick my list on the fridge where everyone can see it and have a good laugh. “You picked him?!”
I like to take a few risks which is why Anthony Tuitavake is on my team this year. If you haven’t seen him play, think of what you’d get if you crossed Christian Cullen with Ma’a Nonu. (And no, I don’t mean an injury-prone, out-of-control prima donna.) Tuitavake has great pace and the ability to get defenders going in two directions. He’s a bit of a nimbler version of Isaia Toeava. (Note: Last year I picked Isaia Toeava who had a fantastic Super 14 season but then wilted on the international stage.)
I don’t necessarily pick the best player for each spot, but the best for the larger combinations that exist in my head. If you don’t like my choices, feel free to send in your own choice. Just hit the “Leave a reply” button below.
15. Mils Muliaina (reserve: Leon McDonald)
14. Sitiveni Sivivatu (Lelia Masaga)
13. Anthony Tuitavake (Sean Maitland)
12. Stephen Brett (Conrad Smith)
11. Josevata Rokocoko (David Smith)
10. Dan Carter (Stephen Donald)
9. Brendon Leonard (Andy Ellis)
8. Rodney So’oialo (Mose Tuiali’i)
7. Richie McCaw (Chris Masoe)
6. Jerry Collins (Kieran Read)
5. Ali Williams (Ross Filipo)
4. Jason Eaton (Brad Thorn)
3. Greg Somerville (?)
2. Andrew Hore (Keven Mealamu)
1. Tony Woodcock (John Afoa)
Notable omissions:
Isaia Toeava – long on potential, short on BMT
Neemia Tialata – too slow and a bit over-rated
Piri Weepu – I love Weepu, but he’s too inconsistent for the test stage
Nic Evans – he’s good, but Stephen Donald is a match-winner and deserves a chance
Ma’a Nonu – he’s a great tackle-breaker, but he takes too much on himself; he doesn’t work well with others
Casey Laulala – he just hasn’t been as brilliant as he was last year
anybody from the Highlanders – I was actually thinking of Jimmy Cowan until a week ago
This dream team consists of 5 Crusaders players, 4 Hurricances, 3 Blues and 3 Chiefs.
(It seems our previous column about Burger’s suspension shook rugby officialdom for they’ve since reduced his sentence to two weeks. Let’s hope someone important reads this one because another travesty of justice has just been committed.)
Ask any Kiwi which is more important – the Bledisloe Cup or the World Cup – and I guarantee there will be a pause before the answer. The Kiwi’s have a fundamental belief in the right to possess the Bledisloe Cup that is on a par with an American’s views about Manifest Destiny. What makes the Bledisloe so special? Because he who holds it has Trans-Tasman bragging rights. “Sure, England may be the World Champs, but at least we’re better than Australia and that’s the main thing.”
It is quite possible the Aussies don’t feel as strongly about this, but then that’s because they’ve not had the Cup very much. In the history of Trans-Tasman rivalry, New Zealand has won the cup 35 times to Australia’s 12. Five of those Aussie wins fell in the period between 1998 and 2003. Interestingly, right after Australia won the cup in 1998, the contest was changed to a two-match format which meant the team holding the cup only had to win one match to retain the cup. This made life a little bit easier for the Wallabies and a little bit harder for the All Blacks. In 1999, 2000, and 2001, both teams won a game a-piece which was mighty frustrating for AB fans. Even worse was the fact that the Aussies made a habit of winning their games in the 80th minute. Our pleas for the contest to return to a 3-match format fell on deaf ears.
The drought finally broke in 2002 and we won the Cup back. Now it was the Wallabies who were begging for a third match. Well next year they’re getting it. This is great news for the Wallabies and great news for rugby fans in general. But tell me this. Who was the yahoo in the NZRFU who agreed to having the third and possibly decisive game in Brisbane? In the format that was advertised yesterday, the Cup-holders get one game at home and two in Australia! This is madness.
In my book, if a team wants to challenge a cup- or shield-holder, they’d better be prepared to play on that cup- or shield-holder’s home turf. If you want to take a piece of silverware from me, you’d better be prepared to come to my house to get it. That’s just the way it is. So in what twisted view of reality does it make sense for the non-cup holders to have home-court advantage? Why the All Blacks need to travel to Australia twice to defend the Cup is beyond me. That third game should be at Jade Stadium in Christchurch. Anyone who says differently is an Aussie.
The Wallabies folded early in their Tokyo test with the All Blacks on Saturday giving them their seventh straight loss against New Zealand. In the past 2 years Australia has won just 3 out of 14 games against Tri-Nations opponents. Only 1 of those wins came in the current season and their performance has gone from bad to worse. Last year they crossed the line 16 times, this year only 9 times.
In 90 seconds last night the ABs retained the Bledisloe Cup and did something that no other team has yet managed to do in this year’s 3N – win away from home.
It will be a long flight home for Graham Henry and the All Blacks. They went to the Republic hoping to get at least one win and instead they got comprehensively beaten two different ways. There was clear evidence of a change in tactics in the second game played last night in Durban, but the result was the same.
Rugby Asteroid 