Bad blood in the Bledisloe

t was a massive relief for former Wallabies coach Ewen McKenzie when he dramatically announced he’d quit.

Looking back, it’s apparent he didn’t have the stomach for it. He either didn’t enjoy or simply couldn’t handle that the job came with an endless battle of wits against All Blacks coach Steve Hansen.

The psychological warfare seemed to overwhelm McKenzie, who never quite understood that his tenure would be defined by what his side produced during the Bledisloe Cup.

His agony was total on October 18, 2014. Half an hour after he saw Colin Slade land a conversion in the 83rd minute to win the third Bledisloe, McKenzie revealed that he’d resigned earlier that day.

The drama was intense but it was only just starting. Waratahs coach Michael Cheika replaced him and the mutual respect that formed an albeit tenuous foundation to the rivalry between the Wallabies and All Blacks started to collapse to such an extent that less than two years later the New South Wales police were questioning executives from both national unions.

The All Blacks arrived in Sydney a week before the first Bledisloe test in 2016 to find that Cheika had vented to the local media — claiming New Zealand had no respect for Australia.

It was a vitriolic blast that signalled the depth of ill-feeling that had percolated the Wallabies’ camp.

Cheika no longer seemed controlled and measured. Instead he sounded enraged, bitter, obsessed even, as if he’d let Hansen and the All Blacks take residence in his head.

It wasn’t a great time to appear out of control as the day after Cheika’s rant, Monday August 15, security consultant Adrian Gard, found a listening device in one of the chairs in the team room at the Sydney hotel at which the All Blacks were staying.

It was an astonishing discovery and one that would have the most explosive impact in the relationship between the two teams.

Up until the discovery of the listening device, the inter-action between the Wallabies and All Blacks had followed what was a predictable path given the history, continued dominance of one team and the respective personalities of both coaches.

Cheika and Hansen have common traits. They both like to know everything going on in their respective camps and they are both driven to win.

The question post discovery of the bug, essentially became, to what degree were both men prepared to chase victory?

It didn’t have to be like that, but Cheika felt the All Blacks had him pinned as the number one suspect in planting the bug. And while NZR say they have never made any accusations, their actions in the days following the discovery of the bug justify Cheika’s grievance.

NZR’s decision to not alert the police for five days after the discovery of the bug was a massive failing of protocol that has never properly been explained.

Nor has NZR said why chief executive, Steve Tew, at a prearranged dinner on the Friday before the test, showed his ARU counterpart Bill Pulver a picture of the device on his phone and asked for an explanation.

When the New Zealand Herald broke the story about the bug on the day of the test, the Wallabies saw it as a pre-meditated attempt to unsettle them and put them under suspicion.

Whether it was a situation NZR had contrived or not, the sight of New South Wales police detective sergeant Paul Mangan outside the All Blacks Double Bay hotel announcing that an investigation had been launched, sent a shiver through both camps as the prospect of someone going to jail suddenly became real.

What got lost in the furore about the bug was that the All Blacks destroyed the Wallabies in Sydney.

That was salt in an open wound for Cheika and the Wallabies came to Wellington seven days later with what appeared to be anger in the system. They played with a near reckless desire to niggle the All Blacks and play them off the ball.

All Blacks flanker Sam Cane would say later:

“The way they went about it was probably what caught us off guard just a fraction but we acknowledged it pretty quickly that that was how they were going to play.”

It was relentless, as were captain Stephen Moore’s attempts to whine to Romain Poite with the referee losing patience by the second half and refusing to deal with him.

“I’m not quite sure why,” said Cheika, “but there was a time there in the game, in a break in play, where the national captain of Australia was asking the referee, ‘when might be a good opportunity for me to talk to you?’“He just ignored him.

The referee might not like the captain personally, that might be his prerogative, but he has to afford him that opportunity if he’s affording it to his opponents.”

Cheika hadn’t finished there, though, as he then claimed Hansen had held a meeting pre-game with the referee which was totally against the rules.

He hadn’t. Hansen had been collared by assistant referee Jaco Peyper at the All Blacks hotel during the week, with the South African asking for feedback on his performance in the Sydney test.

As for Cheika’s views about Poite, Hansen offered the sage advice that perhaps the Wallabies needed to look at themselves and ask why the referee had treated them that way.

Unbeknown to the public in the aftermath of the All Blacks 29-9 victory in Wellington which secured the Bledisloe Cup for another year, the New South Wales police were stepping up their investigation.

Mangan and his team quizzed the All Blacks management group — manager Darren Shand, Hansen and security consultant Gard — as well as Tew.

It transpired, not that it was realised at the time, that early in the interviewing process, Mangan had become suspicious of Gard, but that, however, didn’t stop the police from marching into the ARU headquarters in Sydney shortly before the third Bledisloe Cup test at Eden Park in mid-October.

The heavy-handedness of it and the serious nature of the inquiry exacerbated the Australian view they were on trial.

When Hansen correctly predicted ahead of the Wallabies picking their team, that Cooper would be dropped, Cheika was willing to hide his annoyance with a bit of black humour.

“The bug is obviously not working anymore so he must have had someone there watching, I don’t know,” Cheika said. “He must have known somehow. I’m not quite sure because the bug is gone. We stayed in Double Bay and did a bit of a broom around and couldn’t find any. He made good on the lotto tickets; get the numbers.”

But there was no humour after the All Blacks won 37-10 to achieve a world record 18th consecutive victory and their fifth straight against the Wallabies.

Neither Cheika nor the Wallabies needed much help in nursing their burning sense of injustice, but they were given some nevertheless on the morning of the test.

The New Zealand Herald ran a caricature of Cheika dressed as a clown and that combined with the police investigation and a poor decision by the match officials to deny Wallabies wing Henry Speight a perfectly good try which would have swung the game, led to one of the more memorable post-match exchanges of recent times.

Asked what he thought about the All Blacks achieving a world record, Cheika said:

Cheika said. “I don’t think they respect our comment, anyway, so we won’t make one.

“They’re on top and we’re nowhere at this stage. That’s the relationship between the teams.

“The thing that got me a bit offside was the accusation that we tried to bug them. Like, really? Hello. Honestly? That’s what would cause that bad blood for me, that show of lack of respect. I wouldn’t even be smart enough to get that stuff organised.

“They hold on to it, drop it on the day of the game. They don’t need to do that stuff. They’re too good anyway.

“It’s only because they want to do it to try and needle either me or us. I don’t want to keep going over the same points, but that [NZ Herald] is obviously their go-to paper. The whole bug thing came out from there.

“We had policemen in our offices asking us questions, asking our management questions. That’s serious stuff to be accusing people of and it’s not true.”

A year-long investigation and trial failed to provide an answer about who was behind the bug.

The ARU’s initial glee on the day of Gard’s arrest — they released a statement with indecent haste almost congratulating the NSW police — dissipated with the verdict.

Without closure, Cheika and the Wallabies were effectively back to being suspects and the relief within the All Blacks camp was obvious.

Hansen had stood by Gard from the outset. The All Blacks coach initially called the charges “bizarre and unbelievable” while captain Kieran Read, had given a character reference at the trial.

The All Blacks celebrated the decision by blitzing the Wallabies off the park the following night, leading 54-7 after 50 minutes, which sent Australian fans heading for the exits long before the final whistle.

The Wallabies’ misery was compounded a week later in Dunedin when having played supremely well to lead with three minutes remaining, they saw the All Blacks conjure a miracle try through Beauden Barrett to secure the Bledisloe for the 14th straight year.

A victory to the Wallabies in the third encounter brought them some sort of solace in that it stopped a seven-test losing streak and was the first game an Australian team of any kind had won against a New Zealand opponent all year.

But ahead of the two teams clashing for the first time in 2018, there remains a mutual distrust and wariness and a simmering animosity that feels as if it is only ever one poorly chosen word away from erupting. 

Spygate, as the whole business with the listening device became known, has been a destructive and poisonous force that has eroded respect and goodwill.
There has been untold damage and the last four years sit as the most extraordinary period in a rivalry that stretches back to 1920.

The drama, the scandal and subterfuge have made the Bledisloe Cup the most compelling viewing and no one could possible feel confident predicting what will happen in 2018.