All Blacks prepare for second test against South Africa. Video / allblacks.com
OPINION:
Five Rugby Championship wins from five games has left the All Blacks chasing a clean sweep when they play South Africa on the Gold Coast.
It's tempting to say they are chasing a Grand Slam and even make quite the thing out of that, but strangely the Southern Hemisphereappears to have zero appetite to promote or even recognise landmark achievements.
It's surely marketing 101 – tell the world the All Blacks are chasing history this weekend, one foot on the shoulders of giants as they leap for a summit few have reached, or drift into the game, the title already having been won and allow everyone to draw their own conclusion that what they are seeing is an 80-minute obligation to fulfil a meaningless fixture.
This should be an open goal for Sanzaar, the body charged with running the Rugby Championship, but there's no chance of them hitting the back of the net.
Sanzaar, after all, failed to execute a promotional photoshoot last week when only three of the four captains were invited – seemingly taking the view in this age of vaccination-targets that the cameras could click once present personnel had reached a 75 per cent threshold.
Sanzaar have a unique ability to look marketing gift horses in the mouth and then profess themselves bemused why their tournament fails to capture the public imagination to the same degree as the Northern Hemisphere's Six Nations.
It fails to rival the Six Nations because Sanzaar can't pluck even the low-hanging fruit. Embracing the concept of a Grand Slam, making it an aspiration and using it in the marketing narrative, should have happened in the inaugural tournament in 2012 when the All Blacks were at Ellis Park, sitting on five consecutive wins.
That was the time to make the Grand Slam a thing – to acknowledge the enormity of being able to string together six consecutive wins against the best teams in the world.
A Six Nations Grand Slam requires only five consecutive wins, less travel and comes with a virtual 'gimme' with Italy being involved. And yet while it's probably the equivalent of climbing Mount Fuji to the Rugby Championship's Everest, the Six Nations create a sense of achievement and hype about Grand Slams that end up leaving an indelible mark in history.
A Six Nations Grand Slam comes with a celebratory book and DVD as well as lifelong currency for those involved.
Scotland last won a Grand Slam in 1990 and even 31 years on, it's cherished as if it was more significant than a World Cup win and remembered with the sort of intimate detail as if it happened yesterday.
When Wales scored a dramatic late try to beat England at Wembley in 1999, they celebrated not only the victory, but the fact it had also denied their opponents their coveted Grand Slam.
And that's the additional benefit of making Grand Slams a thing, they create a much-relished element of Schadenfreude, the Celts in particular getting a real buzz out of spoiling England's party.
Ardie Savea. Photo / Photosport.co.nz
The perceived value of a Grand Slam creates drama. It creates intrigue, storylines that engage and with that, comes what all big occasions need – heroes and villains.
The Six Nations of course has the weight of history to intensify the significance of landmark achievements, but that shouldn't obscure the fact that they still had to recognise Grand Slams as a thing way back in the 1880s.
Many followers of the game may wonder why Sanzaar hasn't done anything to acknowledge what's on the line this weekend or indeed didn't celebrate the All Blacks' previous Grand Slams in 2012, 2013, 2016 and 2017.
Probably most assume its incompetence on the part of an administrator that last week couldn't manage to get four people in one specific place at a specific time.
But it may actually be more politicised than that. Does Sydney-based Sanzaar, whose South African-born inaugural chief executive Andy Marinos now holds the same post at Rugby Australia, feel inclined to build-up and celebrate the All Blacks' dominance of the Rugby Championship?
And what New Zealanders may have to accept in the small-minded world of patch protection and self-interested Sanzaar politics, is that it may take another country winning a Grand Slam for the enormity of the achievement to be fully appreciated, promoted and celebrated.
It seems much more likely that were it Australia closing in on a clean sweep this weekend, the sense of occasion, drama and history would be significantly greater and the words Grand Slam would be featuring in a promotional email sent out by Sanzaar.
Instead we have the sound of silence and an undeniable vibe of this coming clash being a test just like any other.
