All Blacks 2023 Rugby World Cup squad. Video / Carson Bluck
OPINION
After falling to a record defeat against South Africa, the All Blacks have been labelled panicky, rattled and shell-shocked – and have also been told that they are more pretenders now than contenders.
But these descriptions are more accurate of the public mood and media assumption thanthey are the mental state of the All Blacks, whose world may not have been rocked overly hard by the 35-7 loss at Twickenham.
This is often the way though – that angst builds outside the team rather than within it, mainly because the rugby-following public tend to make emotional assessments about defeats, whereas inside the team the reaction is always coldly analytical and practical.
So too is there a greater ability and willingness inside the team to understand the context of each game and not catastrophise.
The All Blacks had what can only be described as a shocker in London, but it would be a mistake to read too much into that one defeat and imagine that their World Cup campaign is now suddenly in danger of going horribly wrong.
The inability to deal with the incredible physicality that the South Africans produced was not down to a systemic failing within the All Blacks, but perhaps a reflection of the different mental states of the two teams.
The All Blacks said all the right things and made all the right noises about relishing a tough encounter with South Africa.
It was a chance, they said, to replicate the intensity they would face in the tournament opener against France.
But in truth, it was a terrible idea for the All Blacks to play South Africa so close to the tournament.
Faf de Klerk celebrates as Bongi Mbonambi scores the team's fourth try against the All Blacks. Photo / Getty Images
It’s frankly mad that rugby, as a collective, has its top nations playing each other just weeks before the World Cup – and in this case it was especially strange given the possibility that New Zealand could meet South Africa in a quarter-final.
The All Blacks coaching staff wanted a game, because their top side hadn’t played for four weeks.
But it’s unlikely they wanted a brutal fixture against the Springboks.
The coaching staff were in the market for an opportunity to give their top line-up a 50–60-minute, meaningful hit out – a game that would challenge them, not break them.
Again, the thing that everyone may be missing is that the All Blacks’ opening game against France is not going to be tournament-defining.
Given the nature of the draw, there is no discernible advantage to be gained by topping their pool and the All Blacks’ tournament masterplan is built on having the team at their mental and physical zenith come the quarterfinal.
If they are going to win this tournament, that’s the game they have to get right: the game for which they have to be at their explosive physical best.
The ideal final pre-tournament opponent may in fact have been Fiji, who played at Twickenham the following day where they beat England.
But a test against Fiji in London would unlikely have sold out so NZR, in arranging the game with South Africa, prioritised commercial gain ahead of World Cup preparation, despite the All Blacks’ dutiful attempts to promote the narrative that the game perfectly suited their high-performance needs.
The game made more high-performance sense for the Springboks, who are in a genuine dog-fight to get out of their group.
They face Scotland first up in a must-win game, hence their desire for an intense preceding fixture against the All Blacks and much of what happened at Twickenham was the consequence of one team being more motivated and mentally focused than the other.
This is the reality of World Cup year – that games are arranged purely for the purpose of preparing for the tournament and teams will have different needs and goals about what they want to get out of them.
He got his top team back on the park, where they were given a critical insight into the likely intensity and nature of how this World Cup will play out.
It’s going to be a tournament defined by set-piece efficiency, breakdown accuracy and an ability to be street-smart with referees and the rules.
What the All Blacks were reminded of in London is that perception becomes reality in big games, and they have to paint the right pictures at scrum lineout and tackled ball in the first exchanges.
Early dominance protects teams falling victim to volatile refereeing and while the All Blacks were a shambles at Twickenham, they are clearly capable of delivering the requisite physical crunch, having blown the Boks off the park at Mt Smart earlier in the year.
Foster and his troops didn’t love what they experienced against the Boks, but they are not panicked, rattled or shell-shocked by it, and far from being a catastrophe.
It may prove to be precisely what they needed in their quest to win a fourth World Cup.
