OPINION:
If ever there was proof of how closely triumph and disaster sit to one another, it's the situation in which the All Blacks find themselves.
This time six weeks ago, the All Blacks had produced just one win from four tests played in 2022 and the axe was hovering over head coach Ian Foster's head on the eve of the second test against South Africa at Ellis Park.
Two assistant coaches had already been fired after the July series calamity against Ireland and ahead of that game against the Boks at their spiritual home, few could see anything but disaster looming for the All Blacks.
But here they are now, on the eve of playing the Wallabies at their own fortress, with a chance to win their third trophy of the year and further justify the decision to retain Foster as head coach.
Form staring disaster in the face, the All Blacks now have a settled coaching panel, four wins, the Mandela and Bledisloe Cups, and if they win in Auckland with a bonus point and a bit of daylight between themselves and the Wallabies, they will be a great chance to also secure the Rugby Championship.
Who knows what the situation would like right now had the All Blacks not found the resolve to fight back in the last 12 minutes of the Ellis Park tests to stun the Boks with two late tries.
That's how fine the line is between triumph and disaster and with Eden Park having been sold out, and the first tranche of Silver Lake's $200m investment safely in the bank and clubs already scrambling to get their share of the $7.5m that has been set aside for them, disaster feels like it may now be sitting quite some distance from triumph.
But on the other side of the world, there is a crisis gripping the game that shows disaster is never far from triumph.
This disaster, which is two major premiership clubs in England, Wasps and Worcester, having called in the receivers, is one that should serve as a chilling reminder to New Zealand that the game can be rolling in private equity cash one minute, filing for bankruptcy the next.
How quickly the triumph of the English Premiership securing a private equity deal has turned to disaster is an incredibly powerful "told you so" moment for those who vehemently argued against NZR selling a stake in its future commercial revenue to US fund manager Silver Lake.
These private equity deals which have become commonplace in sport, and particularly rugby in the last few years, are the greatest examples of the proximity of triumph to disaster.
Back in 2018, the English Premiership sold a 28 per cent stake of its assets to private equity group CVC, for a reported fee of $460m.
Each of the 12 clubs plus London Irish were given $36m each as part of the transaction, money that was hailed as having the transformational power to bring long-term financial security.
And yet less than four years later Wasps and Worcester have burned their way through that cash, confirming what the Silver Lake detractors have long feared, which is that rugby wrongly believes private equity investment will be the game's saviour and lead it to a promised land of diversified and sustainable revenue streams that refinance the sport for the next 50 years.
The sceptics have never bought into this idea that private equity investors hold any magical capability to revolutionise professional rugby's long-established business model of selling broadcast rights, sponsorships, merchandise and match tickets, and believe they have bought into the sport to profit from existing revenue opportunities – most notably around TV rights.
CVC has been invested in rugby since 2018 and is yet to produce any definitive, business-model-changing strategy to reposition the sport's income portfolio.
Beyond the initial cash dump that came with the buy-in, it's hard to see what the Northern Hemisphere has gained from being in partnership with private equity other than now having another mouth to feed.
This is why disaster looms so close to triumph with these private equity deals: they are typically structured with the risk sitting too heavily with the sporting entities because they need the investor to deliver unprecedented rates of revenue growth with no punitive downsides for the equity holder if they don't.
What's most worrying in the wake of two prominent English clubs going into administration is that the NZR deal with Silver Lake was partially rationalised on a 'fear of missing out' argument.
While provincial unions debated whether to say yes to selling to Silver Lake, NZR expressed its fear that it was falling behind the Northern Hemisphere, who had also allowed CVC to separately buy a 14 per cent stake in the Six Nations.
Such an argument can't credibly be made now that the CVC investment into the English Premiership has proven anything but revolutionary.
In fact, the English Premiership is now serving as the canary down the mine and the first indication that rugby may have allowed its desperation for money to dupe it into believing private equity investors are something they are not, and as clubs up and down the country stand in line waiting for the Silver Lake handout, how long will it be before the euphoria of receiving that mini-windfall is replaced with the despair of seeing it all disappear with nothing to show for it?
No one wants to entertain that as a possibility while NZR is showering the game in dollars and basking in the glory of a decision to persevere with an All Blacks coach who was flirting with disaster not so long ago.
The prevailing mood is triumphant, smug almost, that the game here has positioned itself for long-term success, but the plight of those two broken clubs in England cannot be ignored because disaster is never far from triumph.
Arne Slot’s side moved four points clear at the top with a win over Spurs.