Phil Gifford: Is it possible the All Blacks aura has gone?

OPINION:

Which is more stressful, playing or coaching? Every former rugby player I've ever asked, haven't had to think. It's coaching.

It's an odd fact of rugby life that Ian Foster, the winning coach in the first Bledisloe Cup test, is under more pressure in the second clash than Dave Rennie, the losing coach.

But then, when you become the All Blacks coach, to paraphrase Paul Simon, a nation turns its ruthless eyes to you. As a journalist I've been part of that process too.

By and large those I've criticised have been forgiving. Sir Graham Henry has recently stopped chuckling when I phone him, and saying, as he did for several years, "Ah Phil, let me get this straight, you were a Robbie Deans man, weren't you?"

After I spoke at his club in Dunedin, Eric Watson, a much maligned All Blacks coach in the 1970s, once said, "I used to think you were the biggest prick unhung, but now I'm thinking you might not be a bad bloke after all."

All Blacks Jordie Scott and Beauden Barrett during the national anthems during the 2nd Bledisloe Cup test match between the New Zealand All Blacks and Australia. Photo / Photosport.co.nz

Foster, as straight an up-and-down and likeable a man as you'd find in the game, has made his intentions clear about the second round at Eden Park.

But for the injury to Anton Liernert-Brown, Foster would have fielded the same side that started last week's game.

Just why that group last Saturday played like world beaters at times, and easy beats at others, is a mystery with many clues and few answers.

Is it possible that the aura around the All Blacks has gone?

Once-Wallaby captain Andrew Slack, who led one of the stronger Australian teams, told me that he "hated playing the All Blacks, because you knew if the buggers were 20 points down with 10 minutes to go they'd be saying to each other, 'We can win this.' And the worst thing was, they believed it!"

Rookie Australian wing Andrew Kellaway, reasonably enough, says he doesn't feel intimidated. But keep in mind that was on the basis of one game against the All Blacks. If there's a spanking for Australia in his second test against New Zealand, he may start to see signs of the old mystic-feelings returning to the men in black.

Did being knocked out of the World Cup in 2019 sting? The way the quarter-final loss in 2007 did?

The All Blacks line up during the national anthem before the New Zealand and Australia rugby test match at Eden Park. 7 August 2021. New Zealand Herald photograph by Jason Oxenham.

In Gregor Paul's book on Gilbert Enoka, the All Blacks leadership manager during the Steven Hansen era, Enoka says he was concerned about the lack of 2019 players who had seen what losing felt like.

"I thought one of the things that was a major impact (in '19) was that no one in the playing group had been exposed to the pain of the loss in 2007.

"We still had a core of those players in 2015 who had lost in 2007. In Japan, after we had won against Ireland, I think we thought we had won and that it was going to be easy.

"The people who had been there in 2007 and 2011 knew how to find a way to get it done in that moment; and we didn't have anyone that could catch up to that reality in 2019."

If ever there was a time to make sure the hurt of '19 against England is used as a spur, it's now. Eight of the players starting at Eden Park were in the starting team that lost 19-7 in Yokohama.

Managing a team's mindset is a massive task. The razor-thin line between belief and over-confidence is usually the difference between victory and defeat.

When Brendon Pickerill blows the final whistle on Saturday night we should have a much better handle on where the 2021 All Blacks sit on the self-belief spectrum.

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When the new Christchurch stadium is finished, there should be some recognition of a Christchurch man called Robert Hough, described to me by one councilor as "not a politician, just a good guy", who in a matter of days organised a petition signed by 24,116 people to ensure the stadium would be big enough to bring top-tier rugby tests to the city.

Having despaired for decades at the intractable attitude of far too many local-body politicians, I'm as delighted as I am astounded that the passion of Hough - a sport-loving quantity surveyor, who told me what drove him was wanting to make sure his four-year-old child would one day enjoy seeing live top-flight sport in Christchurch - could start a wave that in the end overwhelmed the entrenched views of a majority of city council members.

In a private organisation, heads would be rolling down the street at the blinding incompetence of an organisation that would somehow over-estimate the cost of an extra 5000 seats by $38 million. But now is probably not the time to be churlish.

Thanks to Hough and a small, but determined, group of more-enlightened councillors, Christchurch will get a sporting venue fit to stand alongside the art gallery, the central library, and the refurbished Town Hall.