After the Wallabies’ horror show in their second test with the Pumas, it would be
astonishing if the All Blacks didn’t win both Bledisloe Cup tests. The TAB has Australia as $5 to $1.15 underdogs in Sydney.
But the matches are still hugely important in the development of the 2024 All Blacks.
The more self-belief the players have when they fly out at the end of next month for Japan and Europe, the better. In the first three weekends in November, they play England, Ireland and France.
It’s essential that combinations are bedded in, and the Wallabies tests are an ideal place to do that.
Power will out
Forward power has been the strongest element of the All Blacks’ game this season.
When you have the luxury of being able to have giant prop Tamaiti Williams, who was able to better his Springboks opponents in South Africa, on the bench, then you know your pack is formidable. Ethan de Groot, Codie Taylor, and Tyrel Lomax form what is currently the best front row in world rugby.
The bonus is that lock Tupou Vaa’i has been one of the most improved players in the team. He’s gone from being raw, but very promising, in 2020 to being a commanding figure, in both the lineout and general play.
As the Wallabies struggle to develop a rock-solid tight five, the All Blacks have already got there.
Stars on the rise
The All Blacks’ starting team list shows that Cortez Ratima now has the inside running at halfback, which is a fair call.
Speed of foot and reaction is everything for a halfback. The heartening thought is that Cam Roigard, who may yet prove to be an even better option, is rehabbing in the wings.
You couldn’t have asked for a tougher first starting test than loose forward Wallace Sititi had in South Africa, but neither the huge occasion nor the rugged Boks forwards fazed him. Expect him to put constant pressure on the Australian defensive line.
Not the bomb squad, but not far off
Praise be that Scott Robertson has resisted the South African idea of a new forward pack coming on for the second half.
But the grim news for Australia in Sydney is that the replacement front row for the All Blacks will be Tamaiti Williams, hooker Asafo Aumua and tighthead prop Pasilio Tosi, a 140kg bundle of explosive energy.
A tough time for a good man
Everybody who’s encountered Wallabies coach Joe Schmidt has nothing but praise for him. His rugby intelligence and decency are matched by a relentless work ethic.
Twenty years ago, when Bay of Plenty, under head coach Vern Cotter, won the Ranfurly Shield from Auckland, Schmidt was the Bay’s backline coach. Another member of the Bay’s coaching staff, Kevin Schuler, would later tell me how, before every game, “Joe would go in there early. The baggage guy would have laid the jerseys out.
“Under every jersey for the backs, he’d put a handwritten note with two or three specific points for that guy to work on. It was always the first thing they did. You’d see them all sitting there and reading them, and you could almost see their confidence grow.”
Schmidt has now taken on an Australian team full of players whose self-worth must have been almost decimated by the eccentric methods of coach Eddie Jones and the humiliations visited on the side in last year’s World Cup.
Few would doubt that Schmidt, as a former deputy head of Tauranga Boys’ College, doesn’t have the nurturing skills to rebuild the Australian squad. The problem for him this and next weekend is that his work is still at a very early stage.
When the Cup vanished
The Bledisloe Cup hasn’t always been the sort of attraction that, as it has on Saturday week in Wellington, sells out stadiums. One of more bizarre stories in rugby is how it vanished for seven years in the 1950s. What’s even more weird is that nobody in Australian or New Zealand rugby cared.
In 1949, while an all-Pākehā All Blacks side toured South Africa, a consolation series of two tests for those left behind was played in New Zealand against the Wallabies, who won the series 2-0, and took the Cup home.
When the All Blacks toured Australia in 1951, the Cup was taken to Melbourne from Sydney to try to build interest in a match with an Australian XV. The All Blacks romped home, 54-11, and the Cup, as the Australian side’s captain Arch Winning would tell a Kiwi journalist, “was stuck in the back of a cupboard in Melbourne, and stayed there”.
There were two more test series, in 1952 and 1955, both won by the All Blacks. The Cup wasn’t mentioned. Then someone in the Victoria Rugby Union office dragged it out, dusted it off, and the victorious 1957 All Blacks in Australia got to pose for the now-traditional “drinking beer from the Bledisloe Cup” changing-room photo. There was never any public explanation for its disappearance.
