The carnival game, in which moles appear in rapid succession from a variety of mole holes, means the player, armed with a mallet, must whack them back in their holes. However, with every whack, more moles appear in numbers.
Robertson no sooner solves one problem than another appears... and another. The two lost tests against South Africa were not a surprise but the manner in which the All Blacks lost them was. The All Blacks letting Springboks teams off the hook isn’t often seen, let alone three times in a row – at last year’s World Cup and now twice in South Africa.
That said, let’s do a little bit of stating the obvious. This Boks team is still in their pomp. They are dominant in their grinding, stubborn refusal to submit to the All Blacks’ attacking charms and have a world champions’ ability to turn up the heat in the last 20 minutes. They play to rugby’s oddball 21st-century rules perfectly.
It wasn’t all that long ago that various Boks teams struggled under the yoke of post-apartheid team building. There were tales of quotas; promoting players of colour to the top team when many felt they were there for political purposes rather than on rugby merit; losses were not unknown and pretty regularly too.
Got it all sorted now, haven’t they? Look past their major, in-depth forward power and you have a rising star in the young first five-eighths Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu (clearly about to take over from veteran Handrè Pollard) plus the world’s best winger, Cheslin Kolbe.
Speaking of wingers, that is a mole Robertson will not have expected to have to whack, so blessed has New Zealand been in the position up until now. Caleb Clarke was injured out of this one but the loss of form by Mark Tele’a and the way Kolbe showed up Sevu Reece made the All Blacks look a bit lacking out wide – even as their game plan was clearly to attack South Africa there.
Reece won his spot fair and square after fine Super Rugby Pacific form, getting the squad nod ahead of Emoni Narawa. However, he looked distinctly second place against his marker, Kolbe, in terms of pace and penetration. Kolbe was a long needle in the All Blacks’ sides; Reece dibbled, dabbled and darted but never delivered.
Form, as they say, is temporary but it didn’t half look like Narawa’s attacking ability might have been better here. Tele’a is also puzzlingly off colour now after being an automatic selection previously. Their best winger on the day was Rieko Ioane, when moved there because of the cards.
The other mole Robertson was not expecting to pop up again was his bench. He did the right thing – assigning Beauden Barrett and TJ Perenara to the bench for some second-half impact. The problem was, they didn’t really provide it.
Barrett’s partially charged kick was the match that lit the fire of the Springboks for that winning try to Malcolm Marx. It created the field position for it and for the inexplicable fouling of Kolbe by Tyrel Lomax, leading to his yellow card, a decisive factor.
Barrett had come on for Will Jordan, who had a surprisingly quiet match; he is not yet in pre-injury form, so the back three were a muted force in this test.
Perenara, meanwhile, distinguished himself by being told, for the second test in a row, to stop gobbing off to the referee.
Normally a fine defensive halfback, he missed a tackle on Feinberg-Mngomezulu which could have been expensive and spent one defensive ruck late in the game, with the All Blacks desperate to get up the other end of the field, histrionically claiming a penalty when clearing the ball might have been a better tactic.
When Aaron Smith played, you could hear his shrill voice swirling like a set of bagpipes. The difference was his was a general commentary, not directly for the ref’s ears but valuable in its power of persuasion.
When Marx scored, Perenara was on the other side of the ruck, leaving a big blindside for Marx to employ; Reece tried to fill the gap but simply couldn’t stop him on his lonesome ownsome.
Still, it wasn’t all bad news for the All Blacks. There were some fine performances – Codie Taylor in the form of his life; Tamaiti Williams is coming on; Jordie Barrett has become a rock in the midfield, one of the first names on the team sheet, and Tupou Vaa’i continued his rise, as did Wallace Sititi.
Even though he had a rare off day with the boot, Damian McKenzie is maturing all the time and just needs a more commanding kicking game from hand to exercise more control – and is quite the right player to spark the All Blacks’ go-wide policy.
This New Zealand team will do better now with the Boks out of the way. They have two tests against Australia to right the ship and, hopefully, not present Robertson with more moles to whack.
