Crusaders coach Scott Robertson opens up on All Blacks coaching snub.
COMMENT:
There's something in the Kiwi disposition that seems to induce nothing but pessimism at the start of a rugby season.
Perhaps it's the Celtic influence or a misplaced notion that being relentlessly negative is a requirement of being humble which causes this need to forecast only bad times ahead.
Perhaps it's just habit, or a protective measure to avoid an emotional tumble should things indeed go wrong, but whatever the cause, it is more tedious than sad that no one in New Zealand contemplates the prospect of a new season being better than the last.
The portents of gloom are hanging particularly heavily over 2020. Some of this is because post-World Cup years promote a little extra anxiety due to the volume of personnel change.
But really it's because the All Blacks' failure to secure a third World Cup and the manner of their defeat in the semifinal has led mostly everyone to believe New Zealand's rugby empire is on the brink of collapse.
The gloom has been compounded by the appointment of Ian Foster as All Blacks coach – a man almost no one wants to believe has the capacity to surprise and the departure of a handful of senior players who, again, are apparently being viewed as next to impossible to replace.
No one, or few it seems, are willing to use history as a guide and see that New Zealand has supposedly been in real trouble for the last decade or so and yet has never come remotely close to collapsing.
Previous post World Cup years have defied all expectation and been among the best New Zealand rugby has known.
And yet this fact is being readily ignored in the scramble to say that Foster will be sacked before the end of his two-year contract as the game here plunges into mediocrity.
All Black fans were outraged after former head coach Graham Henry kept his job following the 2007 Rugby World Cup disappointment. Photo / Photosport
The 2008 season kicked off with more than half the country angry that Graham Henry and his coaching panel had been re-appointed and firm predictions that New Zealand Rugby's regret would be intense for making such a rash decision.
The All Blacks won 13 of their 15 tests that year, retained the Bledisloe Cup, won the Tri Nations and picked up a Grand Slam.
Brad Thorn, Jerome Kaino, Cory Jane and Richard Kahui emerged as quality test players, Ma'a Nonu and Conrad Smith began their world record midfield partnership and senior players Ali Williams, Richie McCaw, Daniel Carter and Mils Muliaina took their respective games to the next level.
That was after the Crusaders blew everyone away in Super Rugby – a competition which also saw the Hurricanes make the last four.
In 2012 the prevailing view was that having won a World Cup, there would be no motivation for the country's best players, most of whom were 30 or older.
The All Blacks finished the year with just one defeat having played brilliant rugby which saw headlines appear proclaiming them as the most dominant team in history.
And then again in 2016, when the Golden Generation had shuffled off, leaving a younger, less experienced group behind, the collapse was supposedly unavoidable.
The All Blacks averaged 44 points and 5.5 tries per test that year, unearthed Beauden Barrett as a freakish talent at No 10 and saw the likes of Dane Coles, Sam Cane, Brodie Retallick, Sam Whitelock, Kieran Read and Ben Smith fill the leadership void.
All those forecasts of doom and yet the All Blacks went to the next level, dropped just one test and picked up a maximum 30 points in the Rugby Championship.
The weight of evidence suggests that excitement should be the prevailing emotion on the eve of Super Rugby kicking off in 2020.
It should be a time of optimism, wondering whether Will Jordan and Braydon Ennor of the Crusaders will be the next superstars as they hinted they would be last year.
It should be a time to wonder whether Pari Pari Parkinson of the Highlanders just needs prolonged game time to be the new Brodie Retallick and whether Tom Robinson of the Blues can stay injury free and become the abrasive, mobile force the country needs at No 6.
Crusaders utility back Braydon Ennor is a future superstar. Photo / Photosport
There's also reason to believe that captaincy will see Scott Barrett mature into the imposing figure he's been threatening to become; that Cane will suddenly look every inch a world class No 7 and the destructive force that will mark him as a colossus of the world game.
Jack Goodhue and Anton Lienert-Brown are ready to be the new Nonu and Smith and Damian McKenzie and Rieko Ioane are going to be strongly motivated to show all of their vast skills.
With Warren Gatland installed at the Chiefs, Scott Robertson eager to prove himself yet again at the Crusaders and the Blues presumably sick of underperforming, the predictions about the end of an era for New Zealand rugby are hard to fathom.
