OPINION
Gregor Paul in Paris
All Blacks 44 Argentina 6
All those stragglers who didn’t jump on the All Blacks’ bandwagon last week will be scrambling to get on board now following the functional yet impressive dismantling of Argentina.
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The team that was in chaos 14 months ago, losing a historic first test to Argentina in New Zealand, is now in the World Cup final and the coach who even his employer seemed to want to fire, is now 80 minutes away from writing one of the greatest redemption stories in rugby history.
And they have made it there on the back of a performance that was powerful, calm, controlled and at times creatively brilliant, but had enough weak points to leave the All Blacks feeling they have plenty to work on ahead of the final.
It may seem somewhat curmudgeonly to not be splatting gold stars all over such an emphatic victory, but there’s probably a World Cup being played in an alternative universe in which Argentina are nowhere near the semifinals because the truth about this one is that they only made it that far due to the lunacy of the draw that stuck the best four teams on the same side.
The Pumas, bless them, just aren’t a great team, but the All Blacks, with the sort of withdrawn efficiency of a surgeon on his fourth in-grown toenail operation of the day, pulled them apart in such a manner as to make them look worse than they really are.
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It wasn’t by any means vintage All Blacks despite the scoreline. It was a rout all right, but it lacked a bit of polish and at times it also lacked the sort of clinical finishing that wins World Cups.
The scrummaging, though, was as powerful as it’s been all tournament, their defensive breakdown was sharp again and Mark Tele’a was everywhere as always, but there were a few dropped balls, a couple of periods where they fell into a lull and a few missed opportunities where they didn’t read the defence that well.
There was also a worryingly dumb moment from Scott Barrett when he madly slapped a pass down when he was lying on the ground and earned himself a yellow card almost as if he just wanted to give every New Zealander something to fret about for all of next week.
But the overall impression was favourable. It was the performance of a team that has belief in each other, confidence in the gameplan and the ability to make things flow with relative ease.
And this is maybe the biggest difference between the All Blacks now and the All Blacks of even four tests ago – they have a depth of understanding about how they want to play and so even though they weren’t razor sharp in the execution, they had enough cohesion to keep Argentina under constant duress.
Besides, the true art of the semifinal is to realise the performance doesn’t have to be beautiful or epic. It only had to be good enough to get the job done and the All Blacks played as if they never once lost sight of that salient fact.
The energy of the previous week was never there – but it was never going to be. It’s a lovely thought to imagine that tests will have the frantic, non-stop drama of the quarter-final with Ireland, in the same way it is lovely to imagine world peace and lower taxes.
But back in the real world, this was always going to be a bit of a grind for the All Blacks – the sort of unpleasant, but necessary chore that demands rolling up the sleeves and getting on with.
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There was never any sense of the All Blacks being close to fifth gear, but they rammed it into fourth at least in patches and scored the points they needed to ensure the Pumas didn’t have a prolonged, or indeed any, sniff of an upset.
Their calm, controlled efficiency was impressive and the key to playing Argentina is to not become frustrated.
The Pumas make what they have got go so much further purely with the addition of passion and they are a hard team to break down, because they are disruptive and astute in how to slow things down at the ruck and generally frustrate their opposition.
But broken down they were - and now the All Blacks are in their third final in four tournaments and they have arrived there having not had to empty themselves physically or, more importantly mentally, and they will feel they have given themselves a great shot at making the sort of history no one thought possible when they lost to Argentina in Christchurch last year.
Gregor Paul is one of New Zealand’s most respected rugby writers and columnists. He has won multiple awards for journalism and has written several books about sport.
