KEY POINTS:
The tumult and the shouting die and rugby fans the length of the country are wondering how you say "four more years" in French (it's "quatre ans de plus", in case you were curious). In the week that has passed since the All Blacks' humiliating loss to les Bleus at Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, the sense of disbelief has abated only slightly.
The result was unthinkable, yet it seemed, in the context of the game, to assume a sickening inevitability from soon after the second-half restart. Like the team Reuben Thorne led to a 10-22 defeat in the 2003 semifinal in Sydney; like Taine Randell's men in the 43-31 shock-and-awe rout by the French at Twickenham in 1999; the members of a team universally regarded as in a league apart from all their opponents could not do the business when it mattered and wrest the advantage back from the French. Loyal fans were left to wonder whether a side that could not engineer a three-pointer in 10 minutes deserved to be considered, much less crowned, world champions.
Fortunately, as a nation, we are keeping the events of last Sunday morning in proportion. The bulk of the squad arrived home on Wednesday to a warm welcome from crowds who accepted that the players had done their best and that their disappointment was immeasurably keener than that of their supporters. Hard though it may be to swallow, and banal though it may be to say, it is just a game: as coach Graham Henry said, it is not like a death in the family, even if it feels like one - and we do ourselves a disservice as a nation if we pin our sense of self on the outcome of 80 minutes of rugby.
The theories as to why we lost are as many as there are observers - informed and otherwise. It has been mainly the players, rather than the outraged fans, who have stated the obvious truth: the All Blacks lost because the other side played better.
One thing is for certain: it wasn't the referee's fault. Referees - like players - are human and make errors. Wayne Barnes' - or rather touch judge Jonathan Kaplan's - failure to call the crucial forward pass is a bitter pill to swallow, as is the anonymous senior referee's assessment in the Herald this week that Barnes' errors favoured the French 13-3. But how many fans would have renounced our claim to a winning All Black try if it had been preceded by an undetected forward pass? No explanation of the result improves on Graham Henry's "that's sport"; sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.
It is now time for the nation to move on, but rugby administrators have no such luxury. Plainly Henry has to go. He was the architect of a "rotation" policy that, at its absurd extreme, put fullback Mils Muliaina at centre while two specialist centres cooled their heels. He robbed this year's Super 14 of its best players, effectively thumbing his nose at sponsors and fans alike. The coaching team - and incoming NZRU CEO Steve Tew, who must also fall on his sword - had their eyes so firmly fixed on the tournament that they forgot about the game. Players were denied game time as they underwent a "conditioning regime" that ignored the best kind of conditioning - playing rugby. For a year, the coaches knew that the team's first real challenge would be in the quarter-finals stage, yet they took players to France who were not match-hardened and were not going to become match-hardened in pool play.
The campaign for the cup cost $50 million - almost half the amount spent trying to regain a yachting trophy. In diverting resources away from "grass roots" rugby they robbed the future to pay for the present. Whether the next generation of All Blacks will reap the bitter harvest of that remains to be seen. But those who tried and failed must stand aside as we begin the countdown to 2011.
