Rugby World Cup 2023: All Blacks have earned a reputation in France, now it’s time to lose it - Gregor Paul

OPINION

By Gregor Paul in Toulouse

The All Blacks seem determined to get themselves a reputation in France. They are steadfastly on track to become the rugby equivalent of the neighbourhood kid that parents warn their own about hanging out with – not overtly bad, but emanating a vibe that says they don’t hold a deep enough respect for the rules and probably won’t come to much.

They don’t want to be the bad boys of the world game, but they have a discipline problem which they are making little headway in fixing, and if they can’t stop giving away penalties, they won’t win this tournament.

In two World Cup games, they have conceded 24 penalties and picked up a yellow and red card.

It has been an inglorious start for a team that arrived in France promising to clean their act up, having conceded a staggering 11 penalties in the first half of their final pre-tournament test – a game in which they would also be shown two yellow cards and one red.

This isn’t some abstract concept, either – a whacky sports science angle being pursued with no evidential basis to support its validity.

There is an avalanche of statistics which supports the importance of teams playing within the laws.

Ireland and France have been the two most disciplined teams in the last few years, and Ireland and France have been mostly number one and two in the world during the same period.

The best New Zealand case study is that they smashed Argentina, South Africa and Australia in the Rugby Championship this year when they didn’t incur a single card - and in the Mt Smart demolition of the Springboks, maybe its says everything that the All Blacks were on the right side of a 12-8 penalty count.

Anton Lienert-Brown kicks ahead. Photo / Photosport

Staying within the law, keeping penalty counts low and having 15 men on the field are the three agreed golden rules of test rugby in the current climate.

This is the holy triumvirate – the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit - and yet the All Blacks, after producing exemplary numbers in their first four tests of 2023, have regressed alarmingly in their last three.

And in some ways, the 12 penalties conceded against Namibia are the most alarming.

Against South Africa and France, it was possible to argue the penalties the All Blacks conceded were a consequence of the pressure they were under.

The All Blacks were coming second physically, hence the ill-discipline. Frustrating for the coaching staff, yet understandable and potentially fixable.

But what, then, to make of the 12 penalties conceded against lowly Namibia, who the All Blacks hammered 71-3?

It was a structured and disciplined performance by the All Blacks in the sense they held their shape, stuck to their game plan and avoided descending into individualism.

Yet by the end of the 80 minutes, they had conceded as many penalties against the Namibians, who put them under precisely zero pressure, as they did against France, who had them scrambling at times in a high-intensity occasion.

And of course, there was a red card.

The players and coaching staff keep promising they will learn and adapt, and yet the same storyline keeps being spat out almost regardless of who the All Blacks play.

And to be clear, discipline is not confined to the aspect of foul play. It is a multi-faceted term that encompasses a team’s ability to stay on-side, to be technically adept – both with and without possession - at the tackled ball area to create the right scenarios to dominate, and to have the organisation and skill sets to defend rolling mauls without feeling the need to illegally collapse them.

Discipline, in the modern context, is effectively summed up as having both the intensity of desire and technical proficiency to execute the core skills with the accuracy required to produce legal and preferred outcomes.

It’s that simple. Discipline is about having respect for the micro-detail, of understanding the importance and value of meticulous application of the basic skills and being capable of factoring all this into the constant decision-making that big test matches ask of players.

Maintaining discipline is obviously that much more difficult when an opponent is making it harder to achieve the desired outcomes at set-piece, tackled ball and open play, but the fact the All Blacks are struggling to keep their penalty counts down when they are tumbling to a record defeat or putting 70 points on a semi-amateur team like Namibia alludes to there being some kind of gremlin in the collective psyche telling the players that discipline doesn’t really matter and that the whole area is grey enough for them to not worry about.

The day after the Namibia test, defence coach Scott McLeod talked about the need for the players to get better at adapting to referee interpretations, but of the 12 penalties conceded in Toulouse, how many could be considered marginal?

There was nothing interpretive about Ofa Tu’ungafasi obstructing a driving maul; no ambiguity about an early scrum push, or the penalty Namibia converted which came from an All Blacks tackler being caught on the wrong side.

And Ethan de Groot’s high tackle was going to be a penalty in any scenario, even if he’s able to avoid suspension by arguing the initial contact was shoulder-to-shoulder.

The All Blacks have earned their reputation and they now must find a way to lose it, or they’re likely to see themselves squeezed out of the tournament by virtue of their ill-discipline.