Rugby World Cup worry? All Blacks rivals are up to their ‘old tricks’ - Gregor Paul

Referee Mathieu Raynal during the All Blacks' victory over the Springboks. Photo / Photosport

OPINION:

In blitzing both the Pumas and Springboks in high-tempo, first-half onslaughts, the All Blacks may not have done themselves any favours.

What they have likely done by displaying their new-found ability to play at breath-taking speed in sustained bouts, is encourage their probable opponents to dig out their innermost cynics and work on dubious ways to slow games against the All Blacks to the sort of glacial pace that diffuses much of their aerobic advantage.

This is standard practice after all – an old trick that most of the rugby world leant into a decade ago when they realised that the All Blacks had the desire and capacity to turn test rugby into an 80-minute journey through aerobic hell.

The rest of the serious rugby contenders had built muscular, heavyweight, collision-only athletes and they were made to look lumbering when they encountered an All Blacks team that had manufactured hybrid beasts such as Kieran Read, Brodie Retallick and Jerome Kaino who came with power, mobility and subtle touches.

Between 2011 and 2016 it became apparent, when the All Blacks lost just four tests in four years, that they could inflict catastrophic damage by being able to play at a pace and intensity that was simply too much for everyone else.

Under pressure to adapt, the chasing pack decided the best survival technique was to buy themselves additional recovery time, through cynical acts of time wasting.

The likes of England, South Africa, Ireland and even Australia at times, were especially good at stretching the limits of legality and credibility by feigning injuries, waddling to lineouts, huddling for ages for no real reason and setting-up scrums in only slightly less time than the Egyptians managed to build the pyramids.

It should have been harder for them to get away with this, but there was always a hint that the refereeing fraternity had been told to let it slide because it wasn’t good engagement to have the All Blacks so dominant.

Two World Cups and a world record consecutive run of victories came in this period and every other week someone would be telling the media that the All Blacks had made the game boring by winning so much.

And so egregious time-wasting became accepted, all part of the game to the extent that there were periods last year when the whole business felt out of control and World Rugby decided that it had enough of the shenanigans.

The primary validation was no longer there as the All Blacks weren’t running rampant, and for a sport trying to pitch itself as entertainment, it didn’t work having prolonged periods where big men were doing nothing other than hydrating and heavy breathing.

It was decided that this year’s Six Nations would be the place to take a stand and referees were empowered to hurry things along.

To tell players they couldn’t just flop to the ground during a stoppage and say they were injured or take the better part of a minute to walk to a lineout.

Brodie Retallick claims a lineout for the All Blacks against the Springboks. Photo / Photosport

All that was well managed during the Six Nations and it needs to continue, because at Mount Smart Stadium the Boks were up to their old tricks again.

They had picked a pack which was the size of Western Europe, and they had no chance of coping with the pace the All Blacks generated in the opening 20 minutes.

Their opportunities to slow things down were few and far between as the All Blacks were just so good at holding the ball.

“We have got to take onus and control what we can control before we start grizzling about anyone,” said head coach Ian Foster when he was asked if he was happy at the way the game was controlled by French referee Mathieu Raynal in respect to managing time wasting.

“It is up to us to make sure, that if we hold the ball, if we are accurate in what we do, then the ball stays in play more often and that sets the tempo of the game. There are some parts we have got to own rather than expect others to do it for us. That has been our number one mindset.”

Raynal, lest anyone should forget, was the referee who alerted World Rugby to the war it should wage on time-wasting when he famously penalised Wallabies first-five Bernard Foley in the closing minutes of the Bledisloe Cup clash in Melbourne last year.

But while he may be credited as the unwitting crusader in all this, there wasn’t much evidence that he was keen to hurry the Boks along in Auckland.

Given even half a chance to prolong a stoppage, the Boks did their level best to take it and they were mostly indulged.

“I guess number two is that we are aware that opposition will try to slow you down, and I know Sam [Cane] had a talk to Mathieu after the second scrum – there were two scrums and two injuries – so we were mindful of that early, but there is not much we can do to control that.”

World Rugby putting referees back under pressure to hurry things along is a high priority for the All Blacks.

It’s not an intangible problem. When the All Blacks were able to keep things moving along at Ellis Park last year, they ran over the top of the Boks in the final quarter.

When they were able to build a constant flow in Mendoza, they had the game sewn up by halftime and then in Auckland, the 20-minute opening blast was enough to run the legs off the Boks again who faded in the final quarter just as they had in Johannesburg.

As Foster says, there’s plenty the team can do to control the amount of time the ball is in play and how much aerobic duress they can put their opposition under.

But so too do they need World Rugby to come back to the party and make it a priority again for referees to get tough on the worst aspects of time wasting.

There is no team, not even the French or Irish, who would currently feel like it would be a good idea to get into an end-to-end, free-flowing contest with the All Blacks, and the World Cup will come with a heavy element of gamesmanship where teams will strive to get away with whatever they can.