The Clubrooms: Dylan Cleaver - All Blacks looked a side that couldn't be bothered in Bledisloe Cup defeat

Sam Cane and the All Blacks react during their Bledisloe Cup defeat to the Wallabies in Brisbane. Photosport

Clubrooms

Winners and Losers

WINNERS

THE BRAIN

If you scroll or scan down a little here you'll quickly discover that I am no fan of red cards in rugby. If it was up to me they'd be reserved only for the very worst kind of thuggery or obscene referee interaction.

But… if it takes extreme punitive measures to force coaches to lower their sights with front-on tackling technique, then maybe this short-term pain will have long-term benefits. There was no obvious malice in the two offending tackles on Saturday night but the fact is they involved shoulders, chins and whiplash effects.

Go lower. It's good for the brain and, ultimately, good for the game.

CRICKET

If you haven't already seen this clip, you need to spend some time taking it in.

There's a lot to unpack. Tom Blundell returns to form just in time for the international season, scoring a ton. Jacob Duffy continues his excellent bowling form, keeping a massively underpowered Otago side upright in the Plunket Shield.

There's the gathering of Otago players all wearing woolly pompom hats. Given where they're from, if they're finding it cold then Wellington must have turned on a Southerly Special.

There is, of course, the bizarre dismissal – it used to be called "handled the ball" but now comes under the less romantic "obstructing the field" rule – and the chaotic way Blundell turned a moderately dangerous situation into a full-blown catastrophe.

Finally there's the gracious, almost apologetic way he calmly leaves the crease without waiting for official confirmation.

It's a beautiful vignette and why those of us who love it can't let go of long-form cricket.

SOPHIE DEVINE

The White Ferns lost plenty of lustre during their awful tour to Australia, but Devine continues to fly her flag high across the Tasman with a boss-like century in the WBBL.

SOUTHAMPTON FC

A little more than a year ago, Southampton invited Leicester City into their home ground and watched helplessly as the visitors racked up nine unanswered goals.

They then did a curiously un-footbally thing. They didn't sack the manager.

Instead, Ralph Hassenhuttl has been trusted to oversee a stunning reversal of fortune that saw them survive then flourish last season.

This season has not quite reached the quarter pole, but remarkably Southampton spent a brief bit of time this weekend top of the Premier League table after beating Newcastle 2-0.

It might not last. They probably don't have enough firepower to pull off a Leicester City miracle a la 2016, but it was still great to see the little guy standing on the shoulders of giants.

LOSERS

ABs LEADERSHIP

Whether it was the dreaded dead-rubber situation, the red-card distraction, the US election tumult or just general apathy, the post-mortem for the latest All Blacks loss has not been carried out with the same blunt-edged vigour as usual.

In most respects that's healthy. A return to the pitchforks-and-torches routine after every loss benefits nobody but before we flush this one through the system I feel it is important to acknowledge one point (and to do so in Trumpian fashion).

THAT WAS A BIGLY MISERABLE PERFORMANCE!

The red card has become a convenient red herring. Ian Foster was no doubt delighted he got to play a straight bat to questions about Ofa Tuungafasi's felony offence rather than have to dissect the shortcomings of the players who remained and the game plan they tried and presumably failed to enact.

You can almost excuse the Bledisloe I nightmare as a false start. Bledisloe II and III demonstrated the enormous talent deficit between the two countries at this stage of their development.

Bledisloe IV painted a picture of a team that couldn't be that bothered about rising to the small occasion; a team that felt being made to play this Wallabies team again was a bit beneath them.

You can't pin all the blame on the coach, or the skipper, or the halfback-first five combination. That was an 80-minute window into what a collective lack of leadership looks like.

SCOTT BARRETT

Red cards and rugby are a disastrous combination. I'd go even further and say that 10-minute yellow cards tilt the table too much.

However, if you agree that the head is sacrosanct and that players who do not respect that should receive the ultimate punishment, then the sendings off of Tu'ungafasi and Lachlan Swinton are easily defendable.

The aforementioned both made errors of judgement and technique and paid a huge price.

What Barrett did had nothing to do with technique; it was just an almighty brain fade.

STATE OF ORIGIN I

An absolute ratings disaster.

According to Australian reports, the Channel Nine spectacular, for many the high point of the league season, ratings were down an enormous 25 per cent on game one last year. The numbers watching were the lowest since they started recording these sorts of things in 2003.

A move back to the middle of the season seems inevitable.

Letterbox

It's accurate to say the letterbox was dominated by mail on one subject: the appointment of Raelene Castle, first signalled in these pages some time ago. It's also fair to say they were not kind. Some of them were also not sensible. Please bear that in mind when taking this in.

Is that how liberalism works? Be fantastically awful at your job and get top paying work. How many failures has [Castle] managed yet now she has an opportunity to wreck NZ sports as well? Liberal minds are like a box of chocolates that were sitting in the sun for too long. Mushy. J Kalgie

That's an interesting leap to go from a criticism of a particular appointment to a takedown of a political and moral philosophy.

I get the whole concern about Castle's apparent ability to fail upwards. It's been a common theme of the criticism, but to tie it into a liberal conspiracy seems daft given that many involved in the appointment process are far from liberal.

Perhaps conservative minds are like bread left in the pantry: stale and mouldy.

Why are they willingly inflicting this on to our amazing NZ sporting family? Who twisted their arm? Derailed their discernment? Compromised their convictions? Mark my words: This shambolic castle will fall again, upon us. Cathy Gehr.

So it's a woman's turn to take up this role? Surely the appointee should be the best candidate who applied? Of the female applicants, surely there must have been at least another superior female candidate than the seriously flawed, track record of [Castle]. Pity NZ Sport. Tony Panegale, Leigh

Right, so it seems that Castle has a job to do to convince most of the public about her abilities. Problem being, I'm not sure how you do that in that role.

I've never once watched a New Zealand team win and thought, "Wow, Peter Miskimmin has done a great job there". From the outside looking in, success for Sport NZ as an organisation just looks fluffy and ill-defined and failure looks too easy to pass off as somebody else's fault.

If Castle has a vision for the future of Sport NZ and how the bloated and beleaguered High Performance Sport NZ fits into that, it needs to be laid out in a very measured and measurable way.

Castle probably needs the sort of time an unconvinced public is unwilling to afford her.

Media Snack

An interesting piece on greyhound racing from Longreads. It has details like this, which might lure you in… or might drive you away. I'll just leave it out there for you to decide.

"Some owners even like to be in the room when their dog's semen is manually collected. Some owners even like to do it themselves, off-site. (That means what you think it means.)"

The Grim Reaper

ANTHONY VAN DYCK

Just four years old, Anthony Van Dyck suffered a very public death after breaking down in the Melbourne Cup, the two-mile race that stops a nation. An Epsom Derby winner and one of the Melbourne Cup pre-race favourites Anthony Van Dyck was pulled up by jockey with 400m to go and it was discovered he'd fractured a fetlock and was euthanised. His trainer, Aidan O'Brien said: "He was a very kind, sound, lovely-natured horse – incredibly tough and genuine. It was very sad to see that happen, it was just very unfortunate. He was a good Derby winner who we'll have fond memories of." It can be a tough business.

Watch Me

Personally, the history and "tradition" around the US Masters makes my skin crawl a little, but no doubt the golf will be good and no crowds at least means no "Get in the hole". From Friday morning on Sky.