Horror in Tokyo

So, another Rugby World Cup is over. It’s time to reflect and search for a perspective.

The All Blacks are no longer world champions. Congratulations to the Springboks who absolutely monstered England. England’s dreams of world supremacy were cruelly shattered in 80 minutes of brutally efficient Springbok rugby. 

The ‘old foe’ is alive and well.

What went wrong for the All Blacks? Months before the tournament I started to have misgivings. The experimentation went on and on. Even during the Rugby Championship, it went on.

As we got closer to the tournament I could not believe that the insistence on the dual-pivot, Mo’Unga at 10 and Barrett at 15, would mean that the best fullback in the world, Ben Smith, would sit in the stand during the knockout phase. He did.

Did the ‘double-pivot’ yield results that justified leaving a world-class player on the sidelines? Clearly the selectors thought it did. They pursued it doggedly right through the tournament and even in the play-off for third and fourth places. Smith did start in the last game, at wing.

Picking a blindside loose forward was a problem. With Liam Squire not available and no one else with the physical presence of a Jerome Kaino in sight, the selectors decided on Ardie Savea at 6. This worked well especially against Ireland, but with England looming the selectors had a change of heart. It seems that the ‘kamikaze twins’ in the English team really worried our three wise men. So, Scott Barrett came to 6, Ardie went to 7 and Sam Cane was sent to the bench.

It didn’t work. Barrett lasted for a half and then was gone. Cane came on and made some crunching tackles. Scott Barrett is a mighty fine lock, who can play 6, but not at this level.

The midfield proved problematic for the selectors too. Sonny Bill came back strongly from injury and Lienert Brown was a solid consistent performer. Crotty had a broken thumb and Jack Goodhue had a troublesome hamstring.

They were all chosen but Ngani Laumape a strong forceful straight up the guts runner and bone-crushing tackler wasn’t. Sonny Bill did his thing, no problems there. Lienert Brown for all his cleverness could not straighten the attack and offload to Goodhue. Goodhue lasted for only 40 minutes against the English. He ran strongly and tackled well. I do not understand why he was subbed off. Ryan Crotty spent most of his time in Japan sitting in the stand. Laumape paired with Sonny Bill could have given us a lot more ‘go-forward’ in the midfield.

And so to our night of horror. England struck us with ferocity. They were all over us. I watched in disbelief as experienced international players appeared to be shell shocked. They were like possums in the headlights. Remember how Kieran Read stepped in during the game against Ireland to turn things around. Not this time, Kieran appeared to be shell-shocked like everyone else.

We were too slow to the breakdowns and we didn’t commit enough players. Time and time again an All Black would make a break, get tackled and instead of recycling the ball it would come out on the other side, the English side. The English upset our lineout and trifled with our scrum. The All Blacks lost the physical battle on semi-finals night.

It took me some days to get over the shock of this defeat. It was the nature of the defeat, not the defeat itself which upset me so much. I started to search for answers. In my view, Eddie Jones out thought the All Blacks coaching team. Eddie’s players targeted our set pieces and the breakdowns to deny us ball and to reduce our time to set up plays. They were successful. The horror of it all was that we had no reply to these tactics. Once they had established their dominance over us they maintained it. Not even the half time ‘chat’ from Mr Hansen managed to change this

How could coaches who have been around international rugby for years be so comprehensively out coached? Only Mr Hansen and his assistants can tell us that. I doubt that they ever will.

 - Wayne Hawkins

 

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