Black days . . .
What was that?
What in the name of all the old and the new gods was THAT?
Here is what I think it was.
Never can I recall seeing an abject, deeply concerning display from the All Blacks to compare with what we saw in the second half in Wellington last Saturday night.
Yes, the Springboks were very good. Bravo, and all that.
But ye gods.
The All Blacks missed 46 (46!) tackles, and completely fell to bits when the Boks started firing up.
Where was the leadership? Where was the direction? Where were the senior players to pull everything together? What was the coaching plan?
There should never be a rush to declare armageddon after one result but I would point out this continues a recent All Blacks trend of being reasonably good one week and poor the next. And, of course, that this one result was historically bad.
In many other sports, this is the sort of result that gets coaches sacked.
That is not how the All Blacks roll, obviously, but it has certainly emphasised deep concerns over where they are heading and whether there are bigger issues off the field.
Also, Wellington sucks. The city is dying and the All Blacks clearly hate playing at that stadium.
. . . for national team
My theory for the past two or three seasons has been that this is not a great All Blacks team.
That is based not just on results — mediocre, by All Blacks standards — but on that old measurement: how many in the team would make a current World XV?
Right now, Ardie Savea is the one guaranteed selection.
Will Jordan is thereabouts (but needs to be able to take the high ball), Beauden Barrett would be in the mix if it was 2016, and I can see Cam Roigard, Fabian Holland and Wallace Sititi eventually getting the nod.
Having one genuinely world-class player in the All Blacks speaks volumes.
For another interesting exercise, my colleague Adrian Seconi asked me this week how many of the All Blacks who were chewed up and spat out in Wellington would even make the team from 1998, that annus horribilis season that featured five straight losses.
Let’s use the team beaten 13-3 by the Boks in Wellington 27 years ago for comparison.
A back three of Christian Cullen, Jeff Wilson and Jonah Lomu remains intact.
I would keep Walter Little from 1998 and Jordie Barrett from 2025 and make that midfield work.
Barrett nudges out Carlos Spencer, but Justin Marshall trumps Noah Hotham (or replacement Finlay Christie).
Savea moves to No 8 to join Josh Kronfeld and Michael Jones in the loose, but Robin Brooke and Ian Jones would stay at lock, just.
Craig Dowd, Anton Oliver and Olo Brown? Given how the All Blacks scrum went last weekend, the current lot would be bench options only.
That would make it just three players from the modern side in what is widely regarded one of the worst All Blacks teams of all.
Too harsh?
Shield fever
They say the Ranfurly Shield does not mean as much as it once did.
And tell that to the Otago players as they prepare to, hopefully, take the shield off the Minor Evil Empire this afternoon.
It will never feel as good again as it did in 2013, when Paul Grant and his men broke a 56-year drought.
But a little bit of shield magic would be lovely.
The final frontier?
Well, it had to happen.
England have become the first major cricket nation to pass 300 in a T20 game.
Zimbabwe (344 v Gambia) and Nepal (314 v Mongolia) do not really count.
Three hundred! Off 20 overs!
There was a time when 300 in a FIFTY-over game was fantasyland. But the game has changed, and slogging rules.
England scored no fewer than 228 runs from boundaries when they posted 304 for two against South Africa, and Phil Salt peppered the fences with 141 not out.
Are we going to see a team score 500 in a one-dayer before long? Where does this madness end?
Sport of the week
I was this many years old when I learned there is a sport called "tchoukball".
It was referenced by one of the students in our secondary school sports page this week.
Further investigation reveals the seven-a-side indoor sport was developed in Switzerland in the 1970s.
It involves teams trying to bounce a ball off a small elastic rebounder at either end of the court, scoring a point if the ball then bounces on the floor without being intercepted.
The name comes from the "tchouk" sound of the ball bouncing off the little nets.
Randomly interesting
Chukwunonso Azuka Tristan "Noni" Madueke is an Arsenal (formerly Chelsea) and England footballer.
OptaJoe reported, after Madueke scored for England in their World Cup qualifier against Serbia, he was the first player with all five vowels in his name to score for the Three Lions since Paul Gascoigne against Moldova in 1997.
