I know it's not finished. And it still seems wrong to sum up so many matches in one fell swoop. The trouble is that the sides have something of a sameness about them this year, or had until Saturday.
The All Blacks have looked like a team trying, but failing. The return of a certain Dan Carter to the number 10 shirt, and the benching of a number of old faithfuls, So'oialo and Nonu in particular didn't instantly weave its magic, rebuilding a backrow and an 8, 9, 10, 12, 13 combination took a while but once they'd sorted it all out it suddenly looked like an All Black team of old. The ruthless power at the breakdown was there and the silly mistakes were gone. The passing was slick and dangerous, the support running was suddenly back and working, and frankly Australia were lucky with at least one of the disallowed tries which prevented them being drubbed.
The Wallabies though... OMG! WTF?! Robbie Deans suddenly looks mortal. I don't believe he's suddenly become a bad coach but I suspect he's suddenly found a rugby ethos that doesn't suit his style. It's remarkably hard to argue with the structures and system he put in place for the Crusaders. They're not quite uniformly used in New Zealand Rugby, but close to, and they're used at All Black level too. It's hard to argue that they're pretty good there, this year notwithstanding. But Australian rugby seemingly won't, or can't, use these patterns. And I think that's the real problem here. They buy into the game plan in training, but put them under the pressure of a match situation and some of them manage, largely, to continue the game plan, some of them revert to old school aussie rugby. One or the other might work, but the mix clearly doesn't, and it makes them look confused and clueless because if 10 and 13 are playing to one playbook, and 9 and 12 to another, no one is in the right place.
The 'Boks. What to say about the Boks? To be honest they're the main reason I haven't written before. PdV has rediscovered the dark days of 10 man rugby. If you've got a line out with Matfield and Botha it's brutally efficient. But it's so boring! In the previous match their #13 touched the ball once. ONCE. Their wingers, who you'd have to say on current form are probably both in the top five in the world, ONLY touched the ball if the other side kicked it to them. What on earth are you doing? The completely dominated all their matches on South African soil and didn't score tries that were sitting their begging to be scored - never an issue for the AB or the Aussies when they were on top - quite content to keep going until there was a mistake and slot the penalty. This week though, all of that changed. I don't know if there was a rebellion or it was a cunning plan, but suddenly the backs were running the ball, running their angles, cutting the opposition to shreds and running in tries for fun. And when you get to see that, the times when they hammer the ball into the corner and compete at the line out become fun too. Because it's a part of the game, it should stay a part of the game, but it has to be a part, not 100% too.
It's ironic, before this Tri-Nations I was chatting to a friend about it. I'm an AB fan, he's a Bok fan. We both agreed we thought that this would be Australia's year. We quibbled about who would be second (I have to say I was right about that bit I think, I just can't see Australia winning this weekend). But how wrong we were about Australia. I wonder if they can keep on being this bad, and if not, who will pay the price?
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