Well that sucked
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By Benji Crossley
Four years of rugby, a generation of players and management, the legacy of a group all decided by the width of a Handre Pollard goal kick that hit the post and bounced in, a lineout overthrow that left a captain scrambling on defence, a pass not given, or a pass given a split second late. Small moments decide the biggest matches and today was no different.
Earlier in the year I wrote a reaction piece while driving home from watching my Chiefs lose to the Crusaders in the Super Rugby final. It was quite cathartic to get all my thoughts written down. Today, I tried to take my mind off it by taking my kids to the swimming pool but that simply didn’t work. So, I’m trying the writing bit again.
1) The tale of two loose forwards
Pieter-Steph du Toit was the world player of the year in 2019 and he wound back the clock tonight. I’m not sure if it was a specific tactical ploy but every time Jordie Barrett moved, du Toit appeared to stop the movement and, in most cases, he stopped that movement very abruptly. Barrett is so key to the All Black attack because he’s a triple threat and the Springboks clearly realised they could stop the attack at source if they stopped him. For the most part they did and that was mostly du Toit. It goes to show how good Jordie Barrett is that despite the attention he still had a pretty good game.
Ardie Savea is a nominee for world player of the year this year and, if the All Blacks had won tonight, he probably would have won the award. The fact they didn’t win tonight has nothing to do with Ardie Savea. For not the first time during this four-year window it appeared in that second half as though Ardie put that team on his shoulders and dragged them into the contest. He was simply immense in every way. Luckily for All Black fans, we can probably get another four years out of him and if he can use the pain of tonight as fuel then he’ll go a long way towards carrying the Robertson All Blacks to the business end in Australia in four years’ time.
2) Refereeing processes
Wayne Barnes got most of the decisions right tonight and I guess that is what matters. But in the entertainment business, should how a referee gets to a decision matter as well?
Consider two separate instances.
In the first half Barnes penalised Ardie Savea at the breakdown for not showing enough of a release on the tackled player before he went back in the for the ball. Barnes told Savea that then after seeing it on the big screen, appeared to admit to Savea that he got it wrong (unless I misheard the conversation myself?). However, despite seeming to admit that it shouldn’t have been a penalty against Savea he let Handre Pollard kick the goal.
In the second half, Barnes saw the ball hit the ground in a maul and called out that it went backwards. The All Blacks then score from that play. After looking the TMO pointed out that the All Blacks had knocked the ball on (which was correct) so the try was ruled out.
So, my question becomes why, after admitting he got it wrong on one occasion, could he not change his decision while changing it after being wrong in another?
The TMO’s involvement tonight was the most noticeable that I can remember in a long time. He effectively became another set of eyes for every incident in the game. He was constantly telling Barnes that he’d got something right or wrong and correcting decisions where necessary. But my question is, when did the game decide that this is the level of involvement we wanted from the TMO? I was under the impression, a clearly incorrect one as it turns out, that the TMO’s scope was still limited to foul play or looking at tries. If the powers that be want something more, they need to explain to the fans why they’re doing it.
There are plenty of big games where referees put the whistle away to let the players decide it. NRL playoffs and State of Origins famously have a different standard of refereeing applied. Craig Joubert did it in the 2011 final. Wayne Barnes clearly did it in the last five minutes and in particular at those final scrums tonight. I don’t mind it, I like the idea that come finals the players are left to play the decisive role. But you can’t just start doing that in the final ten minutes. If you’re going to put the whistle away at a game defining scrum in the 78th minute then keep it in your pocket at the 20th minute or the 50th minute.
3) Drama does not equal quality
That was a dramatic game of rugby, but it was not a good game of rugby. England v South Africa was dramatic but not good. The All Black and Springbok quarter-finals were both good games of rugby and dramatic. Rugby has one of the highest ceilings of any sport (certainly higher than rugby leagues) when it combines both elements.
Sometimes I think that we think the drama of the ending, and this was the most dramatic of endings, makes up for the fact that what we watched for the majority of the game beforehand was mostly dross. It probably shouldn’t.
Put it this way, if that game was a run of the mill Rugby Championship game, we would have forgotten about it a month later.
4) The balance between passion and analysis
Plenty of moments in the first half left me with my head in my hands but it was the opening minutes of Sky’s half-time show that had my jaw on the floor and shouting NO at the television.
Israel Dagg is clearly a passionate guy who cares deeply about the black jersey and has great mates who are in that All Black squad which must have made that first 40-minutes incredibly tough to watch. But his stone faced rant at the opening of the analysis let him, Sky and the New Zealand rugby public down. What made it even stranger was that he went on to admit that the decisions he’d been ranting about were correct!
I do wonder if a producer had got in his and Laura McGoldrick’s ear at some point during half time because the tone did change the further through they went.
I don’t mind criticism of referees, but in this case do it via an analysis of the substance. Lay out the specifics of what upsets you and go through how you think it should have played out. But that is not what happened.
5) What could have been or what should have been?
I saw a tweet saying that at no point during this four year window have the All Blacks been the best team in the world, but they’ll come away from the final kicking themselves that despite playing 60 minutes with 14 men, they should have won that game.
They let themselves down in the first half. The lineout was so poor. They couldn’t make the gainline with the ball in hand and let South Africa get across it with ease. Then the cards. But they only went in 6-points down. In the second half, led by Ardie Savea they played like men possessed and did enough to win the game two or three times over. They just couldn’t apply the killer blow when it was needed.
I wonder how, with the benefit of hindsight, we’ll view this performance? As what could have been if we’d played with fifteen or what should have been despite playing with 14? I guess it doesn’t really matter. We finished second.
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