COMMENT
There was a time when the All Blacks were viewed as rugby’s moral compass.
Respected globally for their breathtaking flair, unmatched quality, and a culture of grace in both victory and defeat, New Zealand set the gold standard.
Even growing up in South Africa, I idolised players such as Michael Jones, Zinzan Brooke, Carlos Spencer, Christian Cullen, and the great Jonah Lomu. The power, audacious footwork, precise offloading, and blistering speed were the hallmarks of all great All Blacks teams.
How times have changed over the last month during Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry.
Throughout this series, the men in black have traded their traditional rugby authority for a culture of persistent moaning and cynicism. Nowhere is this shift more glaring than in their reaction to the Springboks' scrum dominance.
Unable to match the Springboks' brutal power up front, the All Blacks have resorted to whining about the Boks’ apparent illegal scrummaging technique, which no referee or coach from another country has managed to pick up over the last seven years. Not even the Irish, whose scrum was totally obliterated in November, came up with this sort of hogwash.
Rather than looking inward to fix their own mechanical flaws, their camp has spent the fallout from the first and second Tests launching a calculated media campaign to influence match officials.
Leading the chorus is head coach Dave Rennie, whose post-match rhetoric has degenerated into a public smear campaign. In fact, it started before the first Test already, when he accused the Boks of trying to slow down the game before a tackle had been made in anger at Ellis Park.
By accusing Rassie Erasmus's pack of illegally "walking around" the mark to milk penalties, Rennie has sought to create a pre-empted narrative for the referees. You could see the wheels turning in that regard when Australian referee Angus Gardner spent so much time policing the Boks at scrum time in the second Test that he missed the All Blacks collapsing multiple scrums on the night.
It is a desperate ploy to try to win the series without having to front up.
When armchair analysts and media acolytes attempted to forensically analyse Ox Nché's head position in one of the scrums in Cape Town, former England loosehead Joe Marler summed up the rest of the world’s frustration with Rennie and his social media followers' antics. He set the record straight with a four-word shutdown: "Not a clue x."
The All Blacks also decided to get the odd cheap shot in to try to rile up the Boks into playing the man rather than the ball.
While having his mind on Rennie’s scrum theories, Gardner missed many high shots on Bok players, including a tucked shoulder to the face of Damian de Allende. But if you ask the New Zealand podcasters and media, De Allende actually went and put his face in that position.
In Cape Town, when the rugby failed them, the All Blacks turned to cynicism. Spearheaded by the likes of Fabian Holland and Luke Jacobson, New Zealand’s approach turned noticeably grubby. Late hits off the ball, cynical clear-outs from the side, and off-the-ball niggles were deployed to disrupt the Boks’ momentum.
Gone is the ruthless, clinical precision of the All Blacks of old; in its place is a side resorting to cheap shots when the kitchen gets too hot.
This cheap-shot mentality is the ultimate sign of a team feeling the squeeze. Going into the series, they knew they had to win the first two matches because South Africa’s superior depth would start to come into its own in Tests three and four.
For half a decade, South Africa has sat at the summit of world rugby, winning back-to-back World Cups and establishing themselves as the standard-bearers of physical Test match rugby. The All Blacks used to meet that challenge with skill and iron-willed discipline. Now, they meet it with referee complaints and off-the-ball antics.
Erasmus has been at pains to try to shield his team from Rennie’s antics, though he has at times been guilty of being dragged into this mudslinging competition with his New Zealand counterpart.
As the series heads to the cauldron of FNB Stadium in Soweto for the third Test, the talking must stop.
Rennie and his squad have made their bed of excuses. Now, it is time for Siya Kolisi and Erasmus’s Springboks to do what they do best: inflict a physical beating so absolute that no amount of post-match whinging can disguise it.
It is time to shut Rennie and the All Blacks up — hard.