Ruck & Maul by GREG GROWDEN - SMH | Monday, 04 August 2008
What hope did the Wallabies have? Apart from confronting a militant All Blacks unit, revved up by their rendition of the throat-slitting Kapo O Pango haka before kick-off, they were also facing four million disturbed Kiwis.
If anyone was in any doubt that New Zealand had lost the plot about its national game, you only had to peruse the front page of the Saturday edition of its biggest newspaper.
It was decidedly odd.
A third of the front page of The New Zealand Herald was taken up with this plea: "People Power: How to save the Bledisloe."
And there was even an editorial that demanded that after two straight losses, the All Blacks remember the three Ps - possession, position and pace. The paper asked New Zealanders for "their final words of inspiration for the All Blacks before their crucial Bledisloe Cup Test", and had also asked readers what they would say to the All Blacks before the match if they were the coach.
Some of the responses were real doosies. Ben and Pearl, no relation to Sam and Dave, told it straight: "Talk to each other. Inspire each other. Be positive, we can win. We will win."
Twelve-year-old Colin Pang had obviously been on the red cordial at the flicks: "I just wanna say that if you win, that's great, but if you lose, that's fine. A sentence that I learnt in the Kung Fu Panda movie is that yesterday is a history, tomorrow is a mystery and today is a gift … so try your best to win for NZ!"
Sam, of no fixed address, growled: "You are more than just a rugby team, and you are more than just players when you don the jersey. Your country is suffering in the grip of a fierce winter of despair. They look to you for hope and inspiration, because you are an All Black."
Liz French of Tauranga got all gooey. "Do not worry. It is just a game and you are merely players. Rugby is not a life or death situation. Win or lose, the world will still go round, the sun will still shine, your mothers, wives and girlfriends will still love you and you can bask in the knowledge that some of us do not even care."
That message was definitely not read out to the All Blacks at 7.22pm, Auckland time, on Saturday. Poor Liz had got it so wrong. She was obviously masquerading as a high-brow New Zealand intellectual, because in this part of the world, rugby is life, it is death, and when the All Blacks lose they get the cold shoulder at home. The world does stop. Yesterday, the rest of New Zealand were on a hunting expedition for Liz to set her straight.
Five days in Auckland reminded Monday Maul how depressed this nation becomes if their rugby team loses its bearings. The endless wet and driving wind didn't help, but it felt as if the country was in a deep depression, a condition that had only been amplified by last year's World Cup Quarter-Final Departure Blues.
So when the Wallabies merrily skipped into the city of sails on Thursday night, they didn't really know how immense their task was. Maybe the hour-and-a-half crawl from the airport to their city hotel gave them an inkling, especially when their team bus was buffeted by high winds. Maybe it was only when they arrived at the ground, and discovered the hordes clad in black looming to strangle them.
Then again, maybe it only really hit them when the All Blacks, through dominating the set pieces, territory, possession, the breakdown and kicking, had them in la-la land well before full-time.
And yesterday, at last, the sun re-emerged over Auckland Harbour.
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