GREAT WRITE UP ON THE EDEN PARK GAME FOLKS! Guardian writers are the best! Read soowwly...enjoy every word... ENJOY!! Screaming of the Wallabies will haunt Australian rugby for years to come New Zealand are clearly the best team in the world but their opponents were barely present on Saturday night Australia are left to contemplate a heavy defeat at Eden Park. Photograph: Cameron Spencer/Getty Images Years from now Wallabies supporters will still be taunted by a Hannibal Lecter-like voice in their heads: “You still wake up sometimes, don’t you, wake up in the dark, and hear the screaming of the Wallabies?” Indeed, the Wallabies and their supporters will need an exorcist to rid themselves of their demons after Saturday night’s dismembering at the hands of the All Blacks. That terrifying six-tries-to-two monstering will linger for an age in Australian rugby. The Bledisloe Cup, which many including this column gave the Wallabies a fighting chance of reclaiming, has never looked so out of reach as it does now. The All Blacks didn’t just answer the question of whether they were a great team in decline; they doused the exam paper in petrol, set it alight and then proceeded to flambé the Wallabies over 80 excruciatingly painful minutes. How did it all go so wrong for Australia, from a 12-12 draw in Sydney last week to the mother of all hidings in Auckland one week later? The All Blacks, of course, played superbly and lifted several notches and then some. And there’s no room for doubt with a 51-20 scoreline; the All Blacks are clearly the best rugby team on the planet and won’t be surrendering that status to anyone anytime soon, least of all to the Wallabies. Talk of decline and the rest of the world catching up has now been put in perspective; the All Blacks were underdone in preparation during the June internationals against England, and last week’s draw was a one-off dud performance. They’ve hit their strides now. And yet, the thing that will irk the Wallabies coach, Ewen McKenzie, more than the massive margin of defeat is that the All Blacks didn’t do anything spectacular on Saturday night. There were no big moments of match-defining brilliant plays; rather, it was victory forged on a superbly drilled team flawlessly executing the basics of rugby – catch, pass, kick, and hardness in the tackle and over the ball. As good as the All Blacks were (and to be clear, no team would have beaten them on Saturday), there’s a lingering question about the opposition – namely, where were they? The Wallabies, it seems, simply didn’t show up. The way the teams handled their respective sin-binnings in the first half was telling (Richie McCaw first, followed by Rob Simmons almost immediately on McCaw’s reintroduction). The All Blacks worked the clock expertly, slowing down play to chew up the minutes until the great man’s return. In stark contrast, the Wallabies lost the plot with Simmons in the naughty chair. A penalty try against a seven-man scrum and an All Black counter-attack off a promising Wallabies attack from Israel Folau, and just like that the All Blacks had bolted, from 9-6 to 23-6. Yet, the All Blacks didn’t do anything outrageous with Simmons in the bin; they simply did the basics exceedingly well and capitalised on Wallaby handling errors. The Wallabies, meanwhile, were clueless against 14 All Blacks, just like they were when faced with the same scenario in Sydney last week. To lose a Bledisloe Cup match to an All Black side playing the big moments brilliantly is tolerable (it’s happened so many times down the years with Dan Carter, Richie McCaw, Ma’a Nonu, Ben Smith, Israel Dagg, Cory Jane, Andrew Mehrtens, Jonah Lomu and the like), but to get so comprehensively wiped off the park by nothing more than masterful execution of simple basics from jerseys No1 to 23 presents the sobering reality that the Wallabies, while they may have the individual talent to win, are at heart a collectively weak outfit all too ready to fold when the opposition dominates the micro-contests at the tackle and over the ball. The Pumas and Springboks will be licking their lips.
Posted on: Mon, 25 Aug 2014 03:49:49 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015