Speaker: It's the recrimination I don't need …
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Grow up.
Hey! I was moving from 'bargaining' to 'acceptance' this morning, and you ruined it by being all mean!
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Can't remember the exact wording but there were a few too many Great War comparisons on Morning Report. A player compared the smell in the changing room to a WW1 battlefield, and then someone said something about the ABs being "sent out to their deaths".
Something not quite right there ...
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Hey! I was moving from 'bargaining' to 'acceptance' this morning, and you ruined it by being all mean!
In hindsight, I think all the cr@p I heard on radio sport yesterday afternoon may have influenced how I read the comments this morning. Yes, yes, I understand listening to Murray Deaker may cause irreversable harm, and I promise never to do it again.
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The big lesson NZ needs to take from this is perspective - and also - graciousness in defeat. Already people are blaming the captain, the conditioning programme, the ref, the gameplan. It just isn't cool. Move on and accept we lost, and do it with a smile instead of a moan.
It looks like Henry will be leaving the All Black fold and I'm sad that the era has come to an end (also helped with the exodus to the NH of some of our key players). These last four years have been a great era for NZ rugby. We thrashed an over-hyped Lions outfit. We won the grand slam in the NH - not done since the 70s. We have held a vice like grip on the Tri Nations and Bledisloe cup (with four blips out of about 45 along the way). This All Black team has been a great one, and no matter who goes on to win the world cup, the All Blacks will always be the team to beat.
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With respect to the author of the original blog, e are condemning ourselves to more of this rubbish if we won’t accept the obvious in that arrogance and complacency was a factor (not the only one in this loss.
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One of the minor benefits of being knocked out so early (I'm really clutching at technical straws here :) is that the draw for the 2011 RWC will be based on these results.
The tiny upside as a result is that we will likely end up in the same group as one of the real heavyweights, England, France, SA or Argentina. In theory, we should then get a taste of tough rugby in the group phase, thus avoiding one of the criticisms I hear being levelled at this particular campaign.
See, the NZRU ultra-long term strategy will soon pay off :)
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You play to the conditions and guess what, when you play against the hosting nation you also play to an extent against the ref.
In a two point game France scored half their points against 14 men and made the break that led to the winning 7 pointer from a clear forward pass. A 17 point swing from the referee towards France.
Under these circumstances there are only two ‘play to the conditions ‘ options you have– (a) play the referee, (b) make sure you create a points buffer bigger than the referee’s swing. We haven’t had option (a) since Sean Fitzpatrick retired. Unfortunately the ABs were only good enough to create a 17 point buffer when, with this referee, they really needed a 20+ points buffer.
And this analysis doesn’t even begin to quantify the effect of 60 minutes where the French had immunity from the offside rule. Given the same immunity in their code, the French soccer team would win every world cup. But no one would pretend they did so on merit.
This masochistic belief that the All Blacks need to be better than the opposition and a massive points swing from the referee before they deserve to win is as weird as it is common.
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The other benefit in losing ....not having to play the 3rd/4th play off!
ANd I think Andy Milne and legbreak got it pretty much right.
To which I'd add, they tackled liked demons, we missed two that counted given they only got the ball about twice. Imagine what a better attacking team would have done to us.
We scored once from a back move and almost twice more in the first 20 and they never got the chance again. WHat have we been practising for 4 years?
For the most professional and thorough thinkers of the game, we looked awfully out of our depth once the pick and go didn;t work in the last quarter.
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FYI - for posterity's sake, here's how Fairfax sports journos called it on Friday. Note Greg Ford's reference to the French as 'Cheese eating surrender monkeys', a Homer Simpson-ism for French lack of enthusiasm for a war in Iraq.
Now where's that white flag got to?
Jim Kayes: Forget '99, the last four years are what matters. The All Blacks are too quick, too strong, to skilful, too good. France has forgotten how to play French rugby. No scrum and little flair, they will rely heavily on a kicking game.
Marc Hinton: Everybody keeps saying that the French have a big one in them, a la '99. I don't see it. This is an average Les Bleus side and Bernard Laporte's selection gambles are nothing but last rolls of the dice. The All Blacks have been waiting a long time for a significant test at this tournament, and I fully expect them to be magnifique.
Tony Smith: The moment of reckoning. Now is the hour to justify the All Blacks' billing as world No 1. France can't beat them - they can only beat themselves. This is one of France's worst World Cup squads. Where are the backline Serges? Bernard Laporte has chosen robots as backs.
Greg Ford: Kip time is over lads. Time to earn your pay by bludgeoning France into submission and then by flaying them some more just for kicks. The tabloids in the UK call the French Cheese-Eating-Surrender-Monkeys. Could not have said it better myself. They'll roll up the white flag.
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Here's an amazing clip from the scene of the giant rugby ball in Paris, before, during and after Saturday night's game, which I am now seeing in a whole new light. It was posted by Bruce Ferguson, who directed the movie that screens on the inside of the ball:
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Ah, yes, but as Chris 'The French pose absolutely no threat to the All Blacks' Rattue would say
You take a considered stand and you take your chances in these things. It is the columnist's lot, and an enjoyable, invigorating one whatever the outcome.
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I meant to reply to Charles' post, of course, which is now on the previous page.
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I think the ABs lost due to insufficient hype.
Why couldn't Air NZ paint all their planes black and have the staff fly and serve coffee wearing rugby kit? Couldn't Telecom change all the dialtones to play snatches of patriotic music when you make a call? Why couldn't Parliament switch location to a big tent in Paris for the duration of the cup?
The corporate hype was obviiously a necessary part of getting as far as we did, so a bit more of it could have taken us to victory. No?
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Couldn't Telecom change all the dialtones to play snatches of patriotic music when you make a call?
Right, like "Why does love do this to me?"
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Thanks for putting that up, Giovanni. That's a direct and honest response from Chris Rattue.
But there really was such a lot of hubris being spun about the ABs' chances. I know hindsight is 20/20 but the danger of being so dismissive about the opposition is that sometimes it comes back to bite you in the arse with big teeth.
I wouldn't accuse the ABs of that but certainly many of our sports commentators fall into that category.
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Right, like "Why does love do this to me?"
And "Back to the devil you know"
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It has to rub off on the players though.
When you have recent ex-coaches like Mains and Hart going on about a likely 30+ point win, it must have an effect.
When your coach picks Keith Robinson to get him fit for the semi-final it has to rub off.
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Which begs the question: Does my hubris look big in this??
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There is an up side. This from Molesworth and Featherston
"Rugby doesn’t influence the economy
We thought we’d mention this in case the unthinkable happens this weekend and France - not the other team - qualify for the semi final of the rugby world cup...(What with Dougie not even on the bench n all.)
When Reuben Thorne led New Zealand out of the world cup in the semi-finals four years ago, he commented to a reporter that the loss would dent the economy. The story was picked up all over the world. We noted at the time that the record shows he is more a great All Black Captain than a great economist. New Zealand has been dumped out of the world cup four times now. Each time, our economy has accelerated in the following quarter. We have won the world cup once - in 1987, immediately before the stockmarket crashed.
From an economic point of view then...Allez les bleus. (Actually, we’d rather have a recession, thanks, just this once.)"
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And on a happier note ... our Special Olympians are going great guns in China.
The half-million dollar cost of their trip to the games was largely covered by community fundraising.
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Am I the only one the current lead on the Herald (''Pampered' All Blacks, not Henry, take the blame') profoundly annoying? First of all, "take the blame" suggests it's the players themselves who are doing the taking (native speakers are invited to correct me on this). Secondly, since when are the people who write comments to the Herald synonimous with the "New Zealand public" invoked in the first line of the piece?
I guess four years ago the New Zealand public consisted of to talkback radio callers, which is possibly even worse, but come on...
Are there any Aucklanders on Public Address willing to go to the airport on Wednesday and offer a slightly different take on what the New Zealand public is like?
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Even though I think Henry ended up with a massively undercooked plan, I really, really wish he would stick around. Every time we crash out of a World Cup the first thing we do is panic and throw the coach out. Wouldn't it be better if we stuck with one for a while and had somebody who could actually learn from his mistakes so they wouldn't make them again next time? Nah, just get rid of him, get somebody new who can find whole new ways of screwing up. Fantastic.
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One of the many stupid things about that NZH headline was that it was coach who did the pampering.
Collins and Oliver, for example, spoke publicly about how they’d rather be playing, and I’m sure others thought that privately.
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And the Wellington Phoenix are battling along okay too. Not over promising but not disappointing either.
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But there really was such a lot of hubris being spun about the ABs' chances.
Not from us there wasn't.
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