The New Zealand All Blacks gave a masterclass in media management this week but it wasn’t quite enough to disguise the one flaw in their rugby DNA: they can’t ever admit that sometimes it’s okay to be wrong.
It’s about the only blind spot in a team and culture which stands alone in world sport for enduring splendour.
The lasting story out of this summer’s tour, particularly if the All-Blacks inflict the 3-0 win that many are predicting, may well be that the whole idea of the Lions Tour is no longer sustainable in professional rugby.
The Lions concept was based on glorious impracticality and eccentricity of spirit. Like many of the best things in life, there was an element of daftness about it. It was conceived as a rambling, sprawling and leisurely detour off life’s narrower paths by the elite amateurs of the Home Countries.
The idea was that the time spent on tour would allow players who would war against each other through the bleak midwinter of the local rugby season to achieve a fraternity in distant lands.
But the demands of multinational sponsors, television rights holders and the absurd intensity of the domestic and international rugby season doesn’t really allow for much indulgence of the beatnik life. The corporate world has no truck with eccentricity.
This year’s tour has inflicted on the tourists a punishing itinerary of games and travel which must leave the players privately feeling as if they are the cabaret act on a highly lucrative package holiday tour.
And the Lions are a team which only comes into existence once every four years. Is it realistic to ask a group of rugby players, irrespective of coaching and playing talent, to somehow match the levels of self-knowledge and awareness and execution of a national team which can spend year upon year fine-tuning their game?
The miracle of this tour may not be that the Lions might win a game. It’s that they are capable of even making the show a contest.
So diversionary rows are welcome and in the thorny days after the first Test, a blocking challenge on Conor Murray was referenced by Lions coach Warren Gatland as dangerous. New Zealand coach Steve Hansen responded with a spirited and cranky rebuke on national radio, pointing out that the remarks were “predictable coming from Gatland”.
“Two weeks ago we cheated in the scrums, last week it was blocking, now we are saying this.”
Hansen was adamant his player – and his team – had no case to argue on the issue of whether they were targeting Murray unfairly. And then they placed Jerome Kaino, the player in question, in a scheduled press conference so he could elaborate on the moment himself.
National identity
And Kaino’s interpretation of the incident was persuasive. The All Black explained that what he was trying to do was reach for Murray’s kicking or swinging foot in order to disrupt the clearing kick. His timing was off and he arrived late and his momentum caused him to roll onto the leg Murray had planted. It was a convincing version of events – up to a point.
Last November, after the gruelling Ireland-New Zealand Test match in Dublin, Hansen became very testy in a television interview when he was asked about the All Blacks’ physical approach.
“Do you want me to tell you we’re a dirty side?” he said with revelatory tetchiness.
The All Blacks are the custodians of rugby in that their fame and name transcends the sport. The national team is very closely wrapped up in the national identity of the country. The consistent brilliance of New Zealand rugby teams for a century has rightly been lauded as a glorious impossibility come true.
To cast aspersion on that – to imply or suggest their players stray into underhand or dangerous play – is tantamount to disparaging the character of the nation. Kaino alluded to that in his press conference, stating that “it is never our intent to go out and intentionally injure someone outside the laws”.
That is fair enough. And if Kaino stands up and publicly vows there was no malicious intent in his challenge on Murray, he is entitled to be believed. Still, Kaino could have gone a bit further. He could have acknowledged that the film clip – which, he noted, flooded into his social media streams from irate Lions fans – looked bad.
He might have allowed that if one of his team-mates were on the receiving end of a similar challenge, he wouldn’t be too impressed. He might have said that he was sorry if Gatland or Murray felt in any way that the challenge was reckless or dangerous.
But being apologetic is not a place the All Blacks ever permit themselves to visit. Back in 2005, the notorious spear-tackle on Brian O’Driscoll was explained away as unintentional. And it may well have been but it was also reckless and dangerous in the extreme.
There was no apology at the time although Tana Umaga, one of the two players involved, has said in more recent years that O’Driscoll and he have buried the hatchet.
And it should be noted that the independent citing commissioner found that the New Zealand pair had no case to answer. So strictly speaking, there was nothing to apologise for. Still, O’Driscoll’s tour had been ended and but for the grace of God, his rugby career might have ended there and then too. It wouldn’t have been unreasonable for the All Blacks to apologise for that.
Brutally assaulted
But that unrepentant line is in keeping with how the All Blacks see their role in the game. In The Captain Class, Sam Walker's fascinating book about outstanding captaincy, some four pages are devoted to a France-New Zealand game played in Nantes in 1987.
The All Blacks had won the first Test and the French were baying for blood in the next fixture. Wayne Shelford was the player they targeted. In a gruesome few pages, the extent of the punishment Shelford endured is chronicled. Basically, he was brutally assaulted.
He lost three teeth, suffered concussion, was knocked out cold and was kicked between the legs with such force that his scrotum was ripped open. (Shelford only discovered this after the game: he played through the beating, just as Richie McCaw played through the 2011 World Cup with a broken foot). He became a revered figure in his homeland and was named captain the following year.
That mahogany streak of toughness, as embodied by Colin Meads, the ultimate New Zealand enforcer, is at the core of New Zealand’s approach to rugby. Meads was just the second-ever All Black to receive a red card, from Irish referee Kevin Kelleher in Murrayfield in 1967 (Meads insisted he did nothing wrong; David Chisholm, the player he was alleged to have kicked out at, agreed). He is also the last.
All Blacks fans can point to that as proof of their high disciplinary standards. Opposition rugby fans can grouse that it is proof of nothing more than the fact that they are beyond the rebuke of referees. New Zealand are the best at rugby, ever and always; that provokes the usual combination of admiration and envy.
But Warren Gatland was depicted as a clown this week in the New Zealand Herald for daring to question Kaino's challenge. New Zealand's response suggests they believe their team and players are beyond reproach or criticism; that the watching world must always silently accept whatever happens on the field, their collective integrity should be regarded as unimpeachable.
But they are the All Blacks – and they are human. They should learn to accept that they are bigger and better than that.
