Trainspotters on track to Everest
Wayne Smith, Rugby Union editor | July 18, 2009
Article from: The Australian
TRAINSPOTTERS, Robbie Deans calls them. Those rugby nerds able to quote the most obscure statistics and historical details in the build-up to every Test match.
Funny, just as an aside, that he should use the term during an impromptu press conference on the Wallabies' arrival at Auckland Airport, because it's unlikely even Superman, equipped with his telescopic vision, could spot a train from there. Still, that's a story for another day, probably some time in October 2011 when tens of thousands of World Cup fans are stuck at the airport, not a train to be had, and confronted by that narrow 20km-long parking lot that passes for the highway into town.
But back to the nerds -- most of whom seem to have press accreditation -- who apparently have been in Deans's ear all week, informing him that the All Blacks have won 19 consecutive Tests in Auckland, that the Wallabies haven't come out on top there since 1986 and that not once in the 106-year history of trans-Tasman Tests -- not once! -- has any Australian team been victorious at Eden Park while the stadium was being rebuilt to host the 2011 World Cup final.
Deans would not be a man to play poker against because barely a flicker of emotion crosses his face, no matter how silly the questions put to him. But even he has been struggling not to roll his eyes in sheer exasperation whenever a journalist starts quoting from the history books. He always answers politely, but you see he is just dying to scream, "It doesn't mean anything"!
And he's right. It doesn't, not for the Wallabies anyway. Maybe it does for the All Blacks because the domination New Zealand has established on the rugby field over the past century does seem to feed somehow into the contemporary team and fuels its self-belief.
It doesn't work that way for the Wallabies, sadly. Sure they have enjoyed the odd golden period -- excuse me for a moment while I slip on my nerdy spectacles -- when they have won three Tests in a row, 1929, 1978-80, 1991-92 and 1998. But, unless these gawky glasses are misleading me, never have they won four straight.
Each generation of Wallabies, it seems, is made to go through the same torturous learning process of defeat, resolve, belief and finally achievement. There is curiously no communal or, in these days of professional rugby, corporate knowledge that is handed down from age to age. Each generation has to learn anew, learn for itself, how to beat the All Blacks.
Which brings us to today's Test and today's generation, 12 of whom, you no doubt will be fascinated to learn, also started in the corresponding Eden Park Test last year. Deans has brought them to the "belief" stage. They're on the South Col, 1000m shy of the summit of Everest. The last and most difficult part they have to do on their own.
They could have reached the pinnacle last year. The prize of the Bledisloe Cup was there for the taking. The Wallabies might have been a little lucky to have opened up a 17-7 lead just after the interval in the Brisbane Test, but there was no justice whatever in the 14-9 half-time scoreline in Hong Kong. The Wallabies were murdering the All Blacks. The only trouble was that, while they were doing that, Irish referee Alan Lewis was murdering them.
The first penalty of the match went Australia's way but then seven straight, nine of the next 10, went to the All Blacks, keeping them in the game.
In both matches, as All Blacks captain Richie McCaw acknowledged this week, had the Wallabies been the next to score in those matches, they could have swept on to victory and the cup. Instead, with the series teetering on a knife's edge, the Australians wavered, the All Blacks' self-belief kicked in and for the 75th and 76th times in Bledisloe Cup history, New Zealand found ways to win.
Yes, there was comfort in getting so close, but as those Himalyas expeditions that only made it as far as the South Col would attest, that's cold, cold comfort. And of course, while sometimes the weather can be milder than normal, Everest itself never gets any shorter.
The All Blacks might have looked like rubbish against France and Italy but McCaw is back and, silly as it sounds, that changes everything. As Berrick Barnes so graphically put it this week: "Any team led by Richie McCaw, mate, you know what you're in for."
Still, the Wallabies have as many individual game-breakers as the All Blacks, maybe more. While New Zealand has McCaw -- and let's not forget Australia has George Smith -- it doesn't have Dan Carter, which leaves it with no real counter to Australia's mid-field general Matt Giteau.
Technically, there's no area of the game where the Wallabies appear deficient. The first scrum of every Test is still "hold your breath time" but in the main, the Australian set piece works, functional if not formidable, and the Australian forwards are now speaking of improving their delivery of the ball where once all they could talk about was not being bulldozed off it.
Arguably, the Wallabies have the superior kicking game and all indications are the NZ selectors believe so too, employing a second specialist fullback, Cory Jane, as a winger to help counter it.
So today's the day. There are no escalators to the top of world rugby. The only way to get there is by putting one foot after another, a brutally hard slog.
But those Wallabies who have done it before them insist the view is worth it.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...015651,00.html
