When rugby tribalism was at its height in the
amateur era, facing Waikato in an Auckland jersey held all the appeal of camping in a leaking tent on a wet weekend.
“You might win [against Waikato],” an Auckland player told me in the 1980s, “but, God, most of your body aches for a week”.
If there’s not the same passion with Super Rugby clashes, there’s still plenty about Saturday’s game to spark interest, especially if your formative years were spent somewhere such as Hamilton or Te Awamutu.
Appointing Vern Cotter coach has been a masterstroke for the Blues. As Dalton Papali’i revealed last year, Cotter didn’t tiptoe into the job.
In Cotter’s first meeting with the Blues, Papali’i recalled the coach telling the squad that “we were just Aucklanders, we’re townies, we don’t want to work hard, we just want the result”.
Patently there was the potential for disaster, but in fact, the flash townies buckled down and showed that when the going got tough, so could Aucklanders.
The Chiefs haven’t had an attitude problem for a decade. But if there is any need of a sharp reminder how much effort is needed to beat the new Blues, a quick revisit of their emphatic 41-10 win in last year’s final should do the job.
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New Zealand rugby officials usually cop more brickbats than compliments but good on the Blues for offering tickets to Eden Park as cheaply as $20 for adults and $10 for kids.
Reviving the Crusaders dynasty
The TAB have the Hurricanes ($1.70) at relatively short odds against the Crusaders ($2.15) in the season’s opening game in Christchurch on Friday night.
As a former Canterbury captain, Crusaders coach Rob Penney has been fully aware from when he replaced Scott Robertson last year that the expectations of Christchurch fans have forever been high.
In 2024, it sometimes felt as if all the bad luck a team could have dumped on it had been building up through the golden seven years of being the best Super team in the country and had unloaded in an ugly deluge of injuries and near misses in big games.
It’d be wrong to expect miracles from this year’s model, but on Friday, we should get a decent steer on whether the Crusaders are ready to claw their way back.
How deep the burn
England’s last-gasp 26-25 win against France at Twickenham on Sunday was dramatic and exciting to an almost crazy degree. The England team had been written off all week by their own media.
But in the last minute, with 81,000 fans at the ground glued to their seats, they produced a brilliant try by wing Elliot Daly, converted by the man of the match, first-five Fin Smith.
Smith is only 22 and this was his first test start. But he played with the composure of a veteran, showing an all-round game that illustrated, among many other skills, that he can tackle as well as pass, run and kick.
French superstar Antoine Dupont, like the rest of his team, was plagued by handling errors. The field and ball were wet and slippery, but in his usual form, Dupont can make a soapy ball look like a minor inconvenience.
The defeat will be deeply hurtful for the French on two levels. One is that it damages their chances of wresting the Six Nations title back from Ireland.
The second, as detailed in a fascinating story in the Guardian in England, is that forever embedded in the French rugby psyche is resentment over how they were treated as minions by England for more than 70 years.
In 1906, the countries played their first test against each other. France didn’t beat England until 1927. But by 1951, France were good enough to finally topple England at Twickenham, winning 11-3.
An English forward with the wonderful name of Squire Wilkins claimed the 1951 loss may have been triggered by the English players not having their usual half-pint of beer before the game.
“On this occasion, someone suggested a glass of sherry,” said Wilkins.
England still didn’t allow France to join the International Rugby Board until 1978.
World rugby’s saddest story
Wales, as they slumped to their 14th successive defeat, losing 22-15 to Italy in the rain in Rome, have become the saddest story in world rugby.
This is a team that has historically presented such a challenge, the All Blacks once resorted to falling out of a lineout to earn a late match-saving penalty.
The Kiwi connection in the past 30 years has extended to coaching, with incumbent Warren Gatland following Graham Henry and Steve Hansen.
Wales’ problems now go much deeper than the dismal record of the current test side. In 2003, the Welsh rugby union introduced four regional sides to play in top-level British and European competitions.
There’s never been the fanatical support for those teams that clubs such as Newport and Llanelli enjoyed. The diminishing fan base has led to money problems and threats of player strikes.
For a Kiwi rugby traditionalist, the demise of Wales brings no joy. The grim reality is that it’s hard to see much chance of a rapid revival by one of our revered rivals.