”The Bledisloe Cup means a lot to the team and to New Zealanders and we have selected our best team. It’s not the same team as last week, but it’s our best.”
All Blacks coach Graham Henry could never be described as a voluble man, but the above quote proves that he can pack a little into a lot.
It would, of course, have been rather disingenuous of Henry to criticise the Springboks for leaving 20 of their best players at home for the away leg of the Tri-Nations. After all, it was his decision to rest his top 22 from the first seven weeks of this year’s Super 14. But, without going over the top, Henry has made his point.
The New Zealand Rugby Football Union knows which side its bread is buttered and right now South Africa New Zealand Australia Rugby (Sanzar) is about as cohesive as our own government’s tripartite alliance. By the time the next World Cup comes around in 2011, Sanzar and everything that goes with it — principally the Super 14 and the Tri-Nations — might be no more.
With that in mind Henry is tacitly agreeing with the wounded outrage expressed by the Australian Rugby Union (ARU), in its reaction to Jake White’s Springbok squad announcement. ”It’s not the same team as last week, but it’s our best.” The Bledisloe Cup has been contested for somewhat longer than the Tri-Nations trophy and there is every chance that it will return to its former prominence after 2011.
The International Rugby Board (IRB) has a nettle that it needs to grasp. It has talked tough about weakened teams from major unions going on tour, but done nothing. This year France, England, Wales and now South Africa have all selected below-strength touring squads.
The first three argued successfully that the conclusion to their own domestic season denuded them of playing resources. In which case, why accept the commitment to tour in the first place? Money, of course. The professional era demands constant play to reward the top echelon of Test players.
South Africa used to tour the northern hemisphere once in a blue moon. Between Paul Roos’s tourists in 1906 and Naas Botha’s in 1992, the Springboks played England five times at their Twickenham headquarters. Since 1992, they have played there 10 times and, in the same time span, England have played nine Tests in this country.
Only in 1994, the year before the game went professional, did England send a first-choice squad. By contrast the Springboks always endeavoured to tour at full strength, until last year when White left the likes of Percy Montgomery, Victor Matfield and Fourie du Preez at home to rest ahead of this World Cup year.
Which is not to say that South Africa is accustomed to playing its strongest team abroad, merely its strongest available team. In 2002, under Rudolph Straeuli, the squad was way short of its best due to a plethora of injuries sustained either in the Tri-Nations or the Currie Cup. The result was record defeats to Scotland, France and England.
After a spate of whining through the conduit of the media, the ARU found a diplomatic solution to the ”crisis” this week. South African Rugby explained that the top Springboks had been withdrawn from the tour on medical advice.
Brian West, general manager for public affairs and communications at the ARU, said on Wednesday: ”We have accepted that and will … put the matter behind us. It seems South Africa’s reasons are legitimate.”
Nothing could be further from the truth, of course. It is true that several top Springboks are injured, but the professional game is about strapping yourself up, swallowing a few pills and getting on with it. And, while we’re talking about pills, remember that it was the ARU that chose to turn a blind eye to Ben Tune’s doping offence a few years ago. As the sage put it, diplomacy is the art of lying for the good of your country.
What all this posturing fails to address is the Law of Sod. The scenario that the Wallabies beat Henry’s ”best team” in Melbourne on Saturday, something far from impossible given the way they played in Cape Town a fortnight ago and the fact that the All Blacks will be travelling back from South Africa across time zones with bruised and battered bodies.
If the Wallabies win, then all three contestants will have won one and lost one in this year’s tournament. Now consider the mood of the Springbok touring team. It is made up almost entirely of slighted players with much to prove. Slighted by the Australasian media and by their own coach, who has shown his hand early in a World Cup year and separated the wheat from the chaff.
What happens if this squad of ”no-hopers” bands together and actually wins one or both of its games overseas? After all it is every bit as strong as some of the sides sent as first choice during the past decade. A good deal of humble pie is baking in the oven right now and it remains to be seen whether it is the ARU, the New Zealand Rugby Football Union or Jake White that is forced to eat it.