Little by little, the All Blacks are deteriorating as the world’s rugby superpower, according to World Cup-winning former Wallaby coach Bob Dwyer.
While he declined to nominate the areas in which New Zealand’s game has fallen away — ”don’t want to give them anything”, Dwyer told the Australian on Tuesday — it is apparent to him the All Blacks are not the side they were a relatively short time ago.
”I thought their peak was when they destroyed France in Paris a few years ago [November 27 2004 when they thrashed Les Bleus 45-6 at Stade de France]. I’ve never seen any team play like they did for the full 80 minutes that day.
”When I think of the best rugby I have ever witnessed, I’d have to say Australia for half a game against England in Sydney in 1991 and again for half a game against South Africa in Cape Town the following year. But never have I seen the type of rugby the All Blacks played against France that day sustained for an entire Test match.
”So in some ways, it’s inevitable they’re in decline. When you are at an absolute peak, the only way you can go is down. The best they can hope to do is even out their performances so that the troughs are never too deep.”
According to Dwyer, his suspicions that the All Blacks might not be the unchallengeable superpower of old were confirmed when the Wallabies, despite being ”diabolical” in the first half of the Bledisloe Test at the Melbourne Cricket Ground 10 days ago, were able to steal the match from under the New Zealanders’ noses.
”That continued to sow the seeds of doubt in my mind about New Zealand,” he said. ”I believe the All Blacks have been steadily, if minutely, playing worse, month by month, for the past 18 months.”
Although he still regards the All Blacks as the best side in the world, Dwyer said it was now apparent they can be beaten.
Still, it is one thing for the Wallabies to catch the All Blacks in Melbourne on the rebound from a gruelling Durban Test against the Springboks.
The true test of whether the Wallabies have in fact narrowed the gap will come when the two sides meet at Eden Park on July 21 for the Bledisloe and Tri-Nations decider, and on the evidence of their display against the Springboks in Sydney on Saturday night, Dwyer is not convinced the Australians are as advanced as he had initially thought.
”After the Melbourne Test, I thought we were on the right track. After last Saturday, I’m not so sure. We seemed to revert to where we were a couple of weeks ago,” he said.
Wallaby coach John Connolly wasn’t buying into any talk of the All Blacks being in decline but he did believe that, as of next season, things will start to get easier for Australia at scrum time against the All Blacks.
”In a year’s time, New Zealand won’t have Carl Hayman,” said Connolly, referring to the All Black tighthead’s decision to accept a contract in France.
Unfortunately for the Wallabies — and indeed for the Springboks who will take on the All Blacks in the Tri-Nations Test in Christchurch on Saturday — Hayman is not going anywhere until after the World Cup.
For the moment, loosehead Matt Dunning has the task of managing him, but Connolly was encouraged by the reports he has received about Greg Holmes’s return to club football following a shoulder reconstruction. Connolly will fly to Brisbane from the Wallaby camp in Sydney next Saturday to check out the Reds prop himself.
With Dunning and Guy Shepherdson seemingly World Cup certainties, the selectors have to decide which of four other Test props — Al Baxter, Rodney Blake, Benn Robinson and Holmes — will be allocated the remaining two front-row vacancies in the 30-man squad for France. — Sapa