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Photo by Phil Walter/Getty Images. Tape by The Spinoff.
Photo by Phil Walter/Getty Images. Tape by The Spinoff.

SportsJuly 19, 2022

Next All Blacks test cancelled due to everyone being mean

Photo by Phil Walter/Getty Images. Tape by The Spinoff.
Photo by Phil Walter/Getty Images. Tape by The Spinoff.

Everyone was too critical about the All Blacks last weekend and now there’s no more rugby, writes Scotty Stevenson.

New Zealand Rugby communications executive Jo Malcolm has cancelled the first test between the All Blacks and South Africa on account of the fact the All Blacks coaches, players, bus driver, management, logistics team and attendant hangers-on arent quite ready to face such a stern test of their chops. 

Fresh from Malcolms remarkable and poorly-constructed Linkedin revelation that it was my decision, not Ian Fosters, not to frontfor the traditional post-test coachs press conference on Sunday, it is believed Malcolm has cited some general bad juju in the marketplace and an inability to stop the media from writing really, really, really bad stuff about the All Blacks and New Zealand Rugby as the final straw that led her to cancel the much-anticipated match. 

It’s understood the test match will be rescheduled for a date when media and fans will be nicer to the handsomely-paid professionals playing and coaching the national game at the highest level.

It is believed Malcolm became incensed last week when several media outlets in New Zealand had the temerity to run write-offs of a column penned by respected British rugby commentator and columnist Stuart Barnes. In the column in question, Barnes was highly critical of All Blacks captain Sam Cane, and Malcolm was having none of the standard media practice of taking overseas coverage and reprinting it for local audiences. 

At least one journalist spoken to for this column said, What the actual fuck was that?What the fuck was that, indeed?

It is understood that given the fact New Zealand Rugby dont give journalists anything unless they do as they are told, the major media outlets all burned one intern on a stake as penance, and offered up the next newborn child delivered within their respective organisations as a ritual sacrifice at the next NZR board meeting. 

Malcolm made the arbitrary call to cancel the next test on Linkedin, which NZR claims is “the best and most cost-effective way to reach a younger audience”. It is understood that advice has come from Stewart Mitchell, the septuagenarian Chairman of NZR who knows a thing or two about networking, young man.

Strangely, Malcolm chose to make the announcement as part of her response to a former NZ Rugby staffer, Mike Jaspers, who claimed the correct comms approach is not to duck the difficult questions unless you really are hanging up your boots”. Jaspers also worked for prime minister Jacinda Ardern, who has never dodged a question before and does not surround herself with a phalanx of communications professionals. 

Having clearly had a gutsful of the scrutiny faced by the coach and captain of the most well-known sporting team in New Zealand, one which claims to be the most dominant rugby team in the world, and one that has just pawned a share of its revenues in perpetuity to a private equity fund, Malcolm did not beat around the bush. 

The media didnt want answers,she declared. They wanted a coach to step down.

Not on Malcolms watch. Foster and Cane are going nowhere. On this point she seems adamant, and that conviction may yet keep the coach in his job. Hes not important enough to be told that his own press conference is shitcanned, but then again, what man really understands whats good for him?

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Duncan Greive
— Founder

It seems, too, that from now on, Malcolm could well do without the post-match press conference as well as the post-test, next-day press conference. She makes this abundantly clear in her complaint that the media wanted insight and analysis 25 minutes after the final whistle.

The nerve! Consider yourself on notice, press corp. If you want insight and analysis then wait until the following day. Actually, no. Hold on. 

Anyway, this is what you get for being mean. Youve brought it upon yourselves. All you people out there who have dared question the performance of the national rugby team, all you fans who have shelled out for your television subscriptions, all you armchair warriors wearing your All Blacks jerseys and beanies and jackets and scarves.

But mostly all you media people with your endless questions and your storylines and your genuine inquiries and your years of experience covering the “national game” and bringing it to life in words and pictures and sound, you should be ashamed most of all. 

The next game is definitely off, and if you are not careful, Malcolm will cancel the one after that, too. And you wont have another test match until you can all behave yourselves and do what youre told. I am warning you, you have had your fun now get back to toeing the line and telling the people what they want to hear. There is nothing to see here. Please disperse. 

Keep going!
All Black Beauden Barrett reacts during the Steinlager Series match between New Zealand and Ireland at Sky Stadium in Wellington, New Zealand, July 16, 2022. (Photo: Brendan Moran/Sportsfile via Getty Images)
All Black Beauden Barrett reacts during the Steinlager Series match between New Zealand and Ireland at Sky Stadium in Wellington, New Zealand, July 16, 2022. (Photo: Brendan Moran/Sportsfile via Getty Images)

OPINIONSportsJuly 17, 2022

Scotty Stevenson doesn’t want to talk about the All Blacks

All Black Beauden Barrett reacts during the Steinlager Series match between New Zealand and Ireland at Sky Stadium in Wellington, New Zealand, July 16, 2022. (Photo: Brendan Moran/Sportsfile via Getty Images)
All Black Beauden Barrett reacts during the Steinlager Series match between New Zealand and Ireland at Sky Stadium in Wellington, New Zealand, July 16, 2022. (Photo: Brendan Moran/Sportsfile via Getty Images)

Last night, Spinoff editor Mad Chapman asked Scotty Stevenson to write about the All Blacks’ loss to Ireland. He responded with this.

Dear Mad,

Thank you for kindly requesting 800 words on the All Blacks’ first home series loss since 1994. I am very humbled that you would want any, and so many, words from me about the current state of affairs, but I am afraid it’s just not possible.

For starters I am not entirely sure what you would like me to say. Would you like me to go all the way back to Eden Park, which seems an eternity ago now given the surreal events of the last two weeks, or would you like me to provide a detailed breakdown of the third test during which the home side spectacularly collapsed under its own weight, becoming not so much All Black as All Black hole?

The latter would certainly be easy. I could mention the fourth minute penalty conceded by Sam Cane for an early tackle on Josh van der Flier which led directly to Ireland’s first try. Or I could talk about the eighth minute lineout failure, or two others inside the opening quarter which certainly set the tone of the rest of the match. On the subject of lineouts we could discuss the drive defence, which seemed about as organised as a toddlers’ disco and allowed Ireland to score their second try in the 27th minute. I could talk about the 36th minute lineout loss on attack, swiftly capitalised upon by the Irish who went under the bar for a third try a minute later.

I could do that, but what a yawnfest for you and for me. It would be much more exciting to discuss the home side’s third quarter comeback, during which Ardie Savea, Akira Ioane and Will Jordan all scored tries befitting their prodigious talents, but that would only serve to illustrate something that has become patently obvious over the last two seasons, which is of course that this All Blacks team looks and plays like a collection of individuals, bereft of the cohesion and harmony that has long been a hallmark of all great sides.

All Black Akira Ioane scores a try during the test match between New Zealand and Ireland at Sky Stadium in Wellington on July 16, 2022. (Photo: Joe Allison/Getty Images)

Compare and contrast with The Tears of Peter O’Mahoney, which is both a catchy name for a Celtic ballad, and evidence of the genuine and bone deep soul of the Irish team.

Anyway, all of this is to say I really can’t write this for you because I suspect you are after one of those pithy player critiques, and don’t think for a second you’ll find me criticising the effort of the New Zealand players. I’ve been around this game long enough to know that you just don’t go there. Effort is not the issue. It never is. But trust, on the other hand… Does this look like a team that trusts what it is doing out there? Beauden Barrett is playing with all the joy of an accountancy conference, and so many of the penalties conceded over the last two weeks are straight out of the President’s Grade Dumbfuckery Handbook (A funny enough read, but hardly what one would consider high art).

No, to hell with this! Even if I tried to do it, I would inevitably have to shuffle out to the shed and grab that favourite axe of mine, resigning myself to spending invaluable time, and whatever words remained, grinding it. And who needs that on such a fine and crisp winter’s morning? Not me! I have no desire to revisit the harebrained arrogance of the New Zealand national body which has, over the last decade, decimated club rugby, killed the National Provincial Championship, homogenised Super Rugby, burned Australia, Argentina and South Africa (And guess which nation’s clubs now play regularly against teams from the latter?) and told all who would listen, and many who didn’t really care, how much they were worth.

‘Media is under threat. Help save The Spinoff with an ongoing commitment to support our work.’
Duncan Greive
— Founder

Maybe next time, if you were interested, I could write something about what happens when you package up 120 years of respected representative sporting success, call it a brand, and sell it off to Oxbridge dudebro buddies in an act of ego-inflating, nausea-inducing corporate capriciousness. Now that would be a read.

In the meantime, there’s nothing that can be said other than once upon a time, innovation underpinned the game here in New Zealand. All Blacks teams consistently imposed their tactical superiority on others, convinced (and rightly so) that an abundance of athletic and technical ability existed within the nation’s broad church of styles. That broad church has been reduced to a cult, a one-size-fits-all approach informed not by variety but by reactionary methodology and protectionist ideology. How fitting that the team that spooked New Zealand Rugby so badly in 2016 returned this month to shout “Boo!”

Anyway, we all have our bad days, and unfortunately you’ve got me on one so, again, I thank you for the request, but I’ll have to politely decline.

Best,

S

 

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