Every year for eight years, the media has asked the same question. We consulted the spirit realm to finally settle the debate once and for all.
When the All Blacks went up 31-14 with 30 minutes to go against the Wallabies, the game should have been over. The Australians were tired, on the ropes. New Zealand had an easy opportunity to assert a level of dominance this nation usually only reserves for the per-capita medal table at the Olympics. Instead our national side unleashed what might have gone down as an all-time pant-shitting. The Australians, fresh from going down 67-27 to Argentina, scored under the posts with 78 minutes on the clock to draw within three points of their opponents.
Just a few years ago, this would have been all-but unthinkable. Match results between the All Blacks and Australia from 2015 to 2018 look like my North Harbour B grade basketball scores.
Some attribute that run of wins to skill. Others point to game planning and experience. But over the last eight years a compelling competing theory has emerged. The All Blacks of yore dispatched teams not through on-field superiority, but through the force of an astral projection; their aura.
Since 2016, rugby reporters have been increasingly freaking out about the mysterious energetic field that once surrounded the team going missing. It began with them noticing the All Blacks’ aura had been bludgeoned or pierced by an unexpected loss to Japan.
Somewhere between 2015 and Ardie Savea shakily shanking the ball out of bounds with 81 minutes up on the clock on Saturday, that concern escalated into full-blown panic. The fate of the All Blacks’ aura is now one of the most talked-about topics in rugby reporting. Every year without fail, dozens of articles are published about the state of the team’s spiritual feng shui.
Despite the number of words expended on the topic, our sports reporters and commentators can’t seem to come to a firm conclusion about what’s going on. Is the All Blacks’ aura going? Is it going to go after another couple of losses to [insert team name here]? Has it already gone? Or worse still, has the aura been stolen by the mischievous sprites of the rugby world, the Irish?
The problem for our media is that spiritual fields are hard to measure, being by their very nature invisible and probably fake. Journalists aren’t made for that sort of work. Though there’s shades of grey to their analysis, it’s always underpinned by cold, hard, reality. Tackles made. Metres gained. Offloads completed. The world of the metaphysical is far more murky.
Where reporters fear to tread, psychics dance free. If the question is how to best organise a set piece, it’s worth consulting Gregor Paul. If it’s how to recharge a rugby team’s supernatural vibes, a medium is better placed. Last week, The Spinoff set out to get the experts involved in this debate at long last, compiling eight All Blacks team photos dating to the first auratic murmurings and sending them to the entire cast of the original series of Sensing Murder.
Sue Nicholson didn’t reply, perhaps due to a long-running feud with Spinoff writer Alex Casey. Neither did Kelvin Cruickshank. Thankfully Kerry-Marie Callander was more forthcoming.
“The aura is an electric magnetic field that radiates out from all living things. Animals, insects, trees, flowers etc and human beings. Your aura leaves when you pass away and it is part of your spirit and soul,” she said. “So clearly the All Blacks are alive and kicking (so to speak) lol! I think you are referring to their mojo.”
Finally, some good news. The All Blacks have kept their aura in a similar way to how they retain the Bledisloe Cup, by barely managing to not die. But have they jumped out of the spiritual frying pan into the metaphysical fire? Callander’s guidance suggests their malaise isn’t isolated to them, but part of the broader national mojo crisis identified by prime minister Chris Luxon.
Callander’s email ended on a note of hope. “Everything goes in cycles and they have just lost their sparkle a bit,” she said. “Clouds don’t stay forever and I’m sure this too shall pass.” Hopefully the team can engage in mojo-restoring activities such as going for a ride in the pothole detection machine or feeling the rush that comes with speeding past primary schools.
In a sense though, the mojo or aura debate is a red herring. The question is whether it’s gone, and if so, when it went. Callander didn’t say. Auckland-based psychic medium Jessie Rose echoed her thoughts about aura’s immutability. “We can’t lose it as such, but one can definitely weaken it by means of negative self talk, participating in low vibrational activities etc,” she said.
Losing to Japan would probably constitute a low vibrational activity, but did it kill the All Blacks’ aura? Unlike Callander, Rose was willing to put a date on the origin of the team’s struggles. After looking at the pictures provided by The Spinoff, she consulted the spirit realm for specifics. “There seems to be a big shift in the ‘aura’ of the team as a whole in 2016 to 2019 and every year it lowers more. Question: Was there a loss of a big key player in 2015?” she asked.
As it turns out, Rose was on the right track. Unfortunately it appears she got the year wrong. Though Richie McCaw and Dan Carter retired in 2015, All Blacks captain John Key didn’t step down until the following year — December 4, 2016. Having looked at the evidence, it’s almost certain that date is when the All Blacks lost their aura, their mojo, their confidence, whatever.