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ANALYSIS: A sheepish Ian Foster offered a five-word response and headed to the sheds in the belly of London’s Twickenham stadium to begin the autopsy.
“It’s the preparation we got,” the All Blacks’ coach said, offering a wry smile, after a local broadcaster suggested the humiliating 35-7 defeat to South Africa in London was what his side needed ahead of the looming World Cup.
In other words, yeah, nah.
The largest defeat in All Blacks history, no matter how you look at it, isn’t in any way wanted preparation two weeks out from a World Cup opener in any universe.
Sure, better to put out a stinker in a warm-up match on neutral territory than against hosts France in Paris in a fortnight, but this was a disastrous evening in London for the All Blacks, who had been cock-a-hoop after winning the Bledisloe Cup and Rugby Championship during an unbeaten start to the year.
After all, including when Foster spoke shortly before kickoff, he reiterated all week this fixture was about battle-hardening his troops and building up a head of steam ahead of what shapes as a momentous World Cup opener.
Julian Finney/Getty Images
The dejected All Blacks look on after the South Africans handed them their worst defeat in test history, 35-7 in London.
There was no temptation to rest players and experiment, he said. Rather, outside the injured duo of Brodie Retallick and Shannon Frizell sitting the match out, Foster wheeled out what was essentially his first-choice team for the All Blacks’ first test in three weeks.
But rather than heading to Germany for a pre-tournament training camp upbeat, the All Blacks’ confidence has taken a mighty hit just as some fans were starting to believe Foster might just have a sniff at signing off with a world championship.
It’s easy to say the 28-point flogging, which surpassed the 21-point loss to the Wallabies in 1999 as their worst test loss, means zilch come the global tournament, but that would be both underestimating what a pounding can to do the psyche of a team, and ignoring the many issues which doomed them in London.
On the other hand, the reigning world champions will head into their title defence full of beans, having finally run away with the match after the mistake-plagued All Backs repeatedly invited them to do so.
Everything that could go wrong for the All Blacks essentially did over a painfully long two hours plus.
Three yellow cards, two of which went to Scott Barrett and resulted in a first half red card, a horror penalty count (14), a lousy lineout (10/15), and a worrying leg injury to prop Tyrel Lomax.
More so, they resembled a bunch of strangers who had been plucked off London’s streets and only met in the sheds prior to kickoff, unable to string even a few phases together as forced passes repeatedly found grass.
David Rogers/Getty Images
All Blacks coach Ian Foster and his side copped a heck of a reality check ahead of the World Cup in France courtesy of a 28-point loss to South Africa.
They were all at sea against South Africa’s rush defence, which forced numerous handling errors and constantly buried ball carriers beyond the advantage line.
France, and the rest of the rugby world – and you just know Wallabies coach Eddie Jones was cackling somewhere – will have watched on wide-eyed, no doubt blown away by their ineptness.
All Blacks fans searching for positives could at least point to their side’s first half defence, when they absorbed a mountain of pressure, much of it with Barrett and Sam Cane in the bin, yet hung tough in a start-stop affair
Speaking of the endless stoppages of play, which included multiple TMO interjections, two of which correctly disallowed tries, perhaps nobody will ever complain about the pace-of-play during a Super Rugby match again.
The first half took more than an hour to complete at Twickenham, and the match dragged on beyond the two-hour mark.
Let’s hope it’s not the norm in France.
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