Piri Weepu will lead an emotionally-charged haka at Eden park tomorrow morning
Jack Leahy
Sports Staff
”Beware the filth of the French” warned the front page of the New Zealand Herald this morning with the screaming urgency of a would-be car crash witness.
In case there was any doubt about it, the feel-good World Cup has well-and-truly packed its bags to make way for the ugliness that accompanies do-or-die clashes to Eden Park.
It also says a lot of the national sentiment in the host country. The Kiwis are a naturally laid-back people who occasionally but unfailingly move up a collective notch or two as a nation when it comes to rugby. This time around, the usually cut-throat press have demonstrated remarkable capacities for self-restraint, assuming the mouthpiece of the people role with aplomb to cheer their team through to the final. Now they’re nervous, and it’s showing.
Just as a similar date in October 2007 ought also to have done, Sunday morning should mark the coronation of the All Blacks as the pre-eminent practitioners of their generation. Graham Henry ought to be afforded deserved redemption after the post-2007 witch hunt. All things being well, captain Richie McCaw will vacate his seat among the best All Blacks of all time and graduate the short distance into the sacred pantheon of the greatest.
If only France weren’t the opposition. The banana skin is in town, and people have become paranoid about every step they take. Were it any other team in the world staring blankly at Piri Weepu’s furious ka mate tomorrow morning, the All Blacks would be brimming with confidence that their superior abilities would do the job and that would be that.
But this is the effect that the French have on teams; they scare them. A team with a propensity for wandering in the darkest depths of the shadows before pouncing when you least expect it, they can beat anyone when they’re on form. More effective than that, their sheer enigma unsettles the biggest teams – and it doesn’t come bigger or more vulnerable to unsettling than the All Blacks.
There is no doubt that for France to continue to defy the logics of coherency, tactics, and team spirit and win again at this world cup, they will have to up their game to levels rarely seen in a blue jersey since 1999. For the All Blacks, the problem is that when those levels have been revisited they have almost exclusively come at Kiwi expense.
With the debatable exception of the line-out, New Zealand are the superior team in all departments and have the talent to overwhelm any side in the world if pure rugby talent is the only thing that comes into play. As has always been the case with this tournament, it will come down to that devastating talent that McCaw’s side posses being unlocked by overlooking their own history of tragic self-destruction.
When Piri Weepu begins the haka tomorrow morning, both the national desire and nervous energy of the All Blacks will be palpable, even at this distance. To elaborate any further on a mention of national expectation and 1987 would be a journalistic tautology, but this side will be under pressure. Minor cracks like a raw and inexperienced out-half and a questionable place-kicker could become major faults if exposed by French ferocity under the imposing Auckland sky.
That said, this group of players have grown up with pressure and expectation and have lived through this tournament with the eyes of the rugby-playing world casting a critical eye over their progress on a daily basis. They have been the best team at the competition by some distance and in the semi-final overcame the only other team with realistic designs on global supremacy. They have also comfortably beaten France in the competition already, a fact overlooked by many pundits.
It can happen that France would become the worst team to ever win a World Cup, but surely it can’t, right? Take a step back from the politics of it all and you see one rugby team with home advantage far and away a better side than the other. Is it that simple? It could be, depending on how effectively McCaw calms down his troops in the dressing room. With Hallowe’en fast approaching, will Marc Lievremont decide on a Jeckyl or Hyde theme for the post-match night out? The man is so far out of whack that his players may end up 50-50 on that.
Questions and politics like this make this game much less straightforward than it really should be. A lot of this depends on whether the France of 2007 -uncompromising and ready to fight lions with their bare hands – or the France of 2011 – beaten by Italy and Tonga – shows up. Most rugby games with Gallic involvement usually do.
But the French performance might not mean a thing if the All Blacks ignore the history and play as only they know how. If they do, then tomorrow morning will see the long overdue coronation of the most talented group of players currently assembled under one national cause.
