This post is not meant to overwhelm NZ rugby as it was in an emergency situation. Decisions had to be made and were made.
Yet it must be told that NZ is the first rugby side to succumb to temptation of mimicking SA rugby approach. NZ fought fire with fire. And this is a bad omen for the future of the game.
The SA rugby situation is known: players lack the skills and acumen to play rugby at this level. They conceal their shortcomings by following two priorities: avoiding to play rugby and preventing others from playing rugby.
This leads to a mere attrional perspective: the rugby game is sumed up to which side is the freshest.
As they avoid playing rugby themselves, they save up their energy (no energy is spent on playing rugby) and rely on the committment of the other side to take advantage to wear them down.
The other side spends energy on playing rugby and SA rugby players spend their energy to increase the energy the opposition spent on playing rugby.
It is attrition with the given goal that once the opposition has exhausted itself enough through their committment to play rugby and the SA rugby committment to increase the energy necessary to play rugby, it reduces enough the level of the game SA rugby players may keep pretending and not being frontally exposed as the fraud they are.
Up to now, all sides accepted the terms of SA rugby, they played against SA rugby and took charge of animating the game, trying to play rugby for both sides.
Except the last time. NZ rejected the terms and no longer committed to take charge. They kept the ball to do nothing.
This gave the first twenty minutes (or something) when nothing happened.
Nothing happened because SA rugby had not the talent to make things happen and because NZ simply gave up on making things happen. NZ players saved up their energy by refusing to play rugby. And relied only on sparks here and there. They had a passive opportunity approach, if an opportunity happens, then it was played. But they did not spend energy to provide themselves with opportunities.
Nothing happened. SA rugby were not even able to play to milk a penalty kick. This caused a tremendous shock in the SA staff and pressed them in emergency substitution (they brought fresh players from the bench way earlier than planned in order to bank on it)
Optimists would tell that eventually, the fraud known as SA rugby had been exposed. Simple minded people will tell that the fraud was known before the game.
This post is not meant to damn the ABs which were in a difficult position, they had to win and they compromized.
Yet this game gave a glimpse of the future, of what may happen if sides take example on SA rugby.
This will give games nothing happens.
