All Blacks’ loss meets muted response as New Zealand falls out of love with rugby

A loss in a knockout game at a World Cup in France, with Wayne Barnes as the referee and a few hard-to-understand decisions that had a major bearing on the game – this is a familiar story for the All Blacks and the rugby-following public of New Zealand.

It is the story of 2007, more so than it is the story of 2023, with a 28-year-old Barnes, in a game he should never have been given on account of his inexperience, failing to see the forward pass that enabled France to score the try that knocked the All Blacks out of the quarter-final 16 years ago.

The 2023 version of events had much the same raw ingredients, but the taste left by the 12-11 loss to the Springboks is much different. Not so bitter, which is maybe a sign that having experienced a number of major tragedies since 2007 – earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and a devastating terrorist attack – New Zealand’s public have grown up in the last decade or so and gained a little perspective about where rugby actually sits in their collective lives.

But perhaps, too, the muted and almost resigned response to losing the 2023 World Cup final is indicative of the fact that so many New Zealanders have had their interest and love of the game eroded in the last five years by World Rugby’s confused and conflicted efforts to manage head collisions out of the sport and the inconsistent role technology has been assigned to help in this process.

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Rugby’s popularity as a spectator sport is on the wane in New Zealand, where too many people have lost faith that, under the current officiating regime, they will see the sort of memorable and brilliant contest that New Zealand and Ireland produced.

For every epic like that one, there will be two or three impacted by heavy TMO interference, a yellow or red card that seems to have no empathy or respect for the game being one of collisions, and confusion about which of the four officials involved is actually in charge.

Prior to the tournament, most media pundits were resigned to the probability that a refereeing decision and/or intervention from the TMO would ultimately have a major bearing on who would be crowned world champions.

This is modern rugby after all – a sport that is tearing itself apart in its efforts to be safer. A sport that is now a game of chance as much as anything else as it has made villains of good men such as All Blacks captain Sam Cane for being a bit slow to react in the final when Springbok centre Jesse Kriel cut back towards him.

There was a time when a red card was reserved for the psychos, the total loons who wanted a little bit of rugby with their violence, but these days they are handed out for being in the wrong place at the wrong time and Cane will have to carry the burden of being the first man sent off in a final for the rest of his days.

[ View from New Zealand: All Blacks have a deep respect for Ireland – but not a lot of love ]

As he said to reporters after the final: “There at the time, I wasn’t even aware. It sort of caught me off guard the fact he stepped back. But look, we’ve been at this tournament for two months now, and anything around the head has ramifications.

“I’m not here to discuss whether it was right or wrong. It can’t be changed. It’s something unfortunately I am going to have to live with forever.”

There has been no public backlash. Cane, who endeared himself to a country that wasn’t quite convinced about his merits before the tournament by playing the best game of his career against Ireland in the quarter-final, is seen merely as a victim of the current law interpretations.

[ New Zealand captain Sam Cane feeling ‘so much hurt’ after World Cup final defeat ]

Barnes has been subjected to online abuse – which seems to be standard practice these days – but most New Zealanders don’t blame him for the red card, or even the TMO, as Cane was upright, he made direct contact with Kriel’s head and there were no mitigating factors.

These are the rules that have been imposed on the game by the bureaucrats in Dublin.

What has generated some disappointment is that South Africa’s talismanic captain Siya Kolisi did much the same to Ardie Savea early in the second half and yet his punishment remained a yellow card.

It’s the inconsistency that has upset the All Blacks and left most fans with a sense of disappointment that rugby has allowed itself to be held hostage by the subjective decision-making of a nameless bloke watching a bank of TV screens.

All Blacks head coach Ian Foster offered this when he was asked about his thoughts on the different treatment of the respective captains and whether he felt Kolisi should have been red carded as well: “No I don’t. But nor do I think Sam should have been red carded because I don’t think there was the force they said there was put into it.

“How do you classify someone who rushes in from 10 metres away off a lineout overthrow and has a head collision, because he has gone in too high, with someone who has reacted with half a metre of space and hasn’t brought that same degree of force to the tackle?

“That’s where it’s hard to get that combination right.”

These were Foster’s last words as All Blacks coach – comments that would have undoubtedly carried significantly more weight had the All Blacks managed to shrug off their numerical disadvantage and sneak home as they probably should have given the opportunities they created.

And so too would victory have enabled Foster to complete a remarkable redemption story of being the coach who came within a whisker of being fired last year to winning the World Cup 15 months later.

But, even without that validation, Foster has put himself back into the international coaching market and hinted that he and Joe Schmidt may effectively be touting themselves as a package.

Schmidt has been the quiet influencer inside the All Blacks since he agreed to operate as attack coach in August last year.

He took the job on the condition he didn’t have to front the media at any stage and the combination of working under Foster without having the responsibility of being front of house, as he was with Ireland, seems to have got the best out of Schmidt.

Player testimony since he arrived has been consistently glowing – with the senior group impressed by his eye for microdetail, his ability to analyse and unpick the opposition and his willingness to have hard conversations with players.

As most pundits in Ireland have suggested, Schmidt’s fingerprints were indeed all over the All Blacks’ performance in the quarter-final. When Foster was asked whether he was willing to coach another international team, and whether he would like to keep working with Schmidt, he answered an emphatic yes to both questions.

“I would absolutely love to work with Joe again,” he said. “I think he has been outstanding, fantastic for this group.”

Foster revealed that he received a few offers before the World Cup but that he refused to discuss them until after the tournament had finished.

And now it seems that he and Schmidt will return to New Zealand and wait for opportunities to land in their inbox and get back into the coaching game when the right one comes up.