Aisle be Back: All Blacks v Argentina 2.0

• By Kevin McCarthy

I predict a Bring Back Fozzie sign will be waved on Saturday at Eden Park. Such is the (all) black humour we may need in the rest of the season.

Of course, it wasn’t meant to be this way, yet the Razor honeymoon is already cut short.

I wrote a few weeks ago that the super rugby uber coach wasn’t just playing team X or Y. Rather he was also playing also against his own stellar rugby coaching record, and whether he could translate into a test maestro.

Four games in, it turns out he can’t – or actually, not yet. Perhaps we should have anticipated that happening; being an international coach not being something people can excel at without actually becoming one and doing it for a while.

The diehard fozzieheads may be taking some solace, but Foster did have four years to build his team. Cynics would say it only began to gel in year four, thanks to a near death experience that saw the coaching team largely rejigged. Cynical cynics would say it only worked in a quarterfinal, and semi-final, and then not quite, in the final.

But assessments of All Blacks coaches are not that forgiving, plus I suspect there’s some PTSD about the largely mediocre four years the All Blacks have gone through. The tendency may be to get an itchy trigger finger when, really, that is a gross over-reaction.

There is no doubt that most fans are baffled by what the game plan is, and indeed, if you believe the speculation, so are a lot of the players.

The only sane strategy then in this rocky patch is to strip down and keep things simpler- and perform the basic skills ruthlessly well.

As always, the impulse is to attack, and go wide, and yet, surely, that is now a recipe for disaster some days against effective rush defences.

The All Blacks instead should be aiming to outfox, rather than play into the hands of, sides anticipating a familiar playbook. That’s when New Zealand sides are at their best.

The selection suggests indeed that the coaches have realised they need to build a settled starting line-up, that have the miles on the clock.

It is disturbing however that last week’s team was largely just as experienced, but became rattled in the last 20.

Scott Robertson really needs to be comfortable with this being a long runway ahead. And the same could be said of the fans.

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Anyone living in Wellington can tell you it’s feeling a bit beaten up right now, as the civil service gets cut back.

That’s certainly sucked the inclination to spend out of a lot of people, even those who still have jobs.

But it’s possibly a stretch to give it as a major reason for the empty seats at the Cake Tin last weekend.

As one commentator noted, the attendance was the same as is typically seen at games against the Pumas – which usually are at smaller venues.

In short, they’re not a huge drawcard. Although maybe they will be from now on.

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Job done by the Lions in their NPC opener at Eden Park.

They looked good when they looked good, with their star players turning up.

Taranaki aka the Defending Champions up next, at Porirua.

A scalp the Lions would do well to capture.

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