Johannesburg - In the 2018 western The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, an unnamed cowboy, noose around his neck, turns to his fellow doomed and whimpering companion before their execution and asks: “First time?”
It is the same energy I suspect many Springbok supporters are asking of New Zealand rugby as they see panic setting in within the All Blacks. It is strange – a mixture of lekker and trepidation – as a South African to see such a crisis in confidence spread among our great rivals after many years and instances of that incertitude hampering the Springboks.
Indeed, as recently as 2018, SA rugby questioned its purpose.
That upheaval was markedly worse than the current state of affairs in New Zealand, but for once it’s quite pleasing to see the All Blacks in such a quandary before they face the Boks. Usually, it is SA who must carry the extra burden of self-doubt when the two teams meet.
Sam Cane was set to be axed as skipper no longer be the skipper of the All Blacks. After their recent Test series loss to an impressive Ireland, he has been selected as the sacrifice to the rugby gods.
Instead, Sam Whitelock will be handed the responsibility of leading New Zealand in a mini-tour against the Boks in the opening rounds of the Rugby Championship next month. Cane, supposedly, has lost the lockerroom; and, with 80 Test caps behind him, apparently doesn't have the experience to lead.
Moreover, since their historic defeat this past weekend, All Blacks media has gone silent. Scheduled press conferences have been abandoned, while their usually upto-date social media presence has ceased. The squad announcement for the Championship was supposed to be on Wednesday.
Instead, it will be today ...
Former Ireland head coach Joe Schmidt – hereto a consultant – has also, according to the Otago Daily Times, been co-opted into the management structure above head coach Ian Foster as a “director of rugby”.
The failure to beat Ireland at home, meanwhile, has been likened to the fall of the Roman Empire by New Zealand's rugby pundits.
It's all very dramatic but, honestly, quite pleasing if you are a South African, Irishman, Frenchman, Scotsman or Italian rugby supporter – all of whom have a date with destiny against the All Blacks next year at the Rugby World Cup in France.
This is the chink in the armour that all of world rugby has been waiting for; and Jacques Nienaber and Co, the Australians, Argentinians and the Northern Hemisphere must take full advantage of it now – landing another blow to the chin while they are wobbling.
Admittedly, the Boks weren’t at their best in the recent Wales series, but at least we have some stability, the type of calmness that New Zealand rugby have always seemed to possess, and which the rest of the rugby playing world always envied.
With that said, and despite relishing the uncertainty, the Claxon in the back of my head still cautions that a wounded animal is the most dangerous. The Boks and their supporters will do well to remember that when the All Blacks play us here next month.
@FreemanZAR