Don't count on this being a distraction for the All Blacks

Fresh off a week of often bewildering political debate, the Daily Mail Australia have poured fuel on the fire that is current Trans-Tasman relations. They’ve released the contents of All Black halfback Aaron Smith’s messages to the woman he was caught with in his infamous toilet sexcapade last year, in an obviously planned attempt to throw a bit more intrigue into Saturday night’s first Bledisloe Cup test in Sydney.

That’s right, last year. All that time has gone past before these new details have come to the surface – highlighting both the lengths Smith wanted to go to to cover the story up, as well as his shockingly poor command of spelling and grammar.

For those of you unfamiliar with the incident, which happened at Christchurch airport before the All Blacks flew out to Argentina in 2016, here’s the sordid and often hilarious details.

However, if the Wallabies are thinking that it will prove to be any sort of distraction to the All Blacks, history suggests otherwise.

Smith’s trip to the toilet came the day after a comfortable win over the Springboks at AMI Stadium. The halfback had a massive game, heavily involved in the All Blacks’ first four tries.

The next week passed without incident, and the team again recorded a big win over Los Pumas in Buenos Aires. Smith was legitimately rested for that game, however TJ Perenara had a strong showing in his place.

The story broke upon the All Blacks’ arrival in Durban the following Monday. They were greeted by a media pack intent on getting the most out of the salacious breach of protocol, and Smith was duly sent home to enact the whole tearful apology procedure that’s standard with these sort of things these days.

If the Springboks thought that Smith’s rapid fall from grace was going to slow the All Blacks down, they got a rude awakening around 20 minutes into the subsequent test match. Perenara seized his opportunity with both hands and had a blinder, scoring two tries (although one was very dodgy) to help his team to a record 57-15 win. There were more than a few jokes the next week that Smith should be welcome to frequent as many toilets as he wants if that’s the way the team would play afterwards.

But the double down of the Smith saga isn’t even the only All Black-related distraction going on in Sydney this week. The court case of the alleged hotel room bugging is taking place right now, although the laborious machinations of the justice system – rather than any nefarious timing – that’s meant it’s come around a year later.

It’s unlikely that the All Black camp are in the slightest bit interested in the goings on in that trial, but it is another off-field drama that can be added to the list that includes the sending home of Keith Murdoch in 1972, Kit Fawcett letting slip that he wanted to get laid as often as possible in 1976 and the massive civil disruption and rioting caused by the 1981 Springboks coming to New Zealand.

In fact, it’s fair to say there’s only one well known distraction that’s proven to have worked on the All Blacks, and it hasn’t even been 100% confirmed to be true: when a mysterious waitress called Suzie served the team lunch before a pretty important game in 1995.