LONG READ How the All Blacks were caught up after 'golden decade'

What has happened to New Zealand since the ‘golden decade’ between 2008 and 2018? Teams coached by Sir Graham Henry and Sir Steve Hansen, and masterminded by a stream of innovations provided by ‘The Professor’ Sir Wayne Smith, carried all before them, at a win rate of over 85%.

That gilt-edged period seems like a distant memory. It is not so much that the All Blacks are no longer competitive – the mini-series in South Africa proved they are on a par with the world’s best – but they no longer possess the edge that used to set them apart from all others.

New Zealand sides in their belle epoque had the highest standards of aerobic fitness on the planet, and used the kick and turnover return as their weapons of choice. As play loosened up and structures began to dissolve in the final 20 minutes, their effectiveness increased exponentially and they were truly ‘comfortable in chaos’, both mentally and physically.

Whenever I asked Henry who was the most important man on the coaching panel in that era, he would always give me the same answer – not ‘Smithy’, not one of the ‘three wise men’, but mental skills guru Gilbert Enoka. After the World Cup debacle in 2007, New Zealand built its own psychological consultancy group and the concept of ‘red heads’ and ‘blue heads’ was born.

As all-world flanker Jerome Kaino put it in the NZ Herald: “Once guys got a grasp of the importance of pressure, and how it can affect the winning or the losing of a game, then they bought into it and took it seriously.

“Sometimes you come out of a game and nothing has gone your way and you haven’t won – and you are just like ‘what happened?’

“You have tried as hard as you can and the only thing you can think of is that it must be mental skills. There was a time when guys said they didn’t need it but then I think it was a quick transition.”

‘Red head’ and ‘blue head’ were Enoka’s representations of the old sporting mantra ‘body on fire, head in the fridge’; a way of managing the paradoxical need to play with maximum aggression and yet think clearly and precisely at the same time. Kaino again:

“You have to be aggressive and yet clear thinking, and aware of what is happening next. Some guys get a bit too hyped up and their thinking [becomes] a bit foggy. We learn techniques and they teach you how to learn both sides.

“I take a deep breath if I feel I am slipping into ‘red head’. My hands are on my hips when I am a bit tired, or things are going a bit too quickly; so, I clap my hands and that takes me away from that posture.

“There are so many times that we have spoken within the All Blacks that red head is bad blue head is good, but you need to be able to bounce between both.”

The peak cycle for the need to ‘bounce between both’ is in the final quarter of matches, and that is where the All Blacks are falling down in the Rugby Championship.

The figures are glaring. If the referee stopped the fight after 60 minutes, New Zealand would now be sitting proudly atop the table. How does a team plunge so dramatically from top of the pile to rank bottom in the last 20 minutes of the game? Is it mental, is it physical or a combination of both? Why are the All Blacks no longer the world leaders at running opponents off the pitch physically, or ‘walking towards pressure’ and embracing it in the final stages of matches?

A Test match involving New Zealand is now no more taxing aerobically than the southern hemisphere mean [34.6 minutes of ball in play compared to the 34.3 minutes tournament average]. The All Blacks used to be head and shoulders above everyone else on planet rugby at scoring quickly, but that is no longer the case.

The rest of the rugby world has caught up with New Zealand, and in South Africa’s case, surpassed them. Today the Springboks are the toughest kids on the block, of that there can be no doubt.

Scott Robertson’s words after the second game in Cape Town sounded like eulogy for good times past.

“[South Africa] know how to get it done, don’t they?” he said. “They took their opportunities, especially when they’re in the 22 and they finished them.

“We talk about being proud of all our efforts, but the black jersey demands the best of us, and finishing off what we’ve created.

“Small margins, Test footy. Some great things to see and some great young players coming through, but not the result.

“It’s there, that’s the great thing about it. It’s there for us. We’ve got to be brave and be ‘clutch’ and take it.”

Ther are no more huge steps forward to be taken by New Zealand rugby, so Razor will have to be satisfied with the small margins – just like everyone else.

The good news is, he is beginning to find some of the one percenters in the turnover, and improvement of personnel from not only from the previous regime, but from the July series against England. Tyrel Lomax led such a tumultuous fightback at scrum-time after near-disaster at the first two set-pieces that he should now be considered the premier tighthead in the global game. Tupou Vaa’i relieved Scott Barrett of the lineout captaincy in the second row and repaired the havoc wrought by Maro Itoje in July. Under his auspices the Kiwi lineout is running at a rarified 90% retention rate, and he already has three lineout poaches and two breakdown pilfers to add to the credits on his own ball.

Behind them in the back-row, the 22-year-old from Apia, Wallace ‘Braveheart’ Sititi – named for the eponymous movie starring Mel Gibson – showed he may well be the answer to Robertson’s efforts to find a replacement for Shannon Frizell on the blind-side flank of the scrum.

In his 59 minutes on the field in Cape Town, Sititi was Vaai’s main lineout target with four takes, and he took over from Ardie Savea as the primary ball-handler in the forwards, with 20 receipts divided into 11 carries and nine passes. He even had the temerity to rack up more YAC [yards after contact] than the modern grandmaster of the art – 41m to Ardie’s 25m. Braveheart indeed.

At lineout time, of five throws directed to Sititi, two were won cleanly, two knocked back loosely and one lost to an underthrow. The young Samoan gave Vaa’i the back-ball option which every New Zealand team requires, while dropping a heavy hint he may well be just the ball-carrying foil Savea needs.

There is a strong sense of synergy between six and eight. Sititi wins the lineout beyond the 15m line, Savea carries the next ball around end; the new Braveheart is back on his feet to carry on third phase, while the veteran beating heart of New Zealand rugby is ready to take the ball on the next wave of attack.

The sense of a natural carrying combination in the back-row was reinforced at another first-half sequence.

Sititi can do the hard yakka first up, and that frees Savea to be a little more creative on the second wave, with the in-pass to Codie Taylor creating a deep line break and costing the Springboks a yellow card to Jasper Wiese.

Sititi spent much of his time at the forward first receiver spot ‘in pod’, keeping his shoulders square to the line while throwing ‘no-look’ passes out the back, with mixed results.

The forward has to threaten the run without turning his shoulders to tip off the pass, and in the first instance Damian McKenzie is too far behind the pod to take the ball; in the second clip he is right on top of the play and the All Blacks are able to create some running room for Mark Tele’a down the left.

‘Threaten the run’ is an understatement in Sititi’s case. The big flanker had two huge tackle busts either side of half-time.

He has the speed to play as the pull-back option and beat a fellow forward [Eben Etzebeth] around the corner. He has the low centre of gravity and power in the hips to brush off a tackler [Ox Nche] and penetrate the line on shorter carries.

If there is immediate remedial work to be done, it is on defence, where Sititi missed three of his 11 tackle attempts.

Nche gets his own back in the first clip, bumping off Sititi on a rumble into the Kiwi 22, while the youngster makes a classic mistake in the second – following an advancing scrum through too eagerly and missing the number eight pick-up down the short-side by Wiese in the process. Fortunately, Cortez Ratima was there to win the ball back at the ruck on the end of the carry.

New Zealand rugby will probably never again be able to post the kind of winning stats at national level it achieved in the professional era of the three wise men: 85% over 106 games for Henry, 87% over 109 for the man who succeeded him, Hansen. Ian Foster’s 70% may become the norm, rather than the exception to the rule.

Of the superior individual skill-sets, the advanced aerobic conditioning and the mental skills acuity which led to that success, only the superior skill-sets remain. Everywhere else, the rest of the world has caught up. New Zealand will need patience as Robertson progresses in smaller increments, rather than with world-leading strides. ‘Heart in the oven, head in the fridge’ – for player and supporter of the game alike.